We consider last passage percolation on $\mathbb Z^2$ with general weight distributions, which is expected to be a member of the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) universality class. In this model, an oriented path between given endpoints which maximizes the sum of the i.i.d. weight variables associated to its vertices is called a geodesic. Under natural conditions of curvature of the limiting geodesic weight profile and stretched exponential decay of both tails of the point-to-point weight, we use geometric arguments to upgrade the assumptions to prove optimal upper and lower tail behavior with the exponents of $3/2$ and $3$ for the weight of the geodesic from $(1,1)$ to $(r,r)$ for all large finite $r$. The proofs merge several ideas, including the well known super-additivity property of last passage values, concentration of measure behavior for sums of stretched exponential random variables, and geometric insights coming from the study of geodesics and more general objects called geodesic watermelons. Previously such optimal behavior was only known for exactly solvable models, with proofs relying on hard analysis of formulas from integrable probability, which are unavailable in the general setting. Our results illustrate a facet of universality in a class of KPZ stochastic growth models and provide a geometric explanation of the upper and lower tail exponents of the GUE Tracy-Widom distribution, the conjectured one point scaling limit of such models. The key arguments are based on an observation of general interest that super-additivity allows a natural iterative bootstrapping procedure to obtain improved tail estimates.
In this paper we consider an equilibrium last-passage percolation model on an environment given by a compound two-dimensional Poisson process. We prove an $\LL^2$-formula relating the initial measure with the last-passage percolation time. This formula turns out to be a useful tool to analyze the fluctuations of the last-passage times along non-characteristic directions.
These lecture notes are written as reference material for the Advanced Course "Hydrodynamical Methods in Last Passage Percolation Models", given at the 28th Coloquio Brasileiro de Matematica at IMPA, Rio de Janeiro, July 2011.
We investigate extended processes given by last-passage times in directed models defined using exponential variables with decaying mean. In certain cases we find the universal Airy process, but other cases lead to non-universal and trivial extended processes.
We study the shape fluctuation in the first passage percolation on $\mathbb{Z}^d$. It is known that it diverges when the distribution obeys Bernoulli in [Yu Zhang. The divergence of fluctuations for shape in first passage percolation. Probab. Theory. Related. Fields. 136(2) 298-320, 2006]. In this paper, we extend the result to general distributions.
We study non-random fluctuation in the first passage percolation on $\mathbb{Z}^d$ and show that it diverges for any dimension. We also prove the divergence of the non-random shape fluctuation, which was conjectured in [Yu Zhang. The divergence of fluctuations for shape in first passage percolation. {\em Probab. Theory. Related. Fields.} 136(2) 298--320, 2006].
We study first passage percolation on the plane for a family of invariant, ergodic measures on $\mathbb{Z}^2$. We prove that for all of these models the asymptotic shape is the $\ell$-$1$ ball and that there are exactly four infinite geodesics starting at the origin a.s. In addition we determine the exponents for the variance and wandering of finite geodesics. We show that the variance and wandering exponents do not satisfy the relationship of $χ=2ξ-1$ which is expected for independent first passage percolation.
Bi-infinite geodesics are fundamental objects of interest in planar first passage percolation. A longstanding conjecture states that under mild conditions there are almost surely no bigeodesics, however the result has not been proved in any case. For the exactly solvable model of directed last passage percolation on $\mathbb{Z}^2$ with i.i.d. exponential passage times, we study the corresponding question and show that almost surely the only bigeodesics are the trivial ones, i.e., the horizontal and vertical lines. The proof makes use of estimates for last passage time available from the integr…
We consider the Bernoulli first-passage percolation on $\mathbb Z^d (d\ge 2)$. That is, the edge passage time is taken independently to be 1 with probability $1-p$ and 0 otherwise. Let ${μ(p)}$ be the time constant. We prove in this paper that \[ μ(p_1)-μ({p_2})\ge \frac{μ(p_2)}{1-p_2}(p_2-p_1)\] for all $ 0\leq p_1<p_2< 1$ by using Russo's formula.
We study the two-time distribution in directed last passage percolation with geometric weights in the first quadrant. We compute the scaling limit and show that it is given by a contour integral of a Fredholm determinant.
It has been conjectured in numerous physics papers that in ordinary first-passage percolation on integer lattices, the fluctuation exponent $χ$ and the wandering exponent $ξ$ are related through the universal relation $χ=2ξ-1$, irrespective of the dimension. This is sometimes called the KPZ relation between the two exponents. This article gives a rigorous proof of this conjecture assuming that the exponents exist in a certain sense.
The Poisson clumping heuristic has lead Aldous to conjecture the value of the first passage percolation on the hypercube in the limit of large dimensions. Aldous' conjecture has been rigorously confirmed by Fill and Pemantle [Annals of Applied Prob- ability 3 (1993)] by means of a variance reduction trick. We present here a streamlined and, we believe, more natural proof based on ideas emerged in the study of Derrida's random energy models.
In directed last passage site percolation with i.i.d.~random weights with finite support over a $n\times\lfloor n^α\rfloor$ grid, we prove that for $n$ large enough, the order of the $r$-th central moment, $1\le r<+\infty$, of the last passage time is lower bounded by $n^{r(1-α)/2}$, $0<α<1/3$.
In this paper, we obtain optimal uniform lower tail estimates for the probability distribution of the properly scaled length of the longest up/right path of the last passage site percolation model considered by Johansson in [12]. The estimates are used to prove a lower tail moderate deviation result for the model. The estimates also imply the convergence of moments, and also provide a verification of the universal scaling law relating the longitudinal and the transversal fluctuations of the model.
We study the site version of (independent) first-passage percolation on the triangular lattice $\mathbb{T}$. Denote the passage time of the site $v$ in $\mathbb{T}$ by $t(v)$, and assume that $P(t(v)=0)=P(t(v)=1)=1/2$. Denote by $a_{0,n}$ the passage time from $\textbf{0}$ to $(n,0)$, and by $b_{0,n}$ the passage time from $\textbf{0}$ to the halfplane $\{(x,y):x\geq n\}$. We prove that there exists a constant $0<μ<\infty$ such that as $n\rightarrow\infty$, $a_{0,n}/\log n\rightarrow μ$ in probability and $b_{0,n}/\log n\rightarrow μ/2$ almost surely. This result confirms a prediction of Keste…
We study first-passage percolation where edges in the left and right half-planes are assigned values according to different distributions. We show that the asymptotic growth of the resulting inhomogeneous first-passage process obeys a shape theorem, and we express the limiting shape in terms of the limiting shapes for the homogeneous processes for the two weight distributions. We further show that there exist pairs of distributions for which the rate of growth in the vertical direction is strictly larger than the rate of growth of the homogeneous process with either of the two distributions, a…
The interplay between two-dimensional percolation growth models and one-dimensional particle processes has been a fruitful source of interesting mathematical phenomena. In this paper we develop a connection between the construction of Busemann functions in the Hammersley last-passage percolation model with i.i.d. random weights, and the existence, ergodicity and uniqueness of equilibrium (or time-invariant) measures for the related (multi-class) interacting fluid system. As we shall see, in the classical Hammersley model, where each point has weight one, this approach brings a new and rather g…
The estimates on the fluctuations of first-passsage percolation due to Talagrand (a tail bound) and Benjamini--Kalai--Schramm (a sublinear variance bound) are transcribed into the positive-temperature setting of random Schroedinger operators.
Let $0<a<b<\infty$, and for each edge $e$ of $Z^d$ let $ω_e=a$ or $ω_e=b$, each with probability 1/2, independently. This induces a random metric $\dist_ω$ on the vertices of $Z^d$, called first passage percolation. We prove that for $d>1$ the distance $dist_ω(0,v)$ from the origin to a vertex $v$, $|v|>2$, has variance bounded by $C |v|/\log|v|$, where $C=C(a,b,d)$ is a constant which may only depend on $a$, $b$ and $d$. Some related variants are also discussed
We construct an edge-weight distribution for i.i.d. first-passage percolation on $\mathbb{Z}^2$ whose limit shape is not a polygon and whose extreme points are arbitrarily dense in the boundary. Consequently, the associated Richardson-type growth model can support coexistence of a countably infinite number of distinct species, and the graph of infection has infinitely many ends.
This article studies several properties of the half-space last passage percolation, in particular the two-time covariance. We show that, when the two end-points are at small macroscopic distance, then the first order correction to the covariance for the point-to-point model is the same as the one of the stationary model. In order to obtain the result, we first derive comparison inequalities of the last passage increments for different models. This is used to prove tightness of the point-to-point process as well as localization of the geodesics. Unlike for the full-space case, for half-space we…
For directed last passage percolation on $\mathbb{Z}^2$ with exponential passage times on the vertices, let $T_{n}$ denote the last passage time from $(0,0)$ to $(n,n)$. We consider asymptotic two point correlation functions of the sequence $T_{n}$. In particular we consider ${\rm Corr}(T_{n}, T_{r})$ for $r\le n$ where $r,n\to \infty$ with $r\ll n$ or $n-r \ll n$. We show that in the former case ${\rm Corr}(T_{n}, T_{r})=Θ((\frac{r}{n})^{1/3})$ whereas in the latter case $1-{\rm Corr}(T_{n}, T_{r})=Θ((\frac{n-r}{n})^{2/3})$. The argument revolves around finer understanding of polymer geometry…
We study the time constant $C(ν)$ of last passage percolation on the complete directed acyclic graph on the set of non-negative integers, where edges have i.i.d. weights with distribution $ν$ with support included in $\{-\infty\}\cup\mathbb{R}$. We show that $ν\mapsto C(ν)$ is strictly increasing in $ν$. We also prove that $C(ν)$ is continuous in $ν$ for a large set of measures $ν$. Furthermore, when $ν$ is purely atomic, we show that $C(ν)$ is analytic with respect to the weights of the atoms. In the special case of two positive atoms, it is an explicit rational function of these weights.
In this paper we study stationary last passage percolation (LPP) in half-space geometry. We determine the limiting distribution of the last passage time in a critical window close to the origin. The result is a new two-parameter family of distributions: one parameter for the strength of the diagonal bounding the half-space (strength of the source at the origin in the equivalent TASEP language) and the other for the distance of the point of observation from the origin. It should be compared with the one-parameter family giving the Baik--Rains distributions for full-space geometry. We finally sh…
We continue the study of infinite geodesics in planar first-passage percolation, pioneered by Newman in the mid 1990s. Building on more recent work of Hoffman, and Damron and Hanson, we develop an ergodic theory for infinite geodesics via the study of what we shall call `random coalescing geodesics'. Random coalescing geodesics have a range of nice asymptotic properties, such as asymptotic directions and linear Busemann functions. We show that random coalescing geodesics are (in some sense) dense in the space of geodesics. This allows us to extrapolate properties from random coalescing geodesi…
We study Liouville first passage percolation metrics associated to a Gaussian free field $h$ mollified by the two-dimensional heat kernel $p_t$ in the bulk, and related star-scale invariant metrics. For $γ\in (0,2)$ and $ξ= \fracγ{d_γ}$, where $d_γ$ is the Liouville quantum gravity dimension defined in [Ding-Gwynne18], we show that renormalized metrics $(λ_t^{-1} e^{ξp_t * h} ds)_{t \in (0,1)}$ are tight with respect to the uniform topology. In particular, we show that subsequential limits are bi-Hölder with respect to the Euclidean topology, obtain tail estimates for side-to-side distances an…
For stationary first passage percolation in two dimensions, the existence and uniqueness of semi-infinite geodesics directed in particular directions or sectors has been considered by Damron and Hanson (Commun. Math. Phys., 2014), Ahlberg and Hoffman (preprint, 2016), and others. However the main results do not cover geodesics in the direction of corners of the limit shape $\mathcal{B}$, where two facets meet. We construct an example with the following properties: (i) the limiting shape is an octagon, (ii) semi-infinite geodesics exist only in the four axis directions, and (iii) in each axis d…
Discrete Liouville first passage percolation (LFPP) with parameter $ξ> 0$ is the random metric on a sub-graph of $\mathbb Z^2$ obtained by assigning each vertex $z$ a weight of $e^{ξh(z)}$, where $h$ is the discrete Gaussian free field. We show that the distance exponent for discrete LFPP is strictly positive for all $ξ> 0$. More precisely, the discrete LFPP distance between the inner and outer boundaries of a discrete annulus of size $2^n$ is typically at least $2^{αn}$ for an exponent $α> 0$ depending on $ξ$. This is a crucial input in the proof that LFPP admits non-trivial subsequential sca…
Discrete and continuum Liouville first passage percolation (DLFPP, LFPP) are two approximations of the conjectural $γ$-Liouville quantum gravity (LQG) metric, obtained by exponentiating the discrete Gaussian free field (GFF) and the circle average regularization of the continuum GFF respectively. We show that these two models can be coupled so that with high probability distances in these models agree up to $o(1)$ errors in the exponent, and thus have the same distance exponent. Ding and Gwynne (2018) give a formula for the continuum LFPP distance exponent in terms of the $γ$-LQG dimension exp…
A competition model on $\mathbb{Z}_+^{2}$ governed by directed last passage percolation is considered. A stochastic domination argument between subtrees of the last passage percolation is put forward.
We study local modifications of the graph distance in large random triangulations. Our main results show that, in large scales, the modified distance behaves like a deterministic constant $\mathbf{c}~\in~(0,\infty)$ times the usual graph distance. This applies in particular to the first-passage percolation distance obtained by assigning independent random weights to the edges of the graph. We also consider the graph distance on the dual map, and the first-passage percolation on the dual map with exponential edge weights, which is closely related to the so-called Eden model. In the latter two c…
In this note we give a(nother) combinatorial proof of an old result of Baik--Rains: that for appropriately considered independent geometric weights, the generating series for last passage percolation polymers in a $2n \times n \times n$ quarter square (point-to-half-line-reflected geometry) splits as the product of two simpler generating series---that for last passage percolation polymers in a point-to-line geometry and that for last passage percolation in a point-to-point-reflected (half-space) geometry, the latter both in an $n \times n \times n$ triangle. As a corollary, for iid geometric r…
We pursue the study of a random coloring first passage percolation model introduced by Fontes and Newman. We prove that the asymptotic shape of this first passage percolation model continuously depends on the law of the coloring. The proof uses several couplings, particularly with greedy lattice animals.
This paper is a survey of various results and techniques in first passage percolation, a random process modeling a spreading fluid on an infinite graph. The latter half of the paper focuses on the connection between first passage percolation and a certain class of stochastic growth and competition models.
We give the first properties of independent Bernoulli percolation, for oriented graphs on the set of vertices $\Z^d$ that are translation-invariant and may contain loops. We exhibit some examples showing that the critical probability for the existence of an infinite cluster may be direction-dependent. Then, we prove that the phase transition in a given direction is sharp, and study the links between percolation and first-passage percolation on these oriented graphs.
We consider the model of i.i.d. first passage percolation on $\mathbb{Z}^d$ : we associate with each edge $e$ of the graph a passage time $t(e)$ taking values in $[0,+\infty]$, such that $\mathbb{P}[t(e)<+\infty] >p_c(d)$. Equivalently, we consider a standard (finite) i.i.d. first passage percolation model on a super-critical Bernoulli percolation performed independently. We prove a weak shape theorem without any moment assumption. We also prove that the corresponding time constant is positive if and only if $\mathbb{P}[t(e)=0]<p_c(d)$.
We consider standard first-passage percolation on $\Z^d$. Let $e_1$ be the first coordinate vector. Let $a(n)$ be the expected passage time from the origin to $ne_1$. In this short paper, we note that $a(n)$ is increasing under some strong condition on the support of the law of the passage times on the edges.
We study first-passage percolation on random simple triangulations and their dual maps with independent identically distributed link weights. Our main result shows that the first-passage percolation distance concentrates in an $o_p(n^{1/4})$ window around a constant multiple of the graph distance.
We determine the asymptotic speed of the first-passage percolation process on some ladder-like graphs (or width-2 stretches) when the times associated with different edges are independent and exponentially distributed but not necessarily all with the same mean. The method uses a particular Markov chain associated with the first-passage percolation process and properties of its stationary distribution.
For first passage percolation on $\mathbb{Z}^2$ with i.i.d. bounded edge weights, we consider the upper tail large deviation event; i.e., the rare situation where the first passage time between two points at distance $n$, is macroscopically larger than typical. It was shown by Kesten (1986) that the probability of this event decays as $\exp (-Θ(n^2))$. However the question of existence of the rate function i.e., whether the log-probability normalized by $n^2$ tends to a limit, had remained open. We show that under some additional mild regularity assumption on the passage time distribution, the…
A range of first-passage percolation type models are believed to demonstrate the related properties of sublinear variance and superdiffusivity. We show that directed last-passage percolation with Gaussian vertex weights has a sublinear variance property. We also consider other vertex weight distributions. Corresponding results are obtained for the ground state of the `directed polymers in a random environment' model.
Percolation with edge-passage probability p and first-passage percolation are studied for the n-cube B_n ={0,1}^n with nearest neighbor edges. For oriented and unoriented percolation, p=e/n and p=1/n are the respective critical probabilities. For oriented first-passage percolation with i.i.d. edge-passage times having a density of 1 near the origin, the percolation time (time to reach the opposite corner of the cube) converges in probability to 1 as n->infty. This resolves a conjecture of David Aldous. When the edge-passage distribution is standard exponential, the (smaller) percolation time f…
We show that the number of maximal paths in directed last-passage percolation on the hypercubic lattice ${\mathbb Z}^d$ $(d\geq2)$ in which weights take finitely many values is typically exponentially large.
The ring of symmetric functions has a basis of dual Grothendieck polynomials that are inhomogeneous $K$-theoretic deformations of Schur polynomials. We prove that dual Grothendieck polynomials determine column distributions for a directed last-passage percolation model.
The non-random fluctuation is one of the central objects in first passage percolation. It was proved in [Shuta Nakajima. Divergence of non-random fluctuation in First Passage Percolation. {\em Electron. Commun. Probab.} 24 (65), 1-13. 2019.] that for a particular asymptotic direction, it diverges in a lattice first passage percolation with an explicit lower bound. In this paper, we discuss the non-random fluctuation in Euclidean first passage percolations and show that it diverges in dimension $d\geq 2$ in this model also. Compared with the result in \cite{N19}, the present result is proved fo…
We consider a wide class of ergodic first passage percolation processes on Z^2 and prove that there exist at least four one-sided geodesics a.s. We also show that coexistence is possible with positive probability in a four color Richardson's growth model. This improves earlier results of Haggstrom and Pemantle, Garet and Marchand, and Hoffman who proved that first passage percolation has at least two geodesics and that coexistence is possible in a two color Richardson's growth model.
We introduce a new first passage percolation model in a Poissonian environment on $\mathbb{R}^{2}$. In this model, the action of a path depends on the geometry of the path and the travel time. We prove that the transversal fluctuation exponent for point-to-line action minimizers is at least $3/5$.
We prove a GUE central limit theorem for random variables with finite fourth moment. We apply this theorem to prove that the directed first and last passage percolation problems in thin rectangles exhibit universal fluctuations given by the Tracy-Widom law.
Last three years have seen new developments in the theory of last passage percolation, which has variety applications to random permutations, random growth and random vicious walks. It turns out that a few class of models have determinant formulas for the probability distribution, which can be analyzed asymptotically. One of the tools for the asymptotic analysis has been the Riemann-Hilbert method. In this paper, we survey the use of Riemann-Hilbert method in the last passage percolation problems.
We consider directed first passage percolation on the integer lattice, with time constant $μ$ and passage time $a_{0n}$ from the origin to $(n,0,...,0)$. It is shown that under certain conditions on the passage time distribution, $Ea_{0n} - nμ= O(n^{1/2}(\log\log n)/\log n)$.
In this paper, we study the maximal edge-traversal time (simply we call maximal weight hereafter) on the optimal paths in the first passage percolation for several edge distributions, including the Pareto and Weibull distributions. It is known to be unbounded when the edge distribution has unbounded support [J. van den Berg and H. Kesten. Inequalities for the time constant in first-passage percolation. Ann. Appl. Probab. 56-80, 1993]. We determine the order of the growth up to a multiplicative constant.
Using the fact that the Airy process describes the limiting fluctuations of the Hammersley last-passage percolation model, we prove that it behaves locally like a Brownian motion. Our method is quite straightforward, and it is based on a certain monotonicity and good control over the equilibrium measures of the Hammersley model (local comparison).
