In first-passage percolation, we assign i.i.d.~nonnegative weights $(t_e)$ to the nearest-neighbor edges of $\mathbb{Z}^d$ and study the induced pseudometric $T = T(x,y)$. In this paper, we focus on geodesics, or optimal paths for $T$, and estimate the empirical distribution of weights along them. We prove an upper bound for the expected number of edges with weight $\geq M$ in the union of all geodesics from $0$ to $x$ of the form $q(M) \mathbb{P}(t_e \geq M)|x|$, where $q(M) \leq e^{-cM}$. This shows that the tail of the expected empirical distribution along a geodesic is lighter than that of the original weight distribution by an exponential factor. We also give a lower bound for the expected minimal number of edges with weight $\geq M$ in any geodesic from $0$ to $x$ in terms of $\mathbb{P}(t_e \geq M)$ and $\mathbb{P}(t_e \in [M,2M])$. For example, these two imply that if $t_e$ has a power law tail of the form $\mathbb{P}(t_e \geq M) \sim M^{-α}$, then the tail of the expected empirical distribution asymptotically lies between $e^{-CM \log M}$ and $e^{-cM}$. We also provide estimates for the expected number of edges in a geodesic with weight in a set $A$ for (a) arbitrary $A$, (b) $A$ an interval separated from the infimum of the support of $t_e$ and (c) $A=[0,a]$ for some $a \geq 0$.
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 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 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.
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 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).
We consider the first passage percolation model on the square lattice with an edge weight distribution F. In this paper, we consider the number of optimal paths for two points separated by a long distance. We show that there is a phase transition in the sub-criticality and the criticality.
We provide a new exponential concentration inequality for First Passage Percolation valid for a wide class of edge times distributions. This improves and extends a result by Benjamini, Kalai and Schramm which gave a variance bound for Bernoulli edge times. Our approach is based on some functional inequalities extending the work of Rossignol and Falik and Samorodnitsky.
We consider the first-passage percolation problem on effectively one-dimensional graphs with vertex set {1,...,n}\times{0,1} and translation-invariant edge-structure. For three of six non-trivial cases we obtain exact expressions for the asymptotic percolation rate χ by solving certain recursive distributional equations and invoking results from ergodic theory to identify χ as the expected asymptotic one-step growth of the first-passage time from (0,0) to (n,0).
The aim of this paper is to generalize the well-known asymptotic shape result for first-passage percolation on $\Zd$ to first-passage percolation on a random environment given by the infinite cluster of a supercritical Bernoulli percolation model. We prove the convergence of the renormalized set of wet points to a deterministic shape that does not depend on the random environment. As a special case of the previous result, we obtain an asymptotic shape theorem for the chemical distance in supercritical Bernoulli percolation. We also prove a flat edge result. Some various examples are also given…
We consider first-passage percolation on the edges of $\mathbb{Z}^2 \times \{1, \cdots, k\},$ namely the slab $\mathbb{S}_k$ of width $k$. Each edge is assigned independently a passage time of either 0 (with probability $p_c(\mathbb{S}_k)$) or 1 ( with probability $1-p_c(\mathbb{S}_k)$) where $p_c$ is the critical probability for Bernouilli percolation. We prove central limit theorems for point-to-point and point-to-line passage times. These generalize the results of Kesten and Zhang \cite{kestenzhang} to non-planar graphs.
In this paper we consider first passage percolation on the square lattice \(\mathbb{Z}^d\) with passage times that are independent and have bounded \(p^{th}\) moment for some \(p > 6(1+d),\) but not necessarily identically distributed. For integer \(n \geq 1,\) let \(T(0,n)\) be the minimum time needed to reach the point \((n,\mathbf{0})\) from the origin. We prove that \(\frac{1}{n}\left(T(0,n) - \mathbb{E}T(0,n)\right)\) converges to zero in \(L^2\) and use a subsequence argument to obtain almost sure convergence. As a corollary, for i.i.d. passage times, we also obtain the usual almost sure…
We generalize Richardson's model by starting with two sites of different colors and giving each new site the color of the site that spawned it. We show that co-existence is possible.
We consider last-passage percolation models in two dimensions, in which the underlying weight distribution has a heavy tail of index alpha<2. We prove scaling laws and asymptotic distributions, both for the passage times and for the shape of optimal paths; these are expressed in terms of a family (indexed by alpha) of "continuous last-passage percolation" models in the unit square. In the extreme case alpha=0 (corresponding to a distribution with slowly varying tail) the asymptotic distribution of the optimal path can be represented by a random self-similar measure on [0,1], whose multifractal…
We consider first-passage percolation on the edges of $\mathbb{Z}^2 \times k,$ namely the slab of width $k$. Each edge is assigned independently a passage time of either 0 (with probability $1-p_c(\mathbb{S}_k)$) or 1 ((with probability $p_c(\mathbb{S}_k)$) where $p_c$ is the critical probability. We prove central limit theorems for point-to-point and point-to-line passage times. These generalize the results of [Kesten and Zhang] to non-planar graphs.
For First Passage Percolation in Z^d with large d, we construct a path connecting the origin to {x_1 =1}, whose passage time has optimal order \log d/d. Besides, an improved lower bound for the "diagonal" speed of the cluster combined with a result by Dhar (1988) shows that the limiting shape in FPP with exponential passage times (and thus that of Eden model) is not the euclidian ball in dimension larger than 35.
In this paper we prove a duality relation between coalescence times and exit points in last-passage percolation models with exponential weights. As a consequence, we get lower bounds for coalescence times with scaling exponent 3/2, and we relate its distribution with variational problems involving the Brownian motion process and the Airy process.
We consider two different objects on super-critical Bernoulli percolation on $\mathbb{Z}^d$ : the time constant for i.i.d. first-passage percolation (for $d\geq 2$) and the isoperimetric constant (for $d=2$). We prove that both objects are continuous with respect to the law of the environment. More precisely we prove that the isoperimetric constant of supercritical percolation in $\mathbb{Z}^2$ is continuous in the percolation parameter. As a corollary we prove that normalized sets achieving the isoperimetric constant are continuous with respect to the Hausdroff metric. Concerning first-passag…
We consider first passage percolation with i.i.d. weights on edges of the d-dimensional cubic lattice. Under the assumptions that a weight is equal to zero with probability smaller than the critical probability of bond percolation in the d-dimensional cubic lattice, and has moments bigger than 1, we investigate upper bounds on the so-called non-random fluctuations of the model. In addition, we give an application of our result to a lower bound for variance of the first passage percolation in the case where the limit shape has flat edges.
In this note we investigate the last passage percolation model in the presence of macroscopic inhomogeneity. We analyze how this affects the scaling limit of the passage time, leading to a variational problem that provides an ODE for the deterministic limiting shape of the maximal path. We obtain a sufficient analytical condition for uniqueness of the solution for the variational problem. Consequences for the totally asymmetric simple exclusion process are discussed.
We study the rate of convergence in the Shape Theorem of first-passage percolation, obtaining the precise asymptotic rate of decay for the probability of linear order deviations under a moment condition. Our results are stated for a given time and complements recent work by the same author, in which the rate of convergence was studied from the standard spatial perspective.
In this paper, we study some properties of optimal paths in the first passage percolation on $\Z^d$ and show the followings: (1) the number of optimal paths has an exponential growth if the distribution has an atom; (2) the means of intersection and union of optimal paths are linear in the distance. For the proofs, we use the configuration--flipping argument introduced in [J. van den Berg and H. Kesten. Inequalities for the time constant in first-passage percolation. Ann. Appl. Probab. 56-80, 1993] with suitable adaptions.
This paper studies the first passage percolation (FPP) model: each edge in the cubic lattice is assigned a random passage time, and consideration is given to the behavior of the percolation region $B(t)$, which consists of those vertices that can be reached from the origin within a time $t > 0$. Cox and Durrett showed the shape theorem for the percolation region, saying that the normalized region $B(t)/t$ converges to some limit shape $\mathcal{B}$. This paper introduces a general FPP model defined on crystal lattices, and shows the monotonicity of the limit shapes under covering maps, thereby…
We consider a last-passage directed percolation model in $Z_+^2$, with i.i.d. weights whose common distribution has a finite $(2+p)$th moment. We study the fluctuations of the passage time from the origin to the point $\big(n,n^{\lfloor a \rfloor}\big)$. We show that, for suitable $a$ (depending on $p$), this quantity, appropriately scaled, converges in distribution as $n\to\infty$ to the Tracy-Widom distribution, irrespective of the underlying weight distribution. The argument uses a coupling to a Brownian directed percolation problem and the strong approximation of Komlós, Major and Tusnády.
In first-passage percolation, one places nonnegative i.i.d. random variables (T (e)) on the edges of Z d. A geodesic is an optimal path for the passage times T (e). Consider a local property of the time environment. We call it a pattern. We investigate the number of times a geodesic crosses a translate of this pattern. Under mild conditions, we show that, apart from an event with exponentially small probability, this number is linear in the distance between the extremities of the geodesic.
The Euclidean first-passage percolation model of Howard and Newman is a rotationally invariant percolation model built on a Poisson point process. It is known that the passage time between 0 and $ne_1$ obeys a diffusive upper bound: $\mbox{Var}\, T(0,ne_1) \leq Cn$, and in this paper we improve this inequality to $Cn/\log n$. The methods follow the strategy used for sublinear variance proofs on the lattice, using the Falik-Samorodnitsky inequality and a Bernoulli encoding, but with substantial technical difficulties. To deal with the different setup of the Euclidean model, we represent the pas…
We consider the standard first passage percolation on $\mathbb{Z}^{d}$: with each edge of the lattice we associate a random capacity. We are interested in the maximal flow through a cylinder in this graph. Under some assumptions Kesten proved in 1987 a law of large numbers for the rescaled flow. Chayes and Chayes established that the large deviations far away below its typical value are of surface order, at least for the Bernoulli percolation and cylinders of certain height. Thanks to another approach we extend here their result to higher cylinders, and we transport this result to the model of…
We consider planar stationary exponential Last Passage Percolation in the positive quadrant with boundary weights. For $ρ\in (0,1)$ and points $v_N=((1-ρ)^2 N,ρ^2 N)$ going to infinity along the characteristic direction, we establish right tail estimates with the optimal exponent for the exit time of the geodesic, along with optimal exponent estimates for the upper tail moderate deviations for the passage time. For the case $ρ=\frac{1}{2}$ in the stationary model, we establish the lower bound estimate with the optimal exponent for the lower tail of the passage time. Our arguments are based on …
We study the problem of coexistence in a two-type competition model governed by first-passage percolation on $\Zd$ or on the infinite cluster in Bernoulli percolation. Actually, we prove for a large class of ergodic stationary passage times that for distinct points $x,y\in\Zd$, there is a strictly positive probability that $\{z\in\Zd;d(y,z)<d(x,z)\}$ and $\{z\in\Zd;d(y,z)>d(x,z)\}$ are both infinite sets. We also show that there is a strictly positive probability that the graph of time-minimizing path from the origin in first-passage percolation has at least two topological ends. This generali…
We consider first-passage percolation with i.i.d. non-negative weights coming from some continuous distribution under a moment condition. We review recent results in the study of geodesics in first-passage percolation and study their implications for the multi-type Richardson model. In two dimensions this establishes a dual relation between the existence of infinite geodesics and coexistence among competing types. The argument amounts to making precise the heuristic that infinite geodesics can be thought of as `highways to infinity'. We explain the limitations of the current techniques by pres…
We study the time constant $μ(e_{1})$ in first passage percolation on $\mathbb Z^{d}$ as a function of the dimension. We prove that if the passage times have finite mean, $$\lim_{d \to \infty} \frac{μ(e_{1}) d}{\log d} = \frac{1}{2a},$$ where $a \in [0,\infty]$ is a constant that depends only on the behavior of the distribution of the passage times at $0$. For the same class of distributions, we also prove that the limit shape is not an Euclidean ball, nor a $d$-dimensional cube or diamond, provided that $d$ is large enough.
We consider first-passage percolation on $\mathbb{Z}^2$ with i.i.d. weights, whose distribution function satisfies $F(0) = p_c = 1/2$. This is sometimes known as the "critical case" because large clusters of zero-weight edges force passage times to grow at most logarithmically, giving zero time constant. Denote $T(\mathbf{0}, \partial B(n))$ as the passage time from the origin to the boundary of the box $[-n,n] \times [-n,n]$. We characterize the limit behavior of $T(\mathbf{0}, \partial B(n))$ by conditions on the distribution function $F$. We also give exact conditions under which $T(\mathbf…
We consider large random planar maps and study the first-passage percolation distance obtained by assigning independent identically distributed lengths to the edges. We consider the cases of quadrangulations and of general planar maps. In both cases, the first-passage percolation distance is shown to behave in large scales like a constant times the usual graph distance. We apply our method to the metric properties of the classical Tutte bijection between quadrangulations with $n$ faces and general planar maps with $n$ edges. We prove that the respective graph distances on the quadrangulation a…
A simple lemma bounds $\mathrm{s.d.}(T)/\mathbb{E} T$ for hitting times $T$ in Markov chains with a certain strong monotonicity property. We show how this lemma may be applied to several increasing set-valued processes. Our main result concerns a model of first passage percolation on a finite graph, where the traversal times of edges are independent Exponentials with arbitrary rates. Consider the percolation time $X$ between two arbitrary vertices. We prove that $\mathrm{s.d.}(X)/\mathbb{E} X$ is small if and only if $Ξ/\mathbb{E} X$ is small, where $Ξ$ is the maximal edge-traversal time in th…
We consider an interacting particle system on the lattice involving pushing and blocking interactions, called PushASEP, in the presence of a wall at the origin. We show that the invariant measure of this system is equal in distribution to a vector of point-to-line last passage percolation times in a random geometrically distributed environment. The largest co-ordinates in both of these vectors are equal in distribution to the all-time supremum of a non-colliding random walk.
The aim of this article is to study the forest composed by point-to-line geodesics in the last-passage percolation model with exponential weights. We will show that the location of the root can be described in terms of the maxima of a random walk, whose distribution will depend on the geometry of the substrate (line). For flat substrates, we will get power law behaviour of the height function, study its scaling limit, and describe it in terms of variational problems involving the Airy process.
We consider first-passage percolation on a ladder, i.e. the graph {0,1,...}*{0,1} where nodes at distance 1 are joined by an edge, and the times are exponentially i.i.d. with mean 1. We find an appropriate Markov chain to calculate an explicit expression for the time constant whose numerical value is approximately 0.6827. This time constant is the long-term average inverse speed of the process. We also calculate the average residual time.
A law of the iterated logarithm is established for the last passage times of directed percolation on rectangles in the plane over exponential or geometric independent random variables, rescaled to converge to the Tracy-Widom distribution. The normalization is of loglog type, in contrast with the log normalization for the largest eigenvalue of a GUE matrix recently put forward by E. Paquette and O. Zeitouni. The proof relies on sharp tail bounds and superadditivity, close to the standard law of the iterated logarithm. A weaker result for the liminf is also discussed.
