Recently, the authors showed that the critical probability for random Voronoi percolation in the plane is 1/2. A by-product of the method was a short proof of the Harris-Kesten Theorem concerning bond percolation in the planar square lattice. The aim of this paper is to show that the same techniques can be applied to many other planar percolation models, both to obtain short proofs of known results, and to prove new ones.
Two-dimensional bootstrap percolation is a cellular automaton in which sites become 'infected' by contact with two or more already infected nearest neighbors. We consider these dynamics, which can be interpreted as a monotone version of the Ising model, on an n x n square, with sites initially infected independently with probability p. The critical probability p_c is the smallest p for which the probability that the entire square is eventually infected exceeds 1/2. Holroyd determined the sharp first-order approximation: p_c \sim π^2/(18 log n) as n \to \infty. Here we sharpen this result, prov…
Jigsaw percolation is a model for the process of solving puzzles within a social network, which was recently proposed by Brummitt, Chatterjee, Dey and Sivakoff. In the model there are two graphs on a single vertex set (the `people' graph and the `puzzle' graph), and vertices merge to form components if they are joined by an edge of each graph. These components then merge to form larger components if again there is an edge of each graph joining them, and so on. Percolation is said to occur if the process terminates with a single component containing every vertex. In this note we determine the t…
We prove the sharpness of the percolation phase transition for a class of Cox percolation models, i.e., models of continuum percolation in a random environment. The key requirements are that the environment has a finite range of dependence and satisfies a local boundedness condition, however the FKG inequality need not hold. The proof combines the OSSS inequality with a coarse-graining construction.
We study the percolation time of the $r$-neighbour bootstrap percolation model on the discrete torus $(\Z/n\Z)^d$. For $t$ at most a polylog function of $n$ and initial infection probabilities within certain ranges depending on $t$, we prove that the percolation time of a random subset of the torus is exactly equal to $t$ with high probability as $n$ tends to infinity. Our proof rests crucially on three new extremal theorems that together establish an almost complete understanding of the geometric behaviour of the $r$-neighbour bootstrap process in the dense setting. The special case $d-r=0$ o…
In \emph{$k$-bootstrap percolation}, we fix $p\in (0,1)$, an integer $k$, and a plane graph $G$. Initially, we infect each face of $G$ independently with probability $p$. Infected faces remain infected forever, and if a healthy (uninfected) face has at least $k$ infected neighbors, then it becomes infected. For fixed $G$ and $p$, the \emph{percolation threshold} is the largest $k$ such that eventually all faces become infected, with probability at least $1/2$. For a large class of infinite graphs, we show that this threshold is independent of $p$. We consider bootstrap percolation in tilings o…
We consider Poisson Boolean percolation on $\mathbb R^d$ with power-law distribution on the radius with a finite $d$-moment for $d\ge 2$. We prove that subcritical sharpness occurs for all but a countable number of power-law distributions. This extends the results of Duminil-Copin--Raoufi--Tassion where subcritical sharpness is proved under the assumption that the radii distribution has a $5d-3$ finite moment. Our proofs techniques are different from their paper: we do not use randomized algorithm and rely on specific independence properties of Boolean percolation, inherited from the underlyin…
Bootstrap percolation is a type of cellular automaton on graphs, introduced as a simple model of the dynamics of ferromagnetism. Vertices in a graph can be in one of two states: `healthy' or `infected' and from an initial configuration of states, healthy vertices become infected by local rules. While the usual bootstrap processes are monotone in the sets of infected vertices, in this paper, a modification is examined in which infected vertices can return to a healthy state. Vertices are initially infected independently at random and the central question is whether all vertices eventually becom…
We study percolation properties of the upper invariant measure of the contact process on $\mathbb{Z}^d$. Our main result is a sharp percolation phase transition with exponentially small clusters throughout the subcritical regime and a mean-field lower bound for the infinite cluster density in the supercritical regime. This generalizes and simplifies an earlier result of Van den Berg [Ann. App. Prob., 2011], who proved a sharp percolation phase transition on $\mathbb{Z}^2$. Our proof relies on the OSSS inequality for Boolean functions and is inspired by a series of papers by Duminil-Copin, Raou…
Given a hypergraph $\mathcal{H}$, the $\mathcal{H}$-bootstrap process starts with an initial set of infected vertices of $\mathcal{H}$ and, at each step, a healthy vertex $v$ becomes infected if there exists a hyperedge of $\mathcal{H}$ in which $v$ is the unique healthy vertex. We say that the set of initially infected vertices percolates if every vertex of $\mathcal{H}$ is eventually infected. We show that this process exhibits a sharp threshold when $\mathcal{H}$ is a hypergraph obtained by randomly sampling hyperedges from an approximately $d$-regular $r$-uniform hypergraph satisfying some…
In this work, we consider critical planar site percolation on the triangular lattice and derive sharp estimates on the asymptotics of the probability of half-plane $j$-arm events for $j \geq 1$ and planar (polychromatic) $j$-arm events for $j>1$. These estimates greatly improve previous results and in particular answer (a large part of) a question of Schramm (ICM Proc., 2006).
We consider Bernoulli bond percolation on the product graph of a regular tree and a line. We show that the triangle condition does not hold at the uniqueness threshold.
This paper analyzes various questions pertaining to bootstrap percolation on the $d$-dimensional Hamming torus where each node is open with probability $p$ and the percolation threshold is 2. For each $d'<d$ we find the critical exponent for the event that a $d'$-dimensional subtorus becomes open and compute the limiting value of its probability under the critical scaling. For even $d'$, we use the Chen-Stein method to show that the number of $d'$-dimensional subtori that become open can be approximated by a Poisson random variable.
Bootstrap percolation models have been extensively studied during the two past decades. In this article, we study the following "anisotropic" bootstrap percolation model: the neighborhood of a point (m,n) is the set \[\{(m+2,n),(m+1,n),(m,n+1),(m-1,n),(m-2,n),(m,n-1)\}.\] At time 0, sites are occupied with probability p. At each time step, sites that are occupied remain occupied, while sites that are not occupied become occupied if and only if three of more sites in their neighborhood are occupied. We prove that it exhibits a sharp metastability threshold. This is the first mathematical proof …
We generalize and improve results of Andrews, Gravner, Holroyd, Liggett, and Romik on metastability thresholds for generalized two-dimensional bootstrap percolation models, and answer several of their open problems and conjectures. Specifically, we prove slow convergence and localization bounds for Holroyd, Liggett, and Romik's k-percolation models, and in the process provide a unified and improved treatment of existing results for bootstrap, modified bootstrap, and Frobose percolation. Furthermore, we prove improved asymptotic bounds for the generating functions of partitions without k-gaps, …
In this work we consider the two-dimensional percolation model arising from the majority dynamics process at a given time $t\in\mathbb{R}_+$. We show the emergence of a sharp threshold phenomenon for the box crossing event at the critical probability parameter $p_c(t)$ with polynomial size window. We then use this result in order to obtain stretched-exponential bounds on the one-arm event probability in the subcritical phase. Our results are based on differential inequalities derived from the OSSS inequality, inspired by the recent developments by Ahlberg, Broman, Griffiths, and Morris and by …
Consider a bipartite random geometric graph on the union of two independent homogeneous Poisson point processes in $d$-space, with distance parameter $r$ and intensities $λ,μ$. For any $λ>0$ we consider the percolation threshold $μ_c(λ)$ associated to the parameter $μ$. Denoting by $λ_c:= λ_c(2r)$ the percolation threshold for the standard Poisson Boolean model with radii $r$, we show the lower bound $μ_c(λ)\ge c\log(c/(λ-λ_c))$ for any $λ>λ_c$ with $c>0$ a fixed constant. In particular, $μ_c(λ)$ tends to infinity when $λ$ tends to $λ_c$ from above.
In this paper we analyze several anisotropic bootstrap percolation models in three dimensions. We present the order of magnitude for the metastability threshold for a fairly general class of models. In our proofs we use an adaptation of the technique of dimensional reduction. We find that the order of the metastability threshold is generally determined by the "easiest growth direction" in the model. In contrast to the anisotropic bootstrap percolation in two dimensions, in three dimensions the order of the metatstability threshold for anisotropic bootstrap percolation can be equal to that of i…
The problem of percolation along sites of square lattice is studied. The number of contours being external boundaries for finite clusters has been estimated using geometric considerations. This estimation makes it possible to determine more precisely the upper limit for the percolation threshold.
Consider Bernoulli bond percolation on a locally finite, connected graph $G$ and let $p_{\mathrm{cut}}$ be the threshold corresponding to a "first-moment method" lower bound. Kahn (\textit{Electron.\ Comm.\ Probab.\ Volume 8, 184-187.} (2003)) constructed a counter-example to Lyons' conjecture of $p_{\mathrm{cut}}=p_c$ and proposed a modification. Here we give a positive answer to Kahn's modified question. The key observation is that in Kahn's modification, the new expectation quantity also appears in the differential inequality of one-arm events. This links the question to a lemma of Duminil-…
We study the appearance of the giant component in random subgraphs of a given large finite graph G=(V,E) in which each edge is present independently with probability p. We show that if G is an expander with vertices of bounded degree, then for any c in ]0,1[, the property that the random subgraph contains a giant component of size c|V| has a sharp threshold.
The more exact upper estimate of the percolation threshold for the {\it site problem} on the quadratic lattice ${\Bbb Z}^2$ have been found on the basis of the cluster decomposition. It is done by the number estimate of cycles on ${\Bbb Z}^2$ which maybe external boundaries of finite clusters
We provide a new proof of the sharpness of the phase transition for nearest-neighbour Bernoulli percolation. More precisely, we show that - for $p<p_c$, the probability that the origin is connected by an open path to distance $n$ decays exponentially fast in $n$. - for $p>p_c$, the probability that the origin belongs to an infinite cluster satisfies the mean-field lower bound $θ(p)\ge\tfrac{p-p_c}{p(1-p_c)}$. This note presents the argument of \cite{DumTas15}, which is valid for long-range Bernoulli percolation (and for the Ising model) on arbitrary transitive graphs in the simpler framework o…
We study level-set percolation for Gaussian free fields on metric graphs. In two dimensions, we give an upper bound on the chemical distance between the two boundaries of a macroscopic annulus. Our bound holds with high probability conditioned on connectivity and the bound is sharp up to a poly-logarithmic factor with an exponent of one-quarter. This substantially improves a previous result by Li and the first author. In three dimensions and higher, we provide rather sharp estimates of percolation probabilities in different regimes which altogether describe a sharp phase transition.
We study the stationary distribution of the (spread-out) $d$-dimensional contact process from the point of view of site percolation. In this process, vertices of $\mathbb{Z}^d$ can be healthy (state 0) or infected (state 1). With rate one infected sites recover, and with rate $λ$ they transmit the infection to some other vertex chosen uniformly within a ball of radius $R$. The classical phase transition result for this process states that there is a critical value $λ_c(R)$ such that the process has a non-trivial stationary distribution if and only if $λ> λ_c(R)$. In configurations sampled from…
Consider an independent site percolation model with parameter $p \in (0,1)$ on $\Z^d,\ d\geq 2$ where there are only nearest neighbor bonds and long range bonds of length $k$ parallel to each coordinate axis. We show that the percolation threshold of such model converges to $p_c(\Z^{2d})$ when $k$ goes to infinity, the percolation threshold for ordinary (nearest neighbour) percolation on $\Z^{2d}$. We also generalize this result for models whose long range bonds have several lengths.
We prove that the heavy clusters are indistinguishable for Bernoulli percolation on quasi-transitive nonunimodular graphs. As an application, we show that the uniqueness threshold of any quasi-transitive graph is also the threshold for connectivity decay. This resolves a question of Lyons and Schramm (1999) in the Bernoulli percolation case and confirms a conjecture of Schonmann (2001). We also prove that every infinite cluster of Bernoulli percolation on a nonamenable quasi-transitive graph is transient almost surely.
We prove that the set of possible values for the percolation threshold $p_c$ of Cayley graphs has a gap at 1 in the sense that there exists $\varepsilon_0>0$ such that for every Cayley graph $G$ one either has $p_c(G)=1$ or $p_c(G) \leq 1-\varepsilon_0$. The proof builds on the new approach of Duminil-Copin, Goswami, Raoufi, Severo & Yadin to the existence of phase transition using the Gaussian free field, combined with the finitary version of Gromov's theorem on the structure of groups of polynomial growth of Breuillard, Green & Tao.
We use invasion percolation to compute numerical values for bond and site percolation thresholds $p_c$ (existence of an infinite cluster) and $p_u$ (uniqueness of the infinite cluster) of tesselations $\{P,Q\}$ of the hyperbolic plane, where $Q$ faces meet at each vertex and each face is a $P$-gon. Our values are accurate to six or seven decimal places, allowing us to explore their functional dependency on $P$ and $Q$ and to numerically compute critical exponents. We also prove rigorous upper and lower bounds for $p_c$ and $p_u$ that can be used to find the scaling of both thresholds as a func…
In r-neighbour bootstrap percolation on a graph G, a (typically random) set A of initially 'infected' vertices spreads by infecting (at each time step) vertices with at least r already-infected neighbours. This process may be viewed as a monotone version of the Glauber dynamics of the Ising model, and has been extensively studied on the d-dimensional grid $[n]^d$. The elements of the set A are usually chosen independently, with some density p, and the main question is to determine $p_c([n]^d,r)$, the density at which percolation (infection of the entire vertex set) becomes likely. In this pape…
We construct an exact expression for the site percolation threshold p_c on a quasi-regular tree, and a related exact lower bound for a quasi-regular graph. Both are given by the inverse spectral radius of the appropriate Hashimoto matrix used to count non-backtracking walks. The obtained bound always exceeds the inverse spectral radius of the original graph, and it is also generally tighter than the existing bound in terms of the maximum degree.
In the polluted bootstrap percolation model, the vertices of a graph are independently declared initially occupied with probability p or closed with probability q. At subsequent steps, a vertex becomes occupied if it is not closed and it has at least r occupied neighbors. On the cubic lattice Z^d of dimension d>=3 with threshold r=2, we prove that the final density of occupied sites converges to 1 as p and q both approach 0, regardless of their relative scaling. Our result partially resolves a conjecture of Morris, and contrasts with the d=2 case, where Gravner and McDonald proved that the cri…
In bootstrap percolation it is known that the critical percolation threshold tends to converge slowly to zero with increasing system size, or, inversely, the critical size diverges fast when the percolation probability goes to zero. To obtain higher-order terms (that is, sharp and sharper thresholds) for the percolation threshold in general is a hard question. In the case of two-dimensional anisotropic models, sometimes correction terms can be obtained from inversion in a relatively simple manner.
In the bootstrap percolation model, sites in an $L$ by $L$ square are initially independently declared active with probability $p$. At each time step, an inactive site becomes active if at least two of its four neighbours are active. We study the behaviour as $p \to 0$ and $L \to \infty$ simultaneously of the probability $I(L,p)$ that the entire square is eventually active. We prove that $I(L,p) \to 1$ if $\liminf p \log L > λ$, and $I(L,p) \to 0$ if $\limsup p \log L < λ$, where $λ= π^2/18$. We prove the same behaviour, with the same threshold $λ$, for the probability $J(L,p)$ that a site is …
We provide a new proof of the sharpness of the phase transition for Bernoulli percolation and the Ising model. The proof applies to infinite range models on arbitrary locally finite transitive infinite graphs. For Bernoulli percolation, we prove finiteness of the susceptibility in the subcritical regime $β<β_c$, and the mean-field lower bound $\mathbb{P}_β[0\longleftrightarrow\infty]\ge (β-β_c)/β$ for $β>β_c$. For finite-range models, we also prove that for any $β<β_c$, the probability of an open path from the origin to distance $n$ decays exponentially fast in $n$. For the Ising model, we pro…
Consider long-range Bernoulli percolation on $\mathbb{Z}^d$ in which we connect each pair of distinct points $x$ and $y$ by an edge with probability $1-\exp(-β\|x-y\|^{-d-α})$, where $α>0$ is fixed and $β\geq 0$ is a parameter. We prove that if $0<α<d$ then the critical two-point function satisfies \[ \frac{1}{|Λ_r|}\sum_{x\in Λ_r} \mathbf{P}_{β_c}(0\leftrightarrow x) \preceq r^{-d+α} \] for every $r\geq 1$, where $Λ_r=[-r,r]^d \cap \mathbb{Z}^d$. In other words, the critical two-point function on $\mathbb{Z}^d$ is always bounded above on average by the critical two-point function on the hiera…
We consider the level-sets of continuous Gaussian fields on $\mathbb{R}^d$ above a certain level $-\ell\in \mathbb{R}$, which defines a percolation model as $\ell$ varies. We assume that the covariance kernel satisfies certain regularity, symmetry and positivity conditions as well as a polynomial decay with exponent greater than $d$ (in particular, this includes the Bargmann-Fock field). Under these assumptions, we prove that the model undergoes a sharp phase transition around its critical point $\ell_c$. More precisely, we show that connection probabilities decay exponentially for $\ell<\ell_…
