We extend some of the fundamental results about percolation on unimodular nonamenable graphs to nonunimodular graphs. We show that they cannot have infinitely many infinite clusters at critical Bernoulli percolation. In the case of heavy clusters, this result has already been established, but it also follows from one of our results. We give a general necessary condition for nonunimodular graphs to have a phase with infinitely many heavy clusters. We present an invariant spanning tree with $p_c=1$ on some nonunimodular graph. Such trees cannot exist for nonamenable unimodular graphs. We show a new way of constructing nonunimodular graphs that have properties more peculiar than the ones previously known.
Considering the wired uniform spanning forest on a nonunimodular transitive graph, we show that almost surely each tree of the wired uniform spanning forest is light. More generally we study the tilted volumes for the trees in the wired uniform spanning forest. Regarding the free uniform spanning forest, we consider several families of nonunimodular transitive graphs. We show that the free uniform spanning forest is the same as the wired one on Diestel--Leader graphs. For grandparent graphs, we show that the free uniform spanning forest is connected and has branching number bigger than one. We…
Consider simple random walk $(X_n)_{n\geq0}$ on a transitive graph with spectral radius $ρ$. Let $u_n=\mathbb{P}[X_n=X_0]$ be the $n$-step return probability and $f_n$ be the first return probability at time $n$. It is a folklore conjecture that on transient, transitive graphs $u_n/ρ^n$ is at most of the order $n^{-3/2}$. We prove this conjecture for graphs with a closed, transitive, amenable and nonunimodular subgroup of automorphisms. We also conjecture that for any transient, transitive graph $f_n$ and $u_n$ are of the same order and the ratio $f_n/u_n$ even tends to an explicit constant. W…
We study Bernoulli bond percolation on nonunimodular quasi-transitive graphs, and more generally graphs whose automorphism group has a nonunimodular quasi-transitive subgroup. We prove that percolation on any such graph has a non-empty phase in which there are infinite light clusters, which implies the existence of a non-empty phase in which there are infinitely many infinite clusters. That is, we show that $p_c<p_h \leq p_u$ for any such graph. This answers a question of Haggstrom, Peres, and Schonmann (1999), and verifies the nonunimodular case of a well-known conjecture of Benjamini and Sch…
We study self-avoiding walk on graphs whose automorphism group has a transitive nonunimodular subgroup. We prove that self-avoiding walk is ballistic, that the bubble diagram converges at criticality, and that the critical two-point function decays exponentially in the distance from the origin. This implies that the critical exponent governing the susceptibility takes its mean-field value, and hence that the number of self-avoiding walks of length $n$ is comparable to the $n$th power of the connective constant. We also prove that the same results hold for a large class of repulsive walk models…
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 critical percolation on any quasi-transitive graph of exponential volume growth does not have a unique infinite cluster. This allows us to deduce from earlier results that critical percolation on any graph in this class does not have any infinite clusters. The result is new when the graph in question is either amenable or nonunimodular.
In this note we study the phase transition for percolation on quasi-transitive graphs with quasi-transitively inhomogeneous edge-retention probabilities. A quasi-transitive graph is an infinite graph with finitely many different "types" of edges and vertices. We prove that the transition is sharp almost everywhere, i.e., that in the subcritical regime the expected cluster size is finite, and that in the subcritical regime the probability of the one-arm event decays exponentially. Our proof extends the proof of sharpness of the phase transition for homogeneous percolation on vertex-transitive g…
In this paper we study percolation on a roughly transitive graph G with polynomial growth and isoperimetric dimension larger than one. For these graphs we are able to prove that p_c < 1, or in other words, that there exists a percolation phase. The main results of the article work for both dependent and independent percolation processes, since they are based on a quite robust renormalization technique. When G is transitive, the fact that p_c < 1 was already known before. But even in that case our proof yields some new results and it is entirely probabilistic, not involving the use of Gromov's …
We establish several equivalent characterisations of the anchored isoperimetric dimension of supercritical clusters in Bernoulli bond percolation on transitive graphs. We deduce from these characterisations together with a theorem of Duminil-Copin, Goswami, Raoufi, Severo, and Yadin that if $G$ is a transient transitive graph then the infinite clusters of Bernoulli percolation on $G$ are transient for $p$ sufficiently close to $1$. It remains open to extend this result down to the critical probability. Along the way we establish two new cluster repulsion inequalities that are of independent in…
Let $\{G_n\}_{n=1}^{\infty}$ be a sequence of transitive infinite connected graphs with $\sup\limits_{n\geq 1} p_c(G_n) < 1,$ where each $p_c(G_n)$ is bond percolation critical probability on $G_n.$ Schramm (2008) conjectured that if $G_n$ converges locally to a transitive infinite connected graph $G,$ then $p_c(G_n) \rightarrow p_c(G)$ as $n\rightarrow\infty.$ We prove the conjecture when $G$ satisfies two rough uniformities, and $\{G_n\}_{n=1}^{\infty}$ is uniformly nonamenable.
We prove that for a non-amenable, locally finite, connected, transitive, planar graph with one end, any automorphism invariant site percolation on the graph does not have exactly 1 infinite 1-cluster and exactly 1 infinite 0-cluster a.s. If we further assume that the site percolation is insertion-tolerant and a.s.~there exists a unique infinite 0-cluster, then a.s.~there are no infinite 1-clusters. The proof is based on the analysis of a class of delicately constructed interfaces between clusters and contours. Applied to the case of i.i.d.~Bernoulli site percolation on infinite, connected, loc…
We consider a random object that is associated with both random walks and random media, specifically, the superposition of a configuration of subcritical Bernoulli percolation on an infinite connected graph and the trace of the simple random walk on the same graph. We investigate asymptotics for the number of vertices of the enlargement of the trace of the walk until a fixed time, when the time tends to infinity. This process is more highly self-interacting than the range of random walk, which yields difficulties. We show a law of large numbers on vertex-transitive transient graphs. We compare…
This paper is an up-to-date introduction to the problem of uniqueness versus non-uniqueness of infinite clusters for percolation on ${\mathbb{Z}}^d$ and, more generally, on transitive graphs. For iid percolation on ${\mathbb{Z}}^d$, uniqueness of the infinite cluster is a classical result, while on certain other transitive graphs uniqueness may fail. Key properties of the graphs in this context turn out to be amenability and nonamenability. The same problem is considered for certain dependent percolation models -- most prominently the Fortuin--Kasteleyn random-cluster model -- and in situation…
We study homogeneous, independent percolation on general quasi-transitive graphs. We prove that in the disorder regime where all clusters are finite almost surely, in fact the expectation of the cluster size is finite. This extends a well-known theorem by Menshikov and Aizenman & Barsky to all quasi-transitive graphs. Moreover we deduce that in this disorder regime the cluster size distribution decays exponentially, extending a result of Aizenman & Newman. Our results apply to both edge and site percolation, as well as long range (edge) percolation. The proof is based on a modification of the …
We construct an example of a bounded degree, nonamenable, unimodular random rooted graph with $p_c=p_u$ for Bernoulli bond percolation, as well as an example of a bounded degree, unimodular random rooted graph with $p_c<1$ but with an infinite cluster at criticality. These examples show that two well-known conjectures of Benjamini and Schramm are false when generalised from transitive graphs to unimodular random rooted graphs.
Consider Bernoulli bond percolation on a graph nicely embedded in hyperbolic space $\mathbb H^d$ in such a way that it admits a transitive action by isometries of $\mathbb H^d$. Let $p_0$ be the supremum of such percolation parameters that no point at infinity of $\mathbb H^d$ lies in the boundary of the cluster of a fixed vertex with positive probability. Then for any parameter $p < p_0$, a.s. every percolation cluster has only one-point boundaries of ends.
The asymptotic study of percolation on finite transitive graphs is considered. Several questions and very few answers regarding percolation on finite graphs are presented.
We consider Bernoulli percolation on a locally finite quasi-transitive unimodular graph and prove that two infinite clusters cannot have infinitely many pairs of vertices at distance 1 from one another or, in other words, that such graphs exhibit ``cluster repulsion.'' This partially answers a question of Häggström, Peres and Schonmann.
Let $G=(V,E)$ be a connected, locally finite, transitive graph, and consider Bernoulli bond percolation on $G$. In recent work, we conjectured that if $G$ is nonamenable then the matrix of critical connection probabilities $T_{p_c}(u,v)=\mathbb{P}_{p_c}(u\leftrightarrow v)$ is bounded as an operator $T_{p_c}:L^2(V)\to L^2(V)$ and proved that this conjecture holds for several classes of graphs. We also noted in that work that the conjecture implies two older conjectures, namely that percolation on transitive nonamenable graphs always has a nontrivial nonuniqueness phase, and that critical perco…
A comparison technique for finite random walks on finite graphs is introduced, using the well-known interlacing method. It yields improved return probability bounds. A key feature is the incorporation of parts of the spectrum of the transition matrix other than just the principal eigenvalue. As an application, an upper bound of the expected return probability of a random walk with symmetric transition probabilities is found. In this case, the state space is a random partial graph of a regular graph of bounded geometry and transitive automorphism group. The law of the random edge-set is assumed…
We investigate the \emph{last passage percolation} problem on transitive tournaments, in the case when the edge weights are independent Bernoulli random variables. Given a transitive tournament on $n$ nodes with random weights on its edges, the last passage percolation problem seeks to find the weight $X_n$ of the heaviest path, where the weight of a path is the sum of the weights on its edges. We give a recurrence relation and use it to obtain a (bivariate) generating function for the probability generating function of $X_n$. This also gives exact combinatorial expressions for $\mathbb{E}[X_n…
An important conjecture in percolation theory is that almost surely no infinite cluster exists in critical percolation on any transitive graph for which the critical probability is less than 1. Earlier work has established this for the amenable cases Z^2 and Z^d for large d, as well as for all non-amenable graphs with unimodular automorphism groups. We show that the conjecture holds for the basic classes of non-amenable graphs with non-unimodular automorphism groups: for decorated trees and the non-unimodular Diestel-Leader graphs. We also show that the connection probability between two verti…
In this thesis, I am going to consider Bernoulli percolation on graphs admitting vertex-transitive actions of groups of isometries of d-dimensional hyperbolic spaces H^d. In the first chapter, I give an overview concerning percolation and its terminology. In the separate introduction to each of the other chapters, I explain its contents more precisely, giving also some preliminaries needed therein. In the second chapter, I prove the existence of a non-trivial non-uniqueness phase of Bernoulli percolation on Cayley graphs for a wide class of Coxeter reflection groups of finite type polyhedra in…
We study infinite ``$+$'' or ``$-$'' clusters for an Ising model on an connected, transitive, non-amenable, planar, one-ended graph $G$ with finite vertex degree. If the critical percolation probability $p_c^{site}$ for the i.i.d.~Bernoulli site percolation on $G$ is less than $\frac{1}{2}$, we find an explicit region for the coupling constant of the Ising model such that there are infinitely many infinite ``$+$''-clusters and infinitely many infinite ``$-$''-clusters, while the random cluster representation of the Ising model has no infinite 1-clusters. If $p_c^{site}>\frac{1}{2}$, we obtain …
We investigate generalisations of the classical percolation critical probabilities $p_c$, $p_T$ and the critical probability $\tilde{p_c}$ defined by Duminil-Copin and Tassion (2015) to bounded degree unimodular random graphs. We further examine Schramm's conjecture in the case of unimodular random graphs: does $p_c(G_n)$ converge to $p_c(G)$ if $G_n\to G$ in the local weak sense? Among our results are the following: 1. $p_c=\tilde{p_c}$ holds for bounded degree unimodular graphs. However, there are unimodular graphs with sub-exponential volume growth and $p_T < p_c$; i.e., the classical sharp…
We consider the model of random walk on dynamical percolation introduced by Peres, Stauffer and Steif (2015). We obtain comparison results for this model for hitting and mixing times and for the spectral-gap and log-Sobolev constant with the corresponding quantities for simple random walk on the underlying graph $G$, for general graphs. When $G$ is the torus $\mathbb{Z}_n^d$, we recover the results of Peres et al. and we also extend them to the critical case. We also obtain bounds in the cases where $G$ is a transitive graph of moderate growth and also when it is the hypercube.
I consider p-Bernoulli bond percolation on graphs of vertex-transitive tilings of the hyperbolic plane with finite sided faces (or, equivalently, on transitive, nonamenable, planar graphs with one end) and on their duals. It is known (Benjamini and Schramm) that in such a graph G we have three essential phases of percolation, i. e. 0 < p_c(G) < p_u(G) < 1, where p_c is the critical probability and p_u - the unification probability. I prove that in the middle phase a. s. all the ends of all the infinite clusters have one-point boundary in the boundary of H^2. This result is similar to some resu…
Let $G$ be a connected, locally finite, transitive graph, and consider Bernoulli bond percolation on $G$. We prove that if $G$ is nonamenable and $p > p_c(G)$ then there exists a positive constant $c_p$ such that \[\mathbf{P}_p(n \leq |K| < \infty) \leq e^{-c_p n}\] for every $n\geq 1$, where $K$ is the cluster of the origin. We deduce the following two corollaries: 1. Every infinite cluster in supercritical percolation on a transitive nonamenable graph has anchored expansion almost surely. This answers positively a question of Benjamini, Lyons, and Schramm (1997). 2. For transitive nonamenabl…
Let G_n be a sequence of finite transitive graphs with vertex degree d=d(n) and |G_n|=n. Denote by p^t(v,v) the return probability after t steps of the non-backtracking random walk on G_n. We show that if p^t(v,v) has quasi-random properties, then critical bond-percolation on G_n has a scaling window of width n^{-1/3}, as it would on a random graph. A consequence of our theorems is that if G_n is a transitive expander family with girth at least (2/3 + eps) \log_{d-1} n, then the size of the largest component in p-bond-percolation with p={1 +O(n^{-1/3}) \over d-1} is roughly n^{2/3}. In particu…
We introduce and study a model of percolation with constant freezing (PCF) where edges open at constant rate 1, and clusters freeze at rate αindependently of their size. Our main result is that the infinite volume process can be constructed on any amenable vertex transitive graph. This is in sharp contrast to models of percolation with freezing previously introduced, where the limit is known not to exist. Our interest is in the study of the percolative properties of the final configuration as a function of α. We also obtain more precise results in the case of trees. Surprisingly the algebraic …
Given a quasi-transitive infinite graph $G$ with volume growth rate ${\rm gr}(G),$ a transient biased electric network $(G,\, c_1)$ with bias $λ_1\in (0,\,{\rm gr}(G))$ and a recurrent biased one $(G,\, c_2)$ with bias $λ_2\in ({\rm gr}(G),\infty).$ Write $G(p)$ for the Bernoulli-$p$ bond percolation on $G$ defined by the grand coupling. Let $(G,\, c_1,\, c_2,\, p)$ be the following biased disordered random network: Open edges $e$ in $G(p)$ take the conductance $c_1(e)$, and closed edges $g$ in $G(p)$ take the conductance $c_2(g)$. Our main results are as follows: (i) On connected quasi-transi…
We prove that critical percolation has no infinite clusters almost surely on any unimodular quasi-transitive graph satisfying a return probability upper bound of the form $p_n(v,v) \leq \exp\left[-Ω(n^γ)\right]$ for some $γ>1/2$. The result is new in the case that the graph is of intermediate volume growth.
Schramm's Locality Conjecture asserts that the value of the critical percolation parameter $p_c$ of a graph satisfying $p_c<1$ depends only on its local structure. In this note, we prove this conjecture in the particular case of transitive graphs with polynomial growth. Our proof relies on two recent works about such graphs, namely supercritical sharpness of percolation by the same authors and a finitary structure theorem by Tessera and Tointon.
We study constrained percolation models on planar lattices including the $[m,4,n,4]$ lattice and the square tilings of the hyperbolic plane, satisfying certain local constraints on faces of degree 4, and investigate the existence of infinite clusters. The constrained percolation models on these lattices are closely related to Ising models and XOR Ising models on regular tilings of the Euclidean plane or the hyperbolic plane. In particular, we obtain a complete picture of the number of infinite "$+$" and "$-$" clusters of the ferromagnetic Ising model with the free boundary condition on a verte…
We apply a variation on the methods of Duminil-Copin, Raoufi, and Tassion to establish a new differential inequality applying to both Bernoulli percolation and the Fortuin-Kasteleyn random cluster model. This differential inequality has a similar form to that derived for Bernoulli percolation by Menshikov but with the important difference that it describes the distribution of the volume of a cluster rather than of its radius. We apply this differential inequality to prove the following: The critical exponent inequalities $γ\leq δ-1$ and $Δ\leq γ+1$ hold for percolation and the random cluster m…
We answer a question of Benjamini and Schramm by proving that under reasonable conditions, quotienting a graph strictly increases the value of its percolation critical parameter $p_c$. More precisely, let $\mathcal{G}=(V,E)$ be a quasi-transitive graph with $p_c(\mathcal{G})<1$, and let $G$ be a nontrivial group that acts freely on $V$ by graph automorphisms. Assume that $\mathcal{H}:=\mathcal{G}/G$ is quasi-transitive. Then one has $p_c(\mathcal{G})<p_c(\mathcal{H})$. We provide results beyond this setting: we treat the case of general covering maps and provide a similar result for the unique…
In a previous paper, we defined a version of the percolation triangle condition that is suitable for the analysis of bond percolation on a finite connected transitive graph, and showed that this triangle condition implies that the percolation phase transition has many features in common with the phase transition on the complete graph. In this paper, we use a new and simplified approach to the lace expansion to prove quite generally that for finite graphs that are tori the triangle condition for percolation is implied by a certain triangle condition for simple random walks on the graph. The lat…
The purpose of this modest note is to point out that the proof of the recent result of Huchcroft concerning continuity of phase transition in Bernoulli percolation is applicable to the setting of the Ising model with free boundary condition. This observation, together with a recent result of Aizenman, Duminil-Copin, and Sidoravicius implies that the Ising model on amenable quasi-transitive graph with exponential growth undergoes a second order phase transition.
