No Arabic abstract
The arboreal gas is the probability measure on (unrooted spanning) forests of a graph in which each forest is weighted by a factor $beta>0$ per edge. It arises as the $qto 0$ limit with $p=beta q$ of the $q$-state random cluster model. We prove that in dimensions $dgeq 3$ the arboreal gas undergoes a percolation phase transition. This contrasts with the case of $d=2$ where all trees are finite for all $beta>0$. The starting point for our analysis is an exact relationship between the arboreal gas and a fermionic non-linear sigma model with target space $mathbb{H}^{0|2}$. This latter model can be thought of as the $0$-state Potts model, with the arboreal gas being its random cluster representation. Unlike the $q>0$ Potts models, the $mathbb{H}^{0|2}$ model has continuous symmetries. By combining a renormalisation group analysis with Ward identities we prove that this symmetry is spontaneously broken at low temperatures. In terms of the arboreal gas, this symmetry breaking translates into the existence of infinite trees in the thermodynamic limit. Our analysis also establishes massless free field correlations at low temperatures and the existence of a macroscopic tree on finite tori.
We study (unrooted) random forests on a graph where the probability of a forest is multiplicatively weighted by a parameter $beta>0$ per edge. This is called the arboreal gas model, and the special case when $beta=1$ is the uniform forest model. The arboreal gas can equivalently be defined to be Bernoulli bond percolation with parameter $p=beta/(1+beta)$ conditioned to be acyclic, or as the limit $qto 0$ with $p=beta q$ of the random cluster model. It is known that on the complete graph $K_{N}$ with $beta=alpha/N$ there is a phase transition similar to that of the ErdH{o}s--Renyi random graph: a giant tree percolates for $alpha > 1$ and all trees have bounded size for $alpha<1$. In contrast to this, by exploiting an exact relationship between the arboreal gas and a supersymmetric sigma model with hyperbolic target space, we show that the forest constraint is significant in two dimensions: trees do not percolate on $mathbb{Z}^2$ for any finite $beta>0$. This result is a consequence of a Mermin--Wagner theorem associated to the hyperbolic symmetry of the sigma model. Our proof makes use of two main ingredients: techniques previously developed for hyperbolic sigma models related to linearly reinforced random walks and a version of the principle of dimensional reduction.
We prove that for Bernoulli percolation on $mathbb{Z}^d$, $dgeq 2$, the percolation density is an analytic function of the parameter in the supercritical interval. For this we introduce some techniques that have further implications. In particular, we prove that the susceptibility is analytic in the subcritical interval for all transitive short- or long-range models, and that $p_c^{bond} <1/2$ for certain families of triangulations for which Benjamini & Schramm conjectured that $p_c^{site} leq 1/2$.
We consider instances of long-range percolation on $mathbb Z^d$ and $mathbb R^d$, where points at distance $r$ get connected by an edge with probability proportional to $r^{-s}$, for $sin (d,2d)$, and study the asymptotic of the graph-theoretical (a.k.a. chemical) distance $D(x,y)$ between $x$ and $y$ in the limit as $|x-y|toinfty$. For the model on $mathbb Z^d$ we show that, in probability as $|x|toinfty$, the distance $D(0,x)$ is squeezed between two positive multiples of $(log r)^Delta$, where $Delta:=1/log_2(1/gamma)$ for $gamma:=s/(2d)$. For the model on $mathbb R^d$ we show that $D(0,xr)$ is, in probability as $rtoinfty$ for any nonzero $xinmathbb R^d$, asymptotic to $phi(r)(log r)^Delta$ for $phi$ a positive, continuous (deterministic) function obeying $phi(r^gamma)=phi(r)$ for all $r>1$. The proof of the asymptotic scaling is based on a subadditive argument along a continuum of doubly-exponential sequences of scales. The results strengthen considerably the conclusions obtained earlier by the first author. Still, significant open questions remain.
A bootstrap percolation process on a graph $G$ is an infection process which evolves in rounds. Initially, there is a subset of infected nodes and in each subsequent round each uninfected node which has at least $r$ infected neighbours becomes infected and remains so forever. The parameter $rgeq 2$ is fixed. Such processes have been used as models for the spread of ideas or trends within a network of individuals. We analyse bootstrap percolation process in the case where the underlying graph is an inhomogeneous random graph, which exhibits a power-law degree distribution, and initially there are $a(n)$ randomly infected nodes. The main focus of this paper is the number of vertices that will have been infected by the end of the process. The main result of this work is that if the degree sequence of the random graph follows a power law with exponent $beta$, where $2 < beta < 3$, then a sublinear number of initially infected vertices is enough to spread the infection over a linear fraction of the nodes of the random graph, with high probability. More specifically, we determine explicitly a critical function $a_c(n)$ such that $a_c(n)=o(n)$ with the following property. Assuming that $n$ is the number of vertices of the underlying random graph, if $a(n) ll a_c(n)$, then the process does not evolve at all, with high probability as $n$ grows, whereas if $a(n)gg a_c(n)$, then there is a constant $eps>0$ such that, with high probability, the final set of infected vertices has size at least $eps n$. It turns out that when the maximum degree is $o(n^{1/(beta -1)})$, then $a_c(n)$ depends also on $r$. But when the maximum degree is $Theta (n^{1/(beta -1)})$, then $a_c (n)=n^{beta -2 over beta -1}$.
We prove that for Bernoulli bond percolation on $mathbb{Z}^d$, $dgeq 2$ the percolation density is an analytic function of the parameter in the supercritical interval $(p_c,1]$. This answers a question of Kesten from 1981.