Extendable self-avoiding walks (Q2444870)

Summary: The connective constant \(\mu\) of a graph is the exponential growth rate of the number of \(n\)-step self-avoiding walks starting at a given vertex. A self-avoiding walk is said to be forward (respectively, backward) extendable if it may be extended forwards (respectively, backwards) to a singly infinite self-avoiding walk. It is called doubly extendable if it may be extended in both directions simultaneously to a doubly infinite self-avoiding walk. We prove that the connective constants for forward, backward, and doubly extendable self-avoiding walks, denoted respectively by \(\mu^F, \mu^B, \mu^{FB}\), exist and satisfy \(\mu=\mu^F=\mu^B=\mu^{FB}\) for every infinite, locally finite, strongly connected, quasi-transitive directed graph. The proofs rely on a result of \textit{H. Furstenberg} [Math. Syst. Theory 1, 1--49 (1967; Zbl 0146.28502)] on dimension, and involve two different arguments depending on whether or not the graph is unimodular.