The multiplicative coalescent, inhomogeneous continuum random trees, and new universality classes for critical random graphs (Q681525)

This paper deals with critical random graphs. There is a long-standing conjecture deriving from physics that for a broad range of random graphs with degree exponent \(\tau\in (3,4)\) -- i.e. the proportion of vertices having degree \(k\) is proportional to \(\tau^{-k}\)-distances betweeen typical points in the maximal components in the critical regime scale like \(n^{(\tau-3)/(\tau-1)}\) where as usual \(n\) is the number of vertices of the graph. The paper under review studies the multiplicative coalescent, more specifically the metric space structure of the maximal componenets in the regime where the sizes converge to excursions of Lévy processes ``without replacement''. A by-product of the analysis is the first rigorous proof of such a conjecture. The limit objects are fractals which are analysed in some detail. The (technical) proofs make use of inhomogeneous continuum random trees, including tilted versions. The authors are currently developing their work to other such random graph nodels.