Critical percolation of virtually free groups and other tree-like graphs (Q971940)

The author is interested in the determination of the critical probability \(p_c\) for the Bernoulli bond percolation on graphs that have a tree-like structure; such graphs may be decomposed into a tree of pieces, each of which has finitely many isomorphism classes. Examples include the Cayley graphs of amalgamated products, HNN extensions or general groups acting on trees, as well as all transitive graphs with more than one end. In order to get sufficient information on \(p_c\), the author develops an approach that makes use of a multi-type Galton-Watson branching process (with a parameter \(p\)) which has finite expected population size if and only if the expected percolation cluster size is finite. To be more specific, when the pairwise intersections of pieces are finite, \(p_c\) is the smallest \(p>0\) such that \(\det(M-1)=0\), where \(M\) denotes the first-moment matrix of the branching process. When the pieces of the tree-like structure are finite, \(p_c\) is an algebraic number and the author gives an algorithm computing \(p_c\) as a root of some algebraic function. Finally, the author shows that any Cayley graph of a virtually free group (i.e., a group acting on a tree with finite vertex stabilizers) with respect to any finite generating set has a tree-like structure with finite pieces. This yields a method to compute \(p_c\) for the Cayley graph of a free group with respect to any finite generating set.