From symmetry breaking to Poisson point process in 2D Voronoi tessellations: the generic nature of hexagons

DOI10.1007/S10955-007-9475-XMaRDI QIDQ2482274zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Valerio Lucarini

Publication date 16 April 2008

Published in Journal of Statistical Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/0708.0977, http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/27132/2/0708.0977.pdf

zbMATH Keywords

Poisson point processsymmetry breakingrandom geometryGaussian noiseVoronoi tessellationtopological stabilityLewis lawDesch law

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Point processes (e.g., Poisson, Cox, Hawkes processes) (60G55) Geometric probability and stochastic geometry (60D05) Random walks, random surfaces, lattice animals, etc. in equilibrium statistical mechanics (82B41)

Abstract: We bridge the properties of the regular square and honeycomb Voronoi tessellations of the plane to those of the Poisson-Voronoi case, thus analyzing in a common framework symmetry-break processes and the approach to uniformly random distributions of tessellation-generating points. We consider ensemble simulations of tessellations generated by points whose regular positions are perturbed through a Gaussian noise controlled by the parameter alpha. We study the number of sides, the area, and the perimeter of the Voronoi cells. For alpha>0, hexagons are the most common class of cells, and 2-parameter gamma distributions describe well the statistics of the geometrical characteristics. The symmetry break due to noise destroys the square tessellation, whereas the honeycomb hexagonal tessellation is very stable and all Voronoi cells are hexagon for small but finite noise with alpha<0.1. For a moderate amount of Gaussian noise, memory of the specific unperturbed tessellation is lost, because the statistics of the two perturbed tessellations is indistinguishable. When alpha>2, results converge to those of Poisson-Voronoi tessellations. The properties of n-sided cells change with alpha until the Poisson-Voronoi limit is reached for alpha>2. The Desch law for perimeters is confirmed to be not valid and a square root dependence on n is established. The ensemble mean of the cells area and perimeter restricted to the hexagonal cells coincides with the full ensemble mean; this might imply that the number of sides acts as a thermodynamic state variable fluctuating about n=6; this reinforces the idea that hexagons, beyond their ubiquitous numerical prominence, can be taken as generic polygons in 2D Voronoi tessellations.

Recommendations

• Three-dimensional random Voronoi tessellations: from cubic crystal lattices to Poisson point processes
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Cites work

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• Precise formulae for the distributions of the principal geometric characteristics of the typical cells of a two-dimensional Poisson-Voronoi tessellation and a Poisson line process
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Cited in

(6)

• Voronoi chains, blocks, and clusters in perturbed square lattices
• Statistical topology of perturbed two-dimensional lattices
• Implication of entropy flow for the development of a system as suggested by the life cycle of a hurricane
• A model for Gaussian perturbations of graphene
• Three-dimensional random Voronoi tessellations: from cubic crystal lattices to Poisson point processes
• Heuristic theory for many-faced \(d\)-dimensional Poisson-Voronoi cells

Describes a project that uses

Uses Software

• Qhull

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