Frozen percolation in two dimensions

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Publication:892165



Abstract: Aldous introduced a modification of the bond percolation process on the binary tree where clusters stop growing (freeze) as soon as they become infinite. We investigate the site version of this process on the triangular lattice where clusters freeze as soon as they reach L infinity diameter at least N for some parameter N. We show that, informally speaking, in the limit N goes to infinity, the clusters only freeze in the critical window of site percolation on the triangular lattice. Hence the fraction of vertices that eventually (i. e. at time 1) are in a frozen cluster tends to 0 as N goes to infinity. We also show that the diameter of the open cluster at time 1 of a given vertex is, with high probability, smaller than N but of order N. This shows that the process on the triangular lattice has a behaviour quite different from Aldous' process. We also indicate which modifications have to be made to adapt the proofs to the case of the N-parameter frozen bond percolation process on the square lattice. This extends our results to the square lattice, and answers the questions posed by van den Berg, de Lima and Nolin in an earlier paper.


The paper is devoted to the so called frozen percolation process on a triangular lattice. This process can be described as follows. Let \(G\) be a graph in the triangular lattice and \(n\in\mathbb{N}\). For every vertex \(v\) independently from each others we assign a random value \(\tau_v\) uniformly distributed on \([0,1]\). At time \(t=0\) all of the vertices of \(G\) are closed. The vertex \(v\) becomes open at time \(t=\tau_v\) if all its neighbours' open clusters at time \(\tau_v\) have size less than \(N\) in the \(L^{\infty}\)-metric. The frozen percolation process was introduced by \textit{D. J. Aldous} [Math. Proc. Camb. Philos. Soc. 128, No.~3, 465--477 (2000; Zbl 0961.60096)] for an infinite binary tree. From classical percolation theory, it follows that at time \(t<1/2\) for all \(K>0\) the probability that there is an open cluster with diameter at least \(N\) in a box with side length \(KN\) goes to \(0\) as \(N\to\infty\). The main result of the paper states that this effect does not take place at times \(t>1/2\). More precisely, it is proved that, for all \(K>0\) and \(t>1/2\), the probability that after time \(t\) a frozen cluster forms which intersects a given box with side length \(KN\) goes to \(0\) as \(N\to\infty\). Also, some quantitative estimates for this probability are established. As a corollary, it is proved that for any \(\varepsilon>0\) there exist \(a, b\in (0,1)\), \(N_0\) depending on \(\varepsilon\), such that, for any \(N>N_0\), the probability that the diameter of an open cluster at time \(1\) lies in the interval \((aN,bN)\) is greater than \(1-\varepsilon\). Some generalizations to frozen percolation on square lattices are discussed.











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