English

The evolution of the permutahedron

Combinatorics 2026-03-05 v2

Abstract

In their seminal paper introducing the theory of random graphs, Erd\H{o}s and R\'{e}nyi considered the evolution of the structure of a random subgraph of KnK_n as the density increases from 00 to 11, identifying two key points in this evolution -- the \emph{percolation threshold}, where the order of the largest component seemingly jumps from logarithmic to linear in size, and the \emph{connectivity threshold}, where the subgraph becomes connected. Similar phenomena have been observed in many other random graph models, and in particular, works of Ajtai, Koml\'{o}s and Szemer\'{e}di and of Spencer and Erd\H{o}s determine corresponding thresholds for random subgraphs of the hypercube. We study similar questions on the \emph{permutahedron}. The permutahedron, like the hypercube, has many different equivalent representations, and arises as a natural object of study in many areas of combinatorics. In particular, as a highly-symmetric simple polytope, like the nn-simplex and nn-cube, this percolation model naturally generalises the Erd\H{o}s-R\'{e}nyi random graph and the percolated hypercube. We determine the percolation threshold and the connectivity threshold for random subgraphs of the permutahedron. Along the way we develop a novel graph exploration technique which can be used to find exponentially large clusters after percolation in high-dimensional geometric graphs and we initiate the study of the isoperimetric properties of the permutahedron.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2404.17260,
  title  = {The evolution of the permutahedron},
  author = {Maurício Collares and Joseph Doolittle and Joshua Erde},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2404.17260},
  year   = {2026}
}

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34 pages