English

The sharp threshold for bootstrap percolation in all dimensions

Probability 2011-02-25 v2 Mathematical Physics Combinatorics Dynamical Systems math.MP

Abstract

In r-neighbour bootstrap percolation on a graph G, a (typically random) set A of initially 'infected' vertices spreads by infecting (at each time step) vertices with at least r already-infected neighbours. This process may be viewed as a monotone version of the Glauber dynamics of the Ising model, and has been extensively studied on the d-dimensional grid [n]d[n]^d. The elements of the set A are usually chosen independently, with some density p, and the main question is to determine pc([n]d,r)p_c([n]^d,r), the density at which percolation (infection of the entire vertex set) becomes likely. In this paper we prove, for every pair dr2d \ge r \ge 2, that there is a constant L(d,r) such that pc([n]d,r)=[(L(d,r)+o(1))/log(r1)(n)]dr+1p_c([n]^d,r) = [(L(d,r) + o(1)) / log_(r-1) (n)]^{d-r+1} as nn \to \infty, where logrlog_r denotes an r-times iterated logarithm. We thus prove the existence of a sharp threshold for percolation in any (fixed) number of dimensions. Moreover, we determine L(d,r) for every pair (d,r).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1010.3326,
  title  = {The sharp threshold for bootstrap percolation in all dimensions},
  author = {József Balogh and Béla Bollobás and Hugo Duminil-Copin and Robert Morris},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1010.3326},
  year   = {2011}
}

Comments

37 pages, sketch of the proof added, to appear in Trans. of the AMS

R2 v1 2026-06-21T16:29:25.277Z