A percolation process on the binary tree where large finite clusters are frozen

We study a percolation process on the planted binary tree, where clusters freeze as soon as they become larger than some fixed parameter N. We show that as N goes to infinity, the process converges in some sense to the frozen percolation process introduced by Aldous. In particular, our results show that the asymptotic behaviour differs substantially from that on the square lattice, on which a similar process has been studied recently by van den Berg, de Lima and Nolin.Comment: 11 page

On the size of the largest cluster in 2D critical percolation

We consider (near-)critical percolation on the square lattice. Let M_n be the size of the largest open cluster contained in the box [-n,n]^2, and let pi(n) be the probability that there is an open path from O to the boundary of the box. It is well-known that for all 0< a < b the probability that M_n is smaller than an^2 pi(n) and the probability that M_n is larger than bn^2 pi(n) are bounded away from 0 as n tends to infinity. It is a natural question, which arises for instance in the study of so-called frozen-percolation processes, if a similar result holds for the probability that M_n is between an^2 pi(n) and bn^2 pi(n). By a suitable partition of the box, and a careful construction involving the building blocks, we show that the answer to this question is affirmative. The `sublinearity' of 1/pi(n) appears to be essential for the argument.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures, minor change

Two-dimensional volume-frozen percolation: exceptional scales

We study a percolation model on the square lattice, where clusters "freeze" (stop growing) as soon as their volume (i.e. the number of sites they contain) gets larger than N, the parameter of the model. A model where clusters freeze when they reach diameter at least N was studied in earlier papers. Using volume as a way to measure the size of a cluster - instead of diameter - leads, for large N, to a quite different behavior (contrary to what happens on the binary tree, where the volume model and the diameter model are "asymptotically the same"). In particular, we show the existence of a sequence of "exceptional" length scales.Comment: 20 pages, 2 figure

Boundary rules and breaking of self-organized criticality in 2D frozen percolation

We study frozen percolation on the (planar) triangular lattice, where connected components stop growing (“freeze”) as soon as their “size” becomes at least N, for some parameter N ≥ 1. The size of a connected component can be measured in several natural ways, and we consider the two particular cases of diameter and volume (i.e. number of sites). Diameter-frozen and volume-frozen percolation have been studied in previous works ([5, 15] and [6, 4], resp.), and they display radically different behaviors. These works adopt the rule that the boundary of a frozen cluster stays vacant forever, and we investigate the influence of these “boundary rules” in the present paper. We prove the (somewhat surprising) result that they strongly matter in the diameter case, and we discuss briefly the volume case

Boundary rules and breaking of self-organized criticality in 2D frozen percolation

We study frozen percolation on the (planar) triangular lattice, where connected components stop growing ("freeze") as soon as their "size" becomes at least N, for some parameter N ≥ 1. The size of a connected component can be measured in several natural ways, and we consider the two particular cases of diameter and volume (i.e. number of sites). Diameter-frozen and volume-frozen percolation have been studied in previous works ([25, 11] and [27, 26], resp.), and they display radically different behaviors. These works adopt the rule that the boundary of a frozen cluster stays vacant forever, and we investigate the influence of these "boundary conditions" in the present paper. We prove the (somewhat surprising) result that they strongly matter in the diameter case, and we discuss briefly the volume case

Percolation with constant freezing

We introduce and study a model of percolation with constant freezing (PCF) where edges open at constant rate 1, and clusters freeze at rate \alpha independently of their size. Our main result is that the infinite volume process can be constructed on any amenable vertex transitive graph. This is in sharp contrast to models of percolation with freezing previously introduced, where the limit is known not to exist. Our interest is in the study of the percolative properties of the final configuration as a function of \alpha. We also obtain more precise results in the case of trees. Surprisingly the algebraic exponent for the cluster size depends on the degree, suggesting that there is no lower critical dimension for the model. Moreover, even for \alpha<\alpha_c, it is shown that finite clusters have algebraic tail decay, which is a signature of self organised criticality. Partial results are obtained on Z^d, and many open questions are discussed.Comment: 30 pages, 8 figure