Graph diameter in long-range percolation

We study the asymptotic growth of the diameter of a graph obtained by adding sparse "long" edges to a square box in $\Z^d$. We focus on the cases when an edge between $x$ and $y$ is added with probability decaying with the Euclidean distance as $|x-y|^{-s+o(1)}$ when $|x-y|\to\infty$. For $s\in(d,2d)$ we show that the graph diameter for the graph reduced to a box of side $L$ scales like $(\log L)^{\Delta+o(1)}$ where $\Delta^{-1}:=\log_2(2d/s)$. In particular, the diameter grows about as fast as the typical graph distance between two vertices at distance $L$. We also show that a ball of radius $r$ in the intrinsic metric on the (infinite) graph will roughly coincide with a ball of radius $\exp\{r^{1/\Delta+o(1)}\}$ in the Euclidean metric.Comment: 17 pages, extends the results of arXiv:math.PR/0304418 to graph diameter, substantially revised and corrected, added a result on volume growth asymptoti

Visibility to infinity in the hyperbolic plane, despite obstacles

Suppose that $Z$ is a random closed subset of the hyperbolic plane \H^2, whose law is invariant under isometries of \H^2. We prove that if the probability that $Z$ contains a fixed ball of radius 1 is larger than some universal constant $p<1$, then there is positive probability that $Z$ contains (bi-infinite) lines. We then consider a family of random sets in \H^2 that satisfy some additional natural assumptions. An example of such a set is the covered region in the Poisson Boolean model. Let $f(r)$ be the probability that a line segment of length $r$ is contained in such a set $Z$. We show that if $f(r)$ decays fast enough, then there are almost surely no lines in $Z$. We also show that if the decay of $f(r)$ is not too fast, then there are almost surely lines in $Z$. In the case of the Poisson Boolean model with balls of fixed radius $R$ we characterize the critical intensity for the almost sure existence of lines in the covered region by an integral equation. We also determine when there are lines in the complement of a Poisson process on the Grassmannian of lines in \H^2