Let be the set of three-vertex subsets and let indicate that forms a triangle. Then
In particular . We will use the Stein-Chen method with edge-sharing dependency neighborhoods, rather than wrongly treating triangle indicators as mutually independent.
Here is the needed Poisson approximation with dependency neighborhoods, together with its proof. For indicators with means , let contain and suppose is independent of the entire family of indicators outside . With and , define
The total variation distance convention is . We claim
For an indicator test function on the nonnegative integers, solve the Poisson Stein equation
with . This elementary Stein factor can be proved as follows. Take the immigration--death process with immigration rate and per-particle death rate one. Starting at , its time- distribution is
with independent summands. Its stationary law is that of . Coupling the initial particles with a stationary Poisson initial population makes the centered expectations decay at least as a constant times , so
is finite. Its generator equation is , obtained by integrating the semigroup derivative. Set for ; choose , which does not affect the equation. To bound , couple the processes starting at by adding two independent initial particles. Both survive to time with probability , and otherwise their second difference cancels in expectation. Since ,
This proves the Stein factor for , and the chosen handles .
Put . Independence gives . Inserting this identity into the Stein equation yields
The first sum in absolute value is at most , since the two arguments differ by . In the second sum, on the arguments differ by , giving bound . Taking the supremum over event indicators proves the claimed total variation distance bound.
For triangle , choose to consist of itself and all triangles sharing an edge with . There are exactly such triangles. Every outside triangle uses none of the three edges of , even if it shares one vertex, so is independent of their entire indicator family. For distinct neighboring triangles, their union has five edges and . Therefore
The Stein-Chen method gives . Coupling Poisson distributions of two means by adding an independent Poisson variable gives
This proves the Poisson limit for triangles in a binomial random graph:
Applying the same bound to the event gives
For finite this is an approximation, not an exact formula: the error from is at most , and the error from is at most .
This is an immigration--death process. New individuals enter independently of the current population at the constant rate , producing transitions . Each existing individual dies at rate , so the total transition rate is .
At leading order, . For fixed , the conditional stationary law therefore satisfies
This is an immigration--death process, whose stationary distribution is Poisson with mean
The mean is finite only for . The assumption and the pair-coalescence propensity ensure that the slow process cannot remove its last molecule, so the reduced model remains in that domain.
Poisson Stein equation 2026-10-14
For indicator test functions , the equation has a solution with . One proof uses an immigration--death process with immigration rate and per-particle death rate one. Its potential satisfies its generator equation, and . Coupling two additional initial particles bounds the second difference of by .