Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2026 iii Paper 212 1 a Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-03
In bond percolation on the square lattice, exactly one of the following occurs in the rectangle: an open left-to-right primal crossing, or a closed top-to-bottom crossing in the planar dual graph. These alternatives are disjoint and exhaustive by planar duality for rectangle crossings.
At , the closed dual edges have the same law as open primal edges. Rotating the dual rectangle through a right angle identifies its top-to-bottom crossing with the original left-to-right crossing; the slight difference between the side lengths and is exactly the boundary shift introduced by dualization. Thus the event and its complement have equal probability, so
If each bond has closed probability at most in one-independent bond percolation on the square lattice, a set of bonds contains a matching in a graph of size at least : divide horizontal bonds by the parity of their left endpoint and vertical bonds by the parity of their lower endpoint. Each of the four classes is a matching. Mutual independence in the largest class proves the circuit bound. There are at most dual circuits of length surrounding the origin. For sufficiently small , the sum of these circuit probabilities is less than one, so the origin has a positive chance of belonging to an infinite percolation cluster.
Percolation one-arm decay rate 2026-10-06
For bond percolation on the square lattice, the one-arm probability has a root limit of a sequence . The BK boundary-splitting estimate implies that is submultiplicative for positive integers. Applying the Fekete lemma to its logarithm proves existence when ; at the rate is zero. The same rate is the root limit of the percolation two-point connection probability along a coordinate axis, by the reflection lower bound for two-point percolation.
Percolation probability Created 2026-09-28 Updated 2026-10-14
For independent bond percolation on an infinite graph with a specified root , let be its percolation cluster. The percolation probability isIt concerns the root, rather than the existence of an infinite percolation cluster somewhere else. Even above the percolation critical probability of the square lattice, an isolated root has probability , because its four incident edges can all be closed. Thus when . Positive percolation probability does not mean every vertex is connected to infinity.
On the square lattice, the events that is joined by an open path to the boundary of decrease as increases. Their probabilities converge to by continuity from above of a measure. This relates an infinite question to finite observations, without equating any one finite boundary connection with survival forever. The monotone coupling of Bernoulli percolation shows that is a monotone function of .
Polynomial critical one-arm upper bound 2026-10-06
At for independent bond percolation on the square lattice, there exist and with . The Russo-Seymour-Welsh theorem and the Harris-FKG inequality give a uniform positive probability of a closed dual graph cycle around each geometrically spaced square ring. The independent annular barriers for percolation give the polynomial bound and imply zero critical percolation probability. This does not determine the exact critical exponent.
Rectangle crossing in bond percolation 2026-10-14
For the induced square lattice subgraph in , is the probability of an open graph path from its left boundary to its right boundary under independent bond percolation of density . Width and height count lattice spacings. Dual bond percolation exchanges failure with a top-to-bottom dual crossing of dimensions , with the usual exterior boundary vertices.
For bond percolation on the square lattice, write and . A maximal-probability boundary graph vertex can be placed at by symmetry. Reflection about identifies its connection probability from with that from . The Harris-FKG inequality yields for .
RSW reflection extension lemma 2026-10-06
For independent bond percolation on the square lattice at , square crossing probabilities bounded below by self-duality extend to a uniform positive bound for rectangles of aspect ratio . Expose an extremal vertical square crossing, reflect its geometry, and attach it to an exterior side through an unexposed independent region. Reflection symmetry bounds the attachment probability below. Two attachments and a horizontal square crossing join by the Harris-FKG inequality. Overlapping rectangles and transverse overlap-square crossings then give all fixed aspect ratios. Reflecting a geometrical graph path does not require its reflected edges to be open.
Separated-block percolation renormalization 2026-10-14
Place side- square lattice boxes around the points , . The width- rectangle joining adjacent boxes has length . Declare a coarse bond open when its long rectangle is crossed and each endpoint box is crossed in the transverse direction. Nonincident coarse bonds use disjoint fine-bond sets, while incident good bonds give connected open paths inside their common endpoint box. When fixed-aspect crossing probabilities tend to one, these coarse bond probabilities tend to one. The Peierls circuit bound for one-independent percolation then yields an infinite fine-lattice open cluster.
Torus graph 2026-10-14
For , the square torus graph has vertex set and joins vertices differing by one in exactly one coordinate. It has vertices and bonds. Translations act transitively on vertices; translations together with a quarter turn act transitively on bonds. A rectangle of side lengths at most has the same induced subgraph as its planar square lattice counterpart.
Uniform RSW crossing estimate 2026-10-06
For independent bond percolation on the square lattice, a positive uniform lower bound for square crossings implies a positive uniform lower bound for rectangle crossings of every fixed aspect ratio . The RSW reflection extension lemma first extends a square to aspect ratio . Overlapping rectangles and transverse overlap-square crossings then glue using the Harris-FKG inequality. The required constant depends on and , not on scale. At a self-dual parameter, dual crossings also give a uniform upper bound below one.
Word metric balls in the integer lattice 2026-10-14
The additive group gives a useful way to see what a word metric measures. Let and , and choose the four-move generating set of a group . Its Cayley graph is the square lattice. Each move changes exactly one coordinate by one, so the word length is the L1 norm, and the word metric is Manhattan distance:At least this many moves are necessary, and moving horizontally then vertically attains the bound. Bridson gives this square lattice as a basic Cayley graph example.[ref]
Now allow all eight neighbouring lattice points as moves:Each coordinate changes by at most one per move. Use diagonal moves until the smaller displacement is exhausted, then use axis moves: the resulting word length is the maximum norm, and the word metric is Chebyshev distance. From to , an -route has five steps, while the -route has three.
The closed word metric balls consist of lattice points inside a diamond for , and inside an axis-aligned square for . For every nonnegative integer radius ,The diamond has lattice points at word length ; the square has choices for each coordinate. At radius three the counts are and . These are discrete closed balls for Manhattan distance and Chebyshev distance; an Euclidean distance bound would instead select lattice points inside a Euclidean disk.
Radius-three word metric balls in the integer lattice: a diamond with 25 points and a square with 49 points, with routes to
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