A general class of self-dual percolation models

A general class of self-dual percolation models

Tue, 03/11/2009
14:30 		Oliver Riordan (Oxford) Combinatorial Theory Seminar Add to calendar L3
A general class of self-dual percolation models
One of the main aims in the theory of percolation is to find the `critical probability' above which long range connections emerge from random local connections with a given pattern and certain individual probabilities. The quintessential example is Kesten's result from 1980 that if the edges of the square lattice are selected independently with probability $ p $, then long range connections appear if and only if $ p>1/2 $.  The starting point is a certain self-duality property, observed already in the early 60s; the difficulty is not in this observation, but in proving that self-duality does imply criticality in this setting. Since Kesten's result, more complicated duality properties have been used to determine a variety of other critical probabilities. Recently, Scullard and Ziff have described a very general class of self-dual percolation models; we show that for the entire class (in fact, a larger class), self-duality does imply criticality.