CRITICAL PERCOLATION OF FREE PRODUCT OF GROUPS

Abstract

In this article we study percolation on the Cayley graph of a free product of groups. The critical probability pc of a free product G1 * G2 * ⋯ * Gn of groups is found as a solution of an equation involving only the expected subcritical cluster size of factor groups G1, G2, …, Gn. For finite groups this equation is polynomial and can be explicitly written down. The expected subcritical cluster size of the free product is also found in terms of the subcritical cluster sizes of the factors. In particular, we prove that pc for the Cayley graph of the modular group PSL2(ℤ) (with the standard generators) is 0.5199…, the unique root of the polynomial 2p5 - 6p4 + 2p3 + 4p2 - 1 in the interval (0, 1). In the case when groups Gi can be "well approximated" by a sequence of quotient groups, we show that the critical probabilities of the free product of these approximations converge to the critical probability of G1 * G2 * ⋯ * Gn and the speed of convergence is exponential. Thus for residually finite groups, for example, one can restrict oneself to the case when each free factor is finite. We show that the critical point, introduced by Schonmann, p exp of the free product is just the minimum of p exp for the factors.