50 years of first passage percolation

Antonio Auffinger; Michael Damron; Jack Hanson

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arXiv · 1511.03262

50 years of first passage percolation

Antonio Auffinger·Michael Damron·Jack Hanson

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Abstract

We celebrate the 50th anniversary of one the most classical models in probability theory. In this survey, we describe the main results of first passage percolation, paying special attention to the recent burst of advances of the past 5 years. The purpose of these notes is twofold. In the first chapters, we give self-contained proofs of seminal results obtained in the '80s and '90s on limit shapes and geodesics, while covering the state of the art of these questions. Second, aside from these classical results, we discuss recent perspectives and directions including (1) the connection between Busemann functions and geodesics, (2) the proof of sublinear variance under 2+log moments of passage times and (3) the role of growth and competition models. We also provide a collection of (old and new) open questions, hoping to solve them before the 100th birthday.

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Antonio Auffinger, Michael Damron, Jack Hanson. 2016-09-23. 50 years of first passage percolation. https://arxiv.org/abs/1511.03262

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