Non-triviality of the phase transition for percolation on finite transitive graphs

Abstract

We prove that if $(G_n)_{n\geq1}=((V_n,E_n))_{n\geq 1}$ is a sequence of finite, vertex-transitive graphs with bounded degrees and $|V_n|\to\infty$ that is at least $(1+\epsilon)$-dimensional for some $\epsilon>0$ in the sense that \[\mathrm{diam} (G_n)=O\left(|V_n|^{1/(1+\epsilon)}\right) \text{ as $n\to\infty$}\] then this sequence of graphs has a non-trivial phase transition for Bernoulli bond percolation. More precisely, we prove under these conditions that for each $0<\alpha <1$ there exists $p_c(\alpha)<1$ such that for each $p\geq p_c(\alpha)$, Bernoulli-$p$ bond percolation on $G_n$ has a cluster of size at least $\alpha |V_n|$ with probability tending to $1$ as $n\to \infty$. In fact, we prove more generally that there exists a universal constant $a$ such that the same conclusion holds whenever \[\mathrm{diam} (G_n)=O\left(\frac{|V_n|}{(\log |V_n|)^a}\right) \text{ as $n\to\infty$.}\] This verifies a conjecture of Benjamini up to the value of the constant $a$, which he suggested should be $1$. We also prove a generalization of this result to quasitransitive graph sequences with a bounded number of vertex orbits and prove that one may indeed take $a=1$ when the graphs $G_n$ are all Cayley graphs of Abelian groups. A key step in our proof is to adapt the methods of Duminil-Copin, Goswami, Raoufi, Severo, and Yadin from infinite graphs to finite graphs. This adaptation also leads to an isoperimetric criterion for infinite graphs to have a nontrivial uniqueness phase (i.e., to have $p_u<1$) which is of independent interest. We also prove that the set of possible values of the critical probability of an infinite quasitransitive graph has a gap at $1$ in the sense that for every $k,n<\infty$ there exists $\epsilon>0$ such that every infinite graph $G$ of degree at most $k$ whose vertex set has at most $n$ orbits under Aut$(G)$ either has $p_c=1$ or $p_c\leq 1-\epsilon$.