Year: 2015
Type: preprint
Abstract: The $r$-neighbour bootstrap percolation process on a graph $G$ starts with an initial set $A_0$ of "infected" vertices and, at each step of the process, a healthy vertex becomes infected if it has at least $r$ infected neighbours (once a vertex becomes infected, it remains infected forever). If every vertex of $G$ eventually becomes infected, then we say that $A_0$ percolates. We prove a conjecture of Balogh and Bollobás which says that, for fixed $r$ and $d\to\infty$, every percolating set in the $d$-dimensional hypercube has cardinality at least $\frac{1+o(1)}{r}\binom{d}{r-1}$. We also prove an analogous result for multidimensional rectangular grids. Our proofs exploit a connection between bootstrap percolation and a related process, known as weak saturation. In addition, we improve on the best known upper bound for the minimum size of a percolating set in the hypercube. In particular, when $r=3$, we prove that the minimum cardinality of a percolating set in the $d$-dimensional hypercube is $\left\lceil\frac{d(d+3)}{6}\right\rceil+1$ for all $d\geq3$.
Source: arXiv (Cornell University)
Authors: Morrison, Natasha, Noel, Jonathan A.
Institutions: University of Cambridge, University of Warwick
Language: English
Subfield: Discrete Mathematics and Combinatorics
Field: Mathematics
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4290762948