Geodesics in large planar maps and in the Brownian map

Jean-Francois Le Gall

Published 2008-04-18, updated 2008-05-30Version 2

We study geodesics in the random metric space called the Brownian map, which appears as the scaling limit of large planar maps. In particular, we completely describe geodesics starting from the distinguished point called the root, and we characterize the set S of all points that are connected to the root by more than one geodesic. The set S is dense in the Brownian map and homeomorphic to a non-compact real tree. Furthermore, for every x in S, the number of distinct geodesics from x to the root is equal to the number of connected components of the complement of {x} in S. In particular, points of the Brownian map can be connected to the root by at most three distinct geodesics. Our results have applications to the behavior of geodesics in large planar maps.