Percolation between $k$ separated points in two dimensions

S. S. Manna, Robert M. Ziff

Published 2020-03-21Version 1

We consider a percolation process in which $k$ widely separated points simultaneously connect together ($k>1$), or a single point at the center of a system connects to the boundary ($k=1$), through adjacent connected points of a single cluster. These processes yield new thresholds $\overline p_{ck}$ defined as the average value of $p$ at which the desired connections first occur. These thresholds are not sharp as the distribution of values of $p_{ck}$ remains broad in the limit of $L \to \infty$. We study $\overline p_{ck}$ for bond percolation on the square lattice, and find that $\overline p_{ck}$ are above the normal percolation threshold $p_c = 1/2$ and represent specific supercritical states. The $\overline p_{ck}$ can be related to integrals over powers of the function $P_\infty(p) =$ the probability a point is connected to the infinite cluster; we find numerically from both direct simulations and from measurements of $P_\infty(p)$ on $L\times L$ systems that for $L \to \infty$, $\overline p_{c1} = 0.51761(3)$, $\overline p_{c2} = 0.53220(3)$, $\overline p_{c3} = 0.54458(3)$, and $\overline p_{c4} = 0.55530(3)$. The percolation thresholds $\overline p_{ck}$ remain the same, even when the $k$ points are randomly selected within the lattice. We show that the finite-size corrections scale as $L^{-1/\nu_k}$ where $\nu_k = \nu/(k \beta +1)$, with $\beta=5/36$ and $\nu=4/3$ being the ordinary percolation critical exponents, so that $\nu_1= 48/41$, $\nu_2 = 24/23$, $\nu_3 = 16/17$, $\nu_4 = 6/7$, etc. We also study three-point correlations in the system, and show how for $p>p_c$, the correlation ratio goes to 1 (no net correlation) as $L \to \infty$, while at $p_c$ it reaches the known value of 1.021$\ldots.$