A note on the Harris-Kesten Theorem

Bela Bollobas, Oliver Riordan

Published 2005-09-06, updated 2005-09-10Version 2

Recently, a short proof of the Harris-Kesten result that the critical probability for bond percolation in the planar square lattice is 1/2 was given, using a sharp threshold result of Friedgut and Kalai. Here we point out that a key part of this proof may be replaced by an argument of Russo from 1982, using his approximate zero-one law in place of the Friedgut-Kalai result. Russo's paper gave a new proof of the Harris-Kesten Theorem that seems to have received little attention.