Percolation on dense graph sequences

Béla Bollobás, Christian Borgs, Jennifer Chayes, Oliver Riordan

Published 2007-01-12, updated 2010-01-29Version 3

In this paper we determine the percolation threshold for an arbitrary sequence of dense graphs $(G_n)$. Let $\lambda_n$ be the largest eigenvalue of the adjacency matrix of $G_n$, and let $G_n(p_n)$ be the random subgraph of $G_n$ obtained by keeping each edge independently with probability $p_n$. We show that the appearance of a giant component in $G_n(p_n)$ has a sharp threshold at $p_n=1/\lambda_n$. In fact, we prove much more: if $(G_n)$ converges to an irreducible limit, then the density of the largest component of $G_n(c/n)$ tends to the survival probability of a multi-type branching process defined in terms of this limit. Here the notions of convergence and limit are those of Borgs, Chayes, Lov\'asz, S\'os and Vesztergombi. In addition to using basic properties of convergence, we make heavy use of the methods of Bollob\'as, Janson and Riordan, who used multi-type branching processes to study the emergence of a giant component in a very broad family of sparse inhomogeneous random graphs.