Nonuniqueness of site percolation on nonamenable quasi-transitive graphs

A mix of human-written and AI-generated textHuman understanding: some partsmath.PR — Probabilitymath.CO — Combinatoricsmath.GR — Group Theorymath-ph — Mathematical Physics

Contributed by Yan Ru Pei ↗

Version 1 / Nov 10, 2026 / CC BY 4.0

Abstract

Benjamini and Schramm conjectured in 1996 that site percolation on every nonamenable quasi-transitive graph has pc<pup_c<p_u. We prove this in Hutchcroft's operator form: for Bernoulli site percolation on every connected, locally finite, nonamenable quasi-transitive graph, the critical two-point operator is bounded on ℓ2\ell^2, pc<p2→2≤pup_c<p_{2\to2}\le p_u, and in the standard monotone coupling infinitely many infinite clusters coexist at every parameter of a nondegenerate interval. Since bond percolation is site percolation on the line graph, this contains OpenAI's recent bond theorem. For unimodular automorphism groups we adapt OpenAI's proof: cut vertices replace bridges, a pruning lemma handles retained contact vertices, a rejection step controls the junctions created by opening a vertex, and pivotal corridors become induced paths. For nonunimodular groups we extend Tran and Nguyen's site argument from vertex-transitive to quasi-transitive graphs.

Author comments: 60 pages: main text pp. 1-28, appendices A-G. An earlier version is on Zenodo, doi:10.5281/zenodo.24023209; this version differs only in adding the companion paper's DOI to its bibliography entry. The proof uses three unrefereed inputs, listed in the introduction: OpenAI's manuscript on nonuniqueness of bond percolation (both cases), Section 5 of Tran and Nguyen, arXiv:2609.07026 (nonunimodular case), and the companion paper "Critical site percolation dies on (almost) every quasi-transitive graph", doi:10.5281/zenodo.24023188 (critical finiteness and the nonunimodular case).

Provenance statement

Claude Opus 5.5 (Anthropic) was used for proof discovery and for writing the paper, running as agents in Claude Code. The contributor steered the work: choosing the problem (the site form of Benjamini-Schramm Conjecture 6, following OpenAI's bond theorem), directing the proof strategy, making the scope and attribution decisions, and reviewing the key mathematical lemmas. Independent model instances audited each component proof blind and rechecked every repair, and a model-run precedence search found no earlier statement of the site form. The proof relies on unrefereed inputs, listed in the introduction: OpenAI's bond-percolation manuscript, Section 5 of Tran and Nguyen (arXiv:2609.07026), and the companion paper (doi:10.5281/zenodo.24023188). No formal verification was done.

Tools used

Anthropic
Claude OpusVersion 5.5

References

  1. T. Antunović and I. Veselić. Sharpness of the phase transition and exponential decay of the subcritical cluster size for percolation on quasi-transitive graphs. J. Stat. Phys. , 130:983--1009, 2008. arXiv:0707.1089.arXiv
  2. I. Benjamini and O. Schramm. Percolation beyond Zd\mathbb{Z}^d, many questions and a few answers. Electron. Commun. Probab. , 1:71--82, 1996. doi:10.1214/ECP.v1-978 (https://doi.org/10.1214/ECP.v1-978).DOI
  3. I. Benjamini and O. Schramm. Percolation in the hyperbolic plane. J. Amer. Math. Soc. , 14(2):487--507, 2001. doi:10.1090/S0894-0347-00-00362-3 (https://doi.org/10.1090/S0894-0347-00-00362-3), arXiv:math/9912233.arXivDOI
  4. R. M. Burton and M. Keane. Density and uniqueness in percolation. Comm. Math. Phys. , 121(3):501--505, 1989.
  5. J. Czajkowski. Non-uniqueness phase of Bernoulli percolation on reflection groups for some polyhedra in H3\mathbb H^3. Preprint, arXiv:1303.5624, 2013.arXiv
  6. H. Duminil-Copin and V. Tassion. A new proof of the sharpness of the phase transition for Bernoulli percolation and the Ising model. Comm. Math. Phys. , 343(2):725--745, 2016. Correction: Comm. Math. Phys. , 359(2):821--822, 2018.
  7. O. Häggström, Y. Peres, and R. H. Schonmann. Percolation on transitive graphs as a coalescent process: relentless merging followed by simultaneous uniqueness. In M. Bramson and R. Durrett, editors, Perplexing Problems in Probability , volume 44 of Progr. Probab. , pages 69--90. Birkhäuser, Boston, 1999. doi:10.1007/978-1-4612-2168-5_4 (https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-2168-5_4).DOI
  8. T. E. Harris. A lower bound for the critical probability in a certain percolation process. Proc. Cambridge Philos. Soc. , 56(1):13--20, 1960. doi:10.1017/S0305004100034241 (https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305004100034241).DOI
  9. T. Hutchcroft. Percolation on hyperbolic graphs. Geom. Funct. Anal. , 29(3):766--810, 2019. doi:10.1007/s00039-019-00498-0 (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00039-019-00498-0), arXiv:1804.10191; numbering as in arXiv:1804.10191v3.arXivDOI
  10. T. Hutchcroft. Non-uniqueness and mean-field criticality for percolation on nonunimodular transitive graphs. J. Amer. Math. Soc. , 33(4):1101--1165, 2020. arXiv:1711.02590; numbering as in arXiv:1711.02590v3.arXiv
Show all 21 referencesShow fewer references
  1. S. P. Lalley. Percolation on Fuchsian groups. Ann. Inst. H. Poincaré Probab. Statist. , 34(2):151--177, 1998.
  2. Z. Li. Tree embeddings and nonuniqueness in site percolation. Preprint, arXiv:2304.00923; numbering as in v7, 2026.arXiv
  3. Z. Li. Planar site percolation, end structure, and the Benjamini--Schramm conjecture. Preprint, arXiv:2601.09958, 2026.arXiv
  4. R. Lyons and Y. Peres. Probability on Trees and Networks . Cambridge University Press, 2016. Numbering and pages as in the online version of 17 January 2026, https://rdlyons.pages.iu.edu/prbtree/book.pdf.link
  5. OpenAI. Nonuniqueness of percolation on nonamenable quasi-transitive graphs. OpenAI Math Release preprint, September 24, 2026. Available from github.com/openai/math (https://github.com/openai/math/blob/main/preprints/Nonuniqueness-of-percolation-on-nonamenable-quasi-transitive-graphs-September-24-2026/paper.pdf).link
  6. Y. R. Pei. Critical site percolation dies on (almost) every quasi-transitive graph. Preprint, Zenodo, 2026. doi:10.5281/zenodo.24023188 (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.24023188).DOI
  7. M. Salvatori. On the norms of group-invariant transition operators on graphs. J. Theoret. Probab. , 5(3):563--576, 1992.
  8. R. H. Schonmann. Multiplicity of phase transitions and mean-field criticality on highly non-amenable graphs. Comm. Math. Phys. , 219(2):271--322, 2001. doi:10.1007/s002200100417 (https://doi.org/10.1007/s002200100417).DOI
  9. P. M. Soardi and W. Woess. Amenability, unimodularity, and the spectral radius of random walks on infinite graphs. Math. Z. , 205(3):471--486, 1990.
  10. T. Tran and T. M. Nguyen. Locality of Bernoulli site percolation on transitive graphs. Preprint, arXiv:2609.07026, 2026; numbering as in v1.arXiv
  11. J. van den Berg and H. Kesten. Inequalities with applications to percolation and reliability. J. Appl. Probab. , 22(3):556--569, 1985.

Version history

  1. v1 · 60 pagesSubmitted by Yan Ru Pei60 pages: main text pp. 1-28, appendices A-G. An earlier version is on Zenodo, doi:10.5281/zenodo.24023209; this version differs only in adding the companion paper's DOI to its bibliography entry. The proof uses three unrefereed inputs, listed in the introduction: OpenAI's manuscript on nonuniqueness of bond percolation (both cases), Section 5 of Tran and Nguyen, arXiv:2609.07026 (nonunimodular case), and the companion paper "Critical site percolation dies on (almost) every quasi-transitive graph", doi:10.5281/zenodo.24023188 (critical finiteness and the nonunimodular case).CurrentNov 09, 2026