The second largest component in the supercritical 2D Hamming graph

Abstract

The 2-dimensional Hamming graph H(2,n) consists of the $n^2$ vertices $(i,j)$, $1\leq i,j\leq n$, two vertices being adjacent when they share a common coordinate. We examine random subgraphs of H(2,n) in percolation with edge probability $p$, so that the average degree $2(n-1)p=1+ε$. Previous work by van der Hofstad and Luczak had shown that in the barely supercritical region $n^{-2/3}\ln^{1/3}n\ll ε\ll 1$ the largest component has size $\sim 2εn$. Here we show that the second largest component has size close to $ε^{-2}$, so that the dominant component has emerged. This result also suggests that a {\it discrete duality principle} might hold, whereby, after removing the largest connected component in the supercritical regime, the remaining random subgraphs behave as in the subcritical regime.