Sharp isoperimetric inequalities for infinite plane graphs with bounded vertex and face degrees

Abstract

We provide sharp bounds for the isoperimetric constants of infinite plane graphs (tessellations) with bounded vertex and face degrees. For example, if $G$ is a plane graph satisfying the inequalities $p_1 \leq \mbox{deg}\ v \leq p_2$ for $v \in V(G)$ and $q_1 \leq \mbox{deg}\ f \leq q_2$ for $f \in F(G)$, where $p_1, p_2, q_1$, and $q_2$ are natural numbers such that $1/p_i + 1/q_i \leq 1/2$, $i=1,2$, then we show that \[ Φ(p_1, q_1) \leq \inf_S \frac{|\partial S|}{|V(S)|} \leq Φ(p_2, q_2), \] where the infimum is taken over all finite nonempty subgraphs $S \subset G$, $\partial S$ is the set of edges connecting $S$ to $G \setminus S$, and $Φ(p,q)$ is defined by \[ Φ(p, q) = (p-2) \sqrt{1 - \frac{4}{(p-2)(q-2)}}. \] For $p_1=3$ this gives an affirmative answer to a conjecture by Lawrencenko, Plummer, and Zha from 2002, and for general $p_i$ and $q_i$ our result fully resolves a question posed in the book by Lyons and Peres from 2016, where they extended the conjecture of Lawrencenko et al. to the above form.