Convergence of the free Boltzmann quadrangulation with simple boundary to the Brownian disk

Abstract

We prove that the free Boltzmann quadrangulation with simple boundary and fixed perimeter, equipped with its graph metric, natural area measure, and the path which traces its boundary converges in the scaling limit to the free Boltzmann Brownian disk. The topology of convergence is the so-called Gromov-Hausdorff-Prokhorov-uniform (GHPU) topology, the natural analog of the Gromov-Hausdorff topology for curve-decorated metric measure spaces. From this we deduce that a random quadrangulation of the sphere decorated by a $2l$-step self-avoiding loop converges in law in the GHPU topology to the random curve-decorated metric measure space obtained by gluing together two independent Brownian disks along their boundaries.