Homotopy Types of Random Cubical Complexes

Abstract

We study the topology of a random cubical complex associated to Bernoulli site percolation on a cubical grid. We begin by establishing a limit law for homotopy types. More precisely, looking within an expanding window, we define a sequence of normalized counting measures (counting connected components according to homotopy type), and we show that this sequence of random probability measures converges in probability to a deterministic probability measure. We then investigate the dependence of the limiting homotopy measure on the coloring probability $p$, and our results show a qualitative change in the homotopy measure as $p$ crosses the percolation threshold $p=p_c$. Specializing to the case of $d=2$ dimensions, we also present empirical results that raise further questions on the $p$-dependence of the limiting homotopy measure.