Phase Transition and Fluctuation Results for First-Passage Percolation on Spread-Out Cycle Graphs

Abstract

We study first-passage percolation on the $\ell$-spread-out one-dimensional cycle of size $n$, where vertices are connected if their graph distance is at most $\ell$. We assign i.i.d.~non-negative random weights from a Weibull distribution $ω_e \sim \mathrm{Exp}(1)^{1/θ}$ to the edges for $θ>0$ fixed. This paper investigates the transition in the asymptotic behavior of the passage time $T_n$ between two typical vertices and the hop-count of the optimal path as the connectivity parameter $\ell$ diverges with $n$. We identify two fundamentally distinct geometric regimes. In the mesoscopic regime ($1 \ll \ell \ll n$), the optimal path locally mimics a spatial branching random walk but remains globally constrained to a one-dimensional geometry. We establish a law of large numbers characterized by the front speed of a Crump--Mode--Jagers branching random walk, prove a central limit theorem with Gaussian fluctuations when $\ell\ll n^{1/4}$, and show that the expected hop-count grows proportionally with the spatial distance. In the macroscopic regime ($\ell \approx λn$ for $λ\in (0,1/2)$), the graph becomes a highly connected mean-field network. We prove that the passage time collapses to a $\log n$ scale with constant order non-Gaussian fluctuations, explicitly determining the extreme-value limit driven by the collision of two independent non-spatial CMJ processes. We establish a law of large numbers for the hop-count. Finally, we rigorously trace the transition in the order of the mean of $T_n$ between these two regimes, demonstrating an order transition for the passage time across the critical connectivity threshold $\ell \asymp n/\log n$. Our results provide a comprehensive deterministic-range interpolation from spatial Gaussian fluctuations to mean-field extreme-value fluctuations.