Phase transitions and noise sensitivity on the Poisson space via stopping sets and decision trees

TL;DR

This paper extends inequalities for Boolean functions to the Poisson space, providing new tools to analyze phase transitions and noise sensitivity in percolation models, with applications to planar Poisson percolation and confetti models.

Contribution

It introduces intrinsic versions of the OSSS and Schramm-Steif inequalities for Poisson functionals, enabling analysis of phase transitions and noise sensitivity in new models.

Findings

Established sharp phase transition conditions for Poisson percolation models.

Proved noise sensitivity of crossing events in planar Poisson models.

Confirmed the critical probability as 1/2 in certain planar confetti percolation models.

Abstract

Proofs of sharp phase transition and noise sensitivity in percolation have been significantly simplified by the use of randomized algorithms, via the OSSS inequality (proved by O'Donnell, Saks, Schramm and Servedio (2005)) and the Schramm-Steif inequality for the Fourier-Walsh coefficients of functions defined on the Boolean hypercube. In this article, we prove intrinsic versions of the OSSS and Schramm-Steif inequalities for functionals of a general Poisson process, and apply these new estimates to deduce sufficient conditions - expressed in terms of randomized stopping sets - yielding sharp phase transitions, quantitative noise sensitivity, exceptional times and bounds on critical windows for monotonic Boolean Poisson functions. Our analysis is based on a new general definition of `stopping set', not requiring any topological property for the underlying measurable space, as well as on the new concept of a `continuous-time decision tree', for which we establish several fundamental properties. We apply our findings to the $k$-percolation of the Poisson Boolean model and to the Poisson-based confetti percolation with bounded random grains. In these two models, we reduce the proof of sharp phase transitions for percolation, and of noise sensitivity for crossing events, to the construction of suitable randomized stopping sets and the computation of one-arm probabilities. This enables us to settle some open problem suggested by Ahlberg, Tassion and Texeira (2018) on noise sensitivity of crossing events for the planar Poisson Boolean model and also planar Confetti percolation model. Further, we also prove that critical probability is $1/2$ in certain planar confetti percolation models. A special case of this result was conjectured by Benjamini and Schramm (1998) and proved by M\"uller (2017). Other special cases were proven by Hirsch (2015) and Ghosh and Roy (2018).