Elongated Poisson-Voronoi cells in an empty half-plane

TL;DR

This paper studies the asymptotic shape and structure of elongated Voronoi cells in the upper half-plane generated by a Poisson process in the lower half-plane, revealing a new scaling limit called the menhir.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed probabilistic description of elongated Voronoi cells in a half-plane, including their scaling limit and vertex count asymptotics, which was not previously known.

Findings

The typical cell converges to a random apeirogon called menhir.

Number of vertices of a cell of height λ is asymptotically (4/5) log λ.

Edge structure governed by Beta and exponential distributions.

Abstract

The Voronoi tessellation of a homogeneous Poisson point process in the lower half-plane gives rise to a family of vertical elongated cells in the upper half-plane. The set of edges of these cells is ruled by a Markovian branching mechanism which is asymptotically described by two sequences of iid variables which are respectively Beta and exponentially distributed. This leads to a precise description of the scaling limit of a so-called typical cell. The limit object is a random apeirogon that we name menhir in reference to the Gallic huge stones. We also deduce from the aforementioned branching mechanism that the number of vertices of a cell of height $\lambda$ is asymptotically equal to $\frac45\log\lambda$.