Distances in critical long range percolation

Abstract: We study the long range percolation model on $\mathbb{Z}$ where sites $i$ and $j$ are connected with probability $\beta |i-j|^{-s}$. Graph distances are now well understood for all exponents $s$ except in the case $s=2$ where the model exhibits non-trivial self-similar scaling. Establishing a conjecture of Benjamini and Berger \cite{BenBer:01}, we prove that the typical distance from site 0 to $n$ grows as a power law $n^{\theta(\beta)}$ up to a multiplicative constant for some exponent $0<\theta(\beta)<1$ as does the diameter of the graph on a box of length $n$.