Non-Optimality of Invaded Geodesics in 2d Critical First-Passage Percolation

Abstract: We study the critical case of first-passage percolation in two dimensions. Letting $(t_e)$ be i.i.d. nonnegative weights assigned to the edges of $\mathbb{Z}^2$ with $\mathbb{P}(t_e=0)=1/2$, consider the induced pseudometric (passage time) $T(x,y)$ for vertices $x,y$. It was shown in [2] that the growth of the sequence $\mathbb{E}T(0,\partial B(n))$ (where $B(n) = [-n,n]^2$) has the same order (up to a constant factor) as the sequence $\mathbb{E}T^{\text{inv}}(0,\partial B(n))$. This second passage time is the minimal total weight of any path from 0 to $\partial B(n)$ that resides in a certain embedded invasion percolation cluster. In this paper, we show that this constant factor cannot be taken to be 1. That is, there exists $c>0$ such that for all $n$, [ \mathbb{E}T^{\text{inv}}(0,\partial B(n)) \geq (1+c) \mathbb{E}T(0,\partial B(n)). ] This result implies that the time constant for the model is different than that for the related invasion model, and that geodesics in the two models have different structure.