Energy of Flows on Percolation Clusters

It is well known for which gauge functions H there exists a flow in Z ^d with finite H energy. In this paper we discuss the robustness under random thinning of edges of the existence of such flows. Instead of Z ^d we let our (random) graph cal C cal (Z ^d,p) be the graph obtained from Z ^d by removing edges with probability 1–p independently on all edges. Grimmett, Kesten, and Zhang (1993) showed that for d3,p>p _c(Z ^d), simple random walk on cal C cal (Z ^d,p) is a.s. transient. Their result is equivalent to the existence of a nonzero flow f on the infinite cluster such that the x ² energy _e f(e)² is finite. Levin and Peres (1998) sharpened this result, and showed that if d3 and p>p _c(Z ^d), then cal C cal (Z ^d,p) supports a nonzero flow f such that the x ^q energy is finite for all q>d/(d–1). However, for general gauge functions, there is a gap between the existence of flows with finite energy which results from the work of Levin and Peres and the known results on flows for Z ^d. In this paper we close the gap by showing that if d3 and Z ^d supports a flow of finite H energy then the infinite percolation cluster on Z ^d also support flows of finite H energy. This disproves a conjecture of Levin and Peres.