A sharper threshold for bootstrap percolation in two dimensions

Two-dimensional bootstrap percolation is a cellular automaton in which sites become 'infected' by contact with two or more already infected nearest neighbors. We consider these dynamics, which can be interpreted as a monotone version of the Ising model, on an n x n square, with sites initially infected independently with probability p. The critical probability p_c is the smallest p for which the probability that the entire square is eventually infected exceeds 1/2. Holroyd determined the sharp first-order approximation: p_c \sim π^2/(18 log n) as n \to \infty. Here we sharpen this result, proving that the second term in the expansion is -(log n)^{-3/2+ o(1)}, and moreover determining it up to a poly(log log n)-factor. The exponent -3/2 corrects numerical predictions from the physics literature.

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