Cube{root Boundary Fluctuations for Droplets in Random Cluster Models

For a family of bond percolation models on Z that includes the FortuinKasteleyn random cluster model, we consider properties of the “droplet” that results, in the percolating regime, from conditioning on the existence of an open dual circuit surrounding the origin and enclosing at least (or exactly) a given large area A. This droplet is a close surrogate for the one obtained by Dobrushin, Kotecký and Shlosman by conditioning the Ising model; it approximates an area-A Wulff shape. The local part of the deviation from the Wulff shape (the “local roughness”) is the inward deviation of the droplet boundary from the boundary of its own convex hull; the remaining part of the deviation, that of the convex hull of the droplet from the Wulff shape, is inherently long-range. We show that the local roughness is described by at most the exponent 1/3 predicted by nonrigorous theory; this same prediction has been made for a wide class of interfaces in two dimensions. Specifically, the average of the local roughness over the droplet surface is shown to be O(l(log l)) in probability, where l = √ A is the linear scale of the droplet. We also bound the maximum of the local roughness over the droplet surface and bound the long-range part of the deviation from a Wulff shape, and we establish the absense of “bottlenecks,” which are a form of self-approach by the droplet boundary, down to scale log l. Finally, if we condition instead on the event that the total area of all large droplets inside a finite box exceeds A, we show that with probability near 1 for large A, only a single large droplet is present.