A Surface View of First-Passage Percolation

Let \(\tilde B\)(t) be the set of sites reached from the origin by time t in standard first-passage percolation on Z d , and let B0 (roughly lim \(\tilde B\) (t)/t) be its deterministic asymptotic shape. We relate the t → ∞ microstructure of the surface of \(\tilde B\)(t) to spanning trees of time-minimizing paths and their transverse deviations and to curvature properties of B0. The most complete results are restricted to d = 2.