Dynamics of Lattice Triangulations on Thin Rectangles

Abstract

We consider random lattice triangulations of $n\times k$ rectangular regions with weight $λ^{|σ|}$ where $λ>0$ is a parameter and $|σ|$ denotes the total edge length of the triangulation. When $λ\in(0,1)$ and $k$ is fixed, we prove a tight upper bound of order $n^2$ for the mixing time of the edge-flip Glauber dynamics. Combined with the previously known lower bound of order $\exp(Ω(n^2))$ for $λ>1$ [3], this establishes the existence of a dynamical phase transition for thin rectangles with critical point at $λ=1$.