Rigidity and tolerance for perturbed lattices

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Yuval Peres, MSR
Fine Hall 214

Consider a perturbed lattice $\{v+Y_v\}$ obtained by adding IID $d$-dimensional Gaussian variables $\{Y_v\}$ to the lattice points in $\mathbb{Z}^d$.

Suppose that one point, say $Y_0$, is removed from this perturbed lattice; is
it possible for an observer, who sees just  the remaining points, to detect
that a point is missing?

In one and two dimensions, the answer is positive: the two point processes
(before and after $Y_0$ is removed)  can be distinguished using smooth
statistics, analogously to work of Sodin and Tsirelson (2004) on zeros of
Gaussian analytic functions (cf. Holroyd and Soo (2011)). The situation
in higher dimensions is more delicate; our solution depends on a
game-theoretic idea, in one direction, and on the unpredictable paths
constructed by Benjamini, Pemantle and the speaker (1998), in the other.   
(Joint work with Allan Sly).