Positive-drift conjecture for higher-order environment derivatives

Fix k2k\geq 2. Let SS be a reasonable set of kk edges, and let Sf\partial_S f be its environment derivative. The conjecture concerns every positive value mm in the discrete range of this derivative.

Positive-drift conjecture. There exists θk(0,1)\theta_k\in(0,1) such that, for most reasonable kk-edge sets SS and every positive mm,

P(Sf=m)θkP(Sf=m).\mathbb P(\partial_S f=-m)\leq\theta_k\mathbb P(\partial_S f=m).

This one-sided comparison would imply that E[Sf]\mathbb E[\partial_S f] is comparable to P(Sf0)\mathbb P(\partial_S f\neq 0) for the relevant sets. The notion of “most reasonable” sets is informal in the supplied text.

Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Ivan Matic, Rados Radoicic and Dan Stefanica, “Higher-order derivatives of first-passage percolation with respect to the environment”, arXiv:2504.08935 (2026).

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