Localization of the principal Dirichlet eigenvector in the heavy-tailed random conductance model

Abstract

We study the asymptotic behavior of the principal eigenvector and eigenvalue of the random conductance Laplacian in a large domain of Zd (d≥2) with zero Dirichlet condition. We assume that the conductances w are positive i.i.d. random variables, which fulfill certain regularity assumptions near zero. If γ=sup{q≥0:E[w−q]<∞}<1/4, then we show that for almost every environment the principal Dirichlet eigenvector asymptotically concentrates in a single site and the corresponding eigenvalue scales subdiffusively. The threshold γc=1/4 is sharp. Indeed, other recent results imply that for γ>1/4 the top of the Dirichlet spectrum homogenizes. Our proofs are based on a spatial extreme value analysis of the local speed measure, Borel-Cantelli arguments, the Rayleigh-Ritz formula, results from percolation theory, and path arguments.