Percolation Transition in the Random Antiferromagnetic Spin-1 Chain

We give a physical description in terms of percolation theory of the phase transition that occurs when the disorder increases in the random antiferromagnetic spin-1 chain between a gapless phase with hidden topological order and a random singlet phase. We study the statistical properties of the percolation clusters by numerical simulations, and we compute exact exponents characterizing the transition by a real-space renormalization group calculation.