Abstract
The largest components of the critical Erdös-Rényi graph, G(n,p) with p=1/n, have size of order n^{2/3} with high probability. We give detailed asymptotics for the probability that there is an unusually large component, i.e. of size an^{2/3} for large a. Our results, which extend work of Pittel, allow a to depend upon n and also hold for a range of values of p around 1/n. We also provide asymptotics for the distribution of the size of the component containing a particular vertex.