A characterization of strong percolation via disconnection

Abstract We consider a percolation model, the vacant set of random interlacements on , , in the regime of parameters in which it is strongly percolative. By definition, such values of pinpoint a robust subset of the supercritical phase, with strong quantitative controls on large local clusters. In the present work, we give a new characterization of this regime in terms of a single property, monotone in , involving a disconnection estimate for . A key aspect is to exhibit a gluing property for large local clusters from this information alone, and a major challenge in this undertaking is the fact that the conditional law of exhibits degeneracies. As one of the main novelties of this work, the gluing technique we develop to merge large clusters accounts for such effects. In particular, our methods do not rely on the widely assumed finite‐energy property, which the set does not possess. The characterization we derive plays a decisive role in the proof of a lasting conjecture regarding the coincidence of various critical parameters naturally associated to in the companion article [Duminil‐Copin, Goswami, Rodriguez, Severo, and Teixeira, Phase transition for the vacant set of random walk and random interlacements , arXiv:2308.07919, 2023].