Strong local uniqueness for the vacant set of random interlacements

Abstract: We consider the the vacant set $\mathcal{V}^u$ of random interlacements on $\mathbb{Z}^d$ in dimensions $d \ge 3$. For varying intensity $u > 0$, the connectivity properties of $\mathcal V^u$ undergo a percolation phase transition across a non-degenerate critical parameter $u_* \in (0,\infty)$. As a consequence of the series of recent works arXiv:2308.07303, arXiv:2308.07919 and arXiv:2308.07920, one knows that in the super-critical regime, i.e. when $u < u_\ast$, there is a cluster of positive density inside any ball of radius $R$ with probability stretched exponentially close to $1$ in $R$. Furthermore, with similar probability, any two large clusters are connected to each other locally in any configuration with strictly smaller intensity. This last property falls short of the classical local uniqueness, which requires a connection in the same configuration, i.e. in absence of any sprinkling. In this article we resolve this question by proving a stronger property, namely that local uniqueness holds simultaneously for all configurations $\mathcal{V}^{v}$ with $v \le u$. Apart from the severe degeneracies in the conditional law of $\mathcal{V}^u$ including the lack of any finite-energy property, our methods also face up to the well-known problem of decoupling non-monotone events, by exhibiting a certain regularity in terms of so-called excursion packets, which has implications beyond the scope of this paper. Our approach suggests a robust way to tackle similar problems for various other (correlated) models. In itself, the strong local uniqueness we prove yields several important results characterizing the super-critical phase of $\mathcal{V}^u$, among which are the large-scale geometry of the infinite cluster and sharp upper bounds on truncated connectivity functions.