Local percolative properties of the vacant set of random interlacements with small intensity

Abstract: Random interlacements at level u is a one parameter family of connected random subsets of Z^d, d>=3 introduced in arXiv:0704.2560. Its complement, the vacant set at level u, exhibits a non-trivial percolation phase transition in u, as shown in arXiv:0704.2560 and arXiv:0808.3344, and the infinite connected component, when it exists, is almost surely unique, see arXiv:0805.4106. In this paper we study local percolative properties of the vacant set of random interlacements at level u for all dimensions d>=3 and small intensity parameter u>0. We give a stretched exponential bound on the probability that a large (hyper)cube contains two distinct macroscopic components of the vacant set at level u. Our results imply that finite connected components of the vacant set at level u are unlikely to be large. These results were proved in arXiv:1002.4995 for d>=5. Our approach is different from that of arXiv:1002.4995 and works for all d>=3. One of the main ingredients in the proof is a certain conditional independence property of the random interlacements, which is interesting in its own right.