Graph distance and effective resistance of the random walk trace in four and five dimensions

Abstract: In this paper, we prove that the fluctuations of the graph distance and the effective resistance on the trace of a random walk in four and five dimensions converge in distribution to a stable law. In previous work, the first and second authors proved that the corresponding fluctuations converge to a Gaussian distribution in dimensions six and higher. Taken together, these results reveal a phase transition between dimensions five and six. Our proof develops a novel coupling with long range percolation, and we expect this technique to find applications in a broad class of related models.