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.