Critical window for the vacant set left by random walk on the configuration model

Abstract

We study the simple random walk on the configuration model with given degree sequence $(d_1^n, \dots ,d_n^n)$ and investigate the connected components of its vacant set at level $u>0$. We show that the size of the maximal connected component exhibits a phase transition at level $u^*$ which can be related with the critical parameter of random interlacements on a certain Galton-Watson tree. We further show that there is a critical window of size $n^{-1/3}$ around $u^*$ in which the largest connected components of the vacant set have a metric space scaling limit resembling the one of the critical Erdős-Renyi random graph.