Local criteria for global connectivity comparisons: beyond stochastic domination

Abstract

We introduce a site-wise domination criterion for local percolation models, which enables the comparison of one-arm probabilities even in the absence of stochastic domination. The method relies on a local-to-global principle: if, at each site, one model is more likely than the other to connect to a subset of its neighbors, for all nontrivial such subsets, then this advantage propagates to connectivity events at all scales. In this way, we obtain a robust alternative to stochastic domination, applicable in all cases where the latter works and in many where it does not. As a main application, we compare classical Bernoulli bond percolation with degree-constrained models, showing that degree constraints enhance percolation, and obtain asymptotically optimal bounds on critical parameters for degree-constrained models.