On chemical distances and shape theorems in percolation models with long-range correlations

In this paper we provide general conditions on a one parameter family of random infinite subsets of Z^d to contain a unique infinite connected component for which the chemical distances are comparable to the Euclidean distances, focusing primarily on models with long-range correlations. Our results are in the spirit of those by Antal and Pisztora proved for Bernoulli percolation. We also prove a shape theorem for balls in the chemical distance under such conditions. Our general statements give novel results about the structure of the infinite connected component of the vacant set of random interlacements and the level sets of the Gaussian free field. We also obtain alternative proofs to the main results in arXiv:1111.3979. Finally, as a corollary, we obtain new results about the (chemical) diameter of the largest connected component in the complement of the trace of the random walk on the torus.