On the disconnection of a discrete cylinder by a random walk

We investigate the large N behavior of the time the simple random walk on the discrete cylinder needs to disconnect the discrete cylinder. We show that when d≥2, this time is roughly of order N ^{2 d} and comparable to the cover time of the slice , but substantially larger than the cover timer of the base by the projection of the walk. Further we show that by the time disconnection occurs, a massive ``clogging' typically takes place in the truncated cylinders of height . These mechanisms are in contrast with what happens when d=1.