Title: A lower bound for p_c in range-R bond percolation in four, five and six dimensions

Abstract: For the range-R bond percolation in d=4,5,6, we obtain a lower bound for the critical probability p_c for R large, agreeing with the conjectured asymptotics and thus complementing the corresponding results of Van der Hofstad-Sakai (2005) for d>6, and Frei-Perkins (2016), Hong (2021) for d<4. The proof follows by showing the extinction of the associated SIR epidemic model and introducing a self-avoiding branching random walk where births onto visited sites are suppressed and the total range of which dominates that of the SIR epidemic process.