Cycle factors and renewal theory

For which values of $k$ does a uniformly chosen $3$-regular graph $G$ on $n$ vertices typically contain $n/k$ vertex-disjoint $k$-cycles (a $k$-cycle factor)? To date, this has been answered for $k=n$ and for $k \ll \log n$; the former, the Hamiltonicity problem, was finally answered in the affirmative by Robinson and Wormald in 1992, while the answer in the latter case is negative since with high probability most vertices do not lie on $k$-cycles. Here we settle the problem completely: the threshold for a $k$-cycle factor in $G$ as above is $\kappa_0 \log_2 n$ with $\kappa_0=[1-\frac12\log_2 3]^{-1}\approx 4.82$. Precisely, we prove a 2-point concentration result: if $k \geq \kappa_0 \log_2(2n/e)$ divides $n$ then $G$ contains a $k$-cycle factor w.h.p., whereas if $k<\kappa_0\log_2(2n/e)-\frac{\log^2 n}n$ then w.h.p. it does not. As a byproduct, we confirm the "Comb Conjecture," an old problem concerning the embedding of certain spanning trees in the random graph $G(n,p)$. The proof follows the small subgraph conditioning framework, but the associated second moment analysis here is far more delicate than in any earlier use of this method and involves several novel features, among them a sharp estimate for tail probabilities in renewal processes without replacement which may be of independent interest.