Series expansions of isotropic Gaussian random fields on $\mathbb{S}^2$ with independent Gaussian coefficients and localized basis functions are constructed. Such representations with multilevel localised structure provide an alternative to the standard Karhunen-Loève expansions of isotropic random fields in terms of spherical harmonics. The basis functions are obtained by applying the square root of the covariance operator to spherical needlets. Localization of the resulting covariance-dependent multilevel basis is shown under decay conditions on the angular power spectrum of the random field. In addition, numerical illustrations are given and an application to random elliptic PDEs on the sphere is analyzed.
We prove that any isotropic positive definite function on the sphere can be written as the spherical self-convolution of an isotropic real-valued function. It is known that isotropic positive definite functions on d-dimensional Euclidean space admit a continuous derivative of order [(d-1)/2]. We show that the same holds true for isotropic positive definite functions on spheres and prove that this result is optimal for all odd dimensions.
For a vector random field that is isotropic and mean square continuous on a sphere and stationary on a temporal domain, this paper derives a general form of its covariance matrix function and provides a series representation for the random field, which involve the ultraspherical polynomials. The series representation is somehow an imitator of the covariance matrix function, but differs from the the spectral representation in terms of the ordinary spherical harmonics, and is useful for modeling and simulation. Some semiparametric models are also illustrated.
In this paper we define (empirical) quadratic variations for a Gaussian isotropic random field $f$ on a unit sphere as sums over equidistant increments on one single geodesic line on the surface of the sphere. We prove a noncentral limit theorem for a fixed Fourier component of such a field as well as quantitative central limit theorems in the increasing frequency regime. Based on these results we propose estimators of the angular power spectrum and study their properties. Moreover, we show a quantitative central limit theorem for quadratic variations over the field $f$ and construct an estima…
Taking account of recent developments in the representation of $d$-dimensional isotropic stable Lévy processes as self-similar Markov processes, we consider a number of new ways to condition its path. Suppose that $Ω$ is a region of the unit sphere $\mathbb{S}^{d-1} = \{x\in \mathbb{R}^d: |x| =1\}$. We construct the aforesaid stable Lévy process conditioned to approach $\mathsf{S}$ continuously from either inside or outside of the sphere. Additionally, we show that %this these processes are in duality with the stable process conditioned to remain inside the sphere and absorb continuously at th…
The symmetric convex hull of random points that are independent and distributed according to the cone probability measure on the $\ell_p$-unit sphere of $\mathbb R^n$ for some $1\leq p < \infty$ is considered. We prove that these random polytopes have uniformly absolutely bounded isotropic constants with overwhelming probability. This generalizes the result for the Euclidean sphere ($p=2$) obtained by D. Alonso-Gutiérrez. The proof requires several different tools including a probabilistic representation of the cone measure due to G. Schechtman and J. Zinn and moment estimates for sums of inde…
Suppose that $\mathsf{S}$ is a closed set of the unit sphere $\mathbb{S}^{d-1} = \{x\in \mathbb{R}^d: |x| =1\}$ in dimension $d\geq2$, which has positive surface measure. We construct the law of absorption of an isotropic stable Lévy process in dimension $d\geq2$ conditioned to approach $\mathsf{S}$ continuously, allowing for the interior and exterior of $\mathbb{S}^{d-1}$ to be visited infinitely often. Additionally, we show that this process is in duality with the underlying stable Lévy process. We can replicate the aforementioned results by similar ones in the setting that $\mathsf{S}$ is r…
The explicit formulae for the height distribution and expected number of local maxima have been obtained for isotropic Gaussian random fields on certain low-dimensional Euclidean space or low-dimensional spheres.
In this paper, we focus on isotropic and stationary sphere-cross-time random fields. We first introduce the class of spherical functional autoregressive-moving average processes (SPHARMA), which extend in a natural way the spherical functional autoregressions (SPHAR) recently studied in [8, 7]; more importantly, we then show that SPHAR and SPHARMA processes of sufficiently large order can be exploited to approximate every isotropic and stationary sphere-cross-time random field, thus generalizing to this infinite-dimensional framework some classical results on real-valued stationary processes. …
We obtain formulae for the expected number and height distribution of critical points of smooth isotropic Gaussian random fields parameterized on Euclidean space or spheres of arbitrary dimension. The results hold in general in the sense that there are no restrictions on the covariance function of the field except for smoothness and isotropy. The results are based on a characterization of the distribution of the Hessian of the Gaussian field by means of the family of Gaussian orthogonally invariant (GOI) matrices, of which the Gaussian orthogonal ensemble (GOE) is a special case. The obtained …
In this paper we provide some simple characterizations for the spherical harmonics coefficients of an isotropic random field on the sphere. The main result is a characterization of isotropic gaussian fields through independence of the coefficients of their development in spherical harmonics.
We introduce a class of isotropic time dependent random fields on the non-homogeneous sphere represented by a time-changed spherical Brownian motion of order ν\in (0,1] with which some anisotrophies can be captured in Cosmology. This process is a time-changed rotational diffusion (TRD) or the stochastic solution to the equation involving the spherical Laplace operator and a time-fractional derivative of order ν. TRD is a diffusion on the non-homogeneous sphere and therefore, the spherical coordinates given by TRD represent the coordinates of a non-homogeneous sphere by means of which an isotop…
The covariance matrix function is characterized in this paper for a Gaussian or elliptically contoured vector random field that is stationary, isotropic, and mean square continuous on the compact two-point homogeneous space. Necessary and sufficient conditions are derived for a symmetric and continuous matrix function to be an isotropic covariance matrix function on all compact two-point homogeneous spaces. It is also shown that, for a symmetric and continuous matrix function with compact support, if it makes an isotropic covariance matrix function in the Euclidean space, then it makes an isot…
We develop a technique for the construction of random fields on algebraic structures. We deal with two general situations: random fields on homogeneous spaces of a compact group and in the spin-line bundles of the 2-sphere. In particular, every spin Gaussian isotropic field can be obtained with this construction. Our construction extends P. Lévy's original idea for the spherical Brownian Motion.
Let $X= \{X(p), p\in M\}$ be a centered Gaussian random field, where $M$ is a smooth Riemannian manifold. For a suitable compact subset $D\subset M$, we obtain the approximations to excursion probability $\mathbb{P}\{\sup_{p\in D} X(p) \ge u \}$, as $u\to \infty$, for two cases: (i) $X$ is smooth and isotropic; (ii) $X$ is non-smooth and locally isotropic. For case (i), the expected Euler characteristic approximation is formulated explicitly; while for case (ii), it is shown that the asymptotics is similar to Pickands' approximation on Euclidean space which involves Pickands' constant and the …
Let $X=\{X(x): x\in\mathbb{S}^N\}$ be a real-valued, centered Gaussian random field indexed on the $N$-dimensional unit sphere $\mathbb{S}^N$. Approximations to the excursion probability ${\mathbb{P}}\{\sup_{x\in\mathbb{S}^N}X(x)\ge u\}$, as $u\to\infty$, are obtained for two cases: (i) $X$ is locally isotropic and its sample functions are non-smooth and; (ii) $X$ is isotropic and its sample functions are twice differentiable. For case (i), the excursion probability can be studied by applying the results in Piterbarg (Asymptotic Methods in the Theory of Gaussian Processes and Fields (1996) Ame…
Isotropic positive definite functions on spheres play important roles in spatial statistics, where they occur as the correlation functions of homogeneous random fields and star-shaped random particles. In approximation theory, strictly positive definite functions serve as radial basis functions for interpolating scattered data on spherical domains. We review characterizations of positive definite functions on spheres in terms of Gegenbauer expansions and apply them to dimension walks, where monotonicity properties of the Gegenbauer coefficients guarantee positive definiteness in higher dimensi…
We study the weak convergence (in the high-frequency limit) of the parameter estimators of power spectrum coefficients associated with Gaussian, spherical and isotropic random fields. In particular, we introduce a Whittle-type approximate maximum likelihood estimator and we investigate its asympotic weak consistency and Gaussianity, in both parametric and semiparametric cases.
We show that an isotropic random field on $SU(2)$ is not necessarily isotropic as a random field on $S^3$, although the two spaces can be identified. The ambiguity is due to the fact that the notion of isotropy on a group and on a sphere are different, the latter being much stronger. We show that any isotropic random field on $S^3$ is necessarily a superposition of uncorrelated random harmonic homogeneous polynomials, such that the one of degree $d$ is necessarily a superposition of uncorrelated random spin weighted functions of every possible spin weight in the range $\{-\frac{d}{2},\dots,\fr…
In this paper, aliasing effects are investigated for random fields defined on the d-dimensional sphere and reconstructed from discrete samples. First, we introduce the concept of an aliasing function on the sphere. The aliasing function allows one to identify explicitly the aliases of a given harmonic coefficient in the Fourier decomposition. Then, we exploit this tool to establish the aliases of the harmonic coefficients approximated by means of the quadrature procedure named spherical uniform sampling. Subsequently, we study the consequences of the aliasing errors in the approximation of the…
