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. 2018 Nov 10;6(4):509–532. doi: 10.1007/s40304-018-0162-9

Sharp Convergence of Nonlinear Functionals of a Class of Gaussian Random Fields

Weijun Xu 1,2,
PMCID: PMC6404850  PMID: 30931237

Abstract

We present a self-contained proof of a uniform bound on multi-point correlations of trigonometric functions of a class of Gaussian random fields. It corresponds to a special case of the general situation considered in Hairer and Xu (large-scale limit of interface fluctuation models. ArXiv e-prints arXiv:1802.08192, 2018), but with improved estimates. As a consequence, we establish convergence of a class of Gaussian fields composite with more general functions. These bounds and convergences are useful ingredients to establish weak universalities of several singular stochastic PDEs.

Keywords: Multi-point correlation function, Trigonometric polynomial, Gaussian random fields

Introduction

Motivation from Weak Universalities

The study of singular stochastic PDEs has received much attention recently, and powerful theories are being developed to enhance the general understanding of this area. We refer to the excellent surveys [8, 11] and references therein for recent breakthroughs in the field.

One of the motivations to study singular SPDEs is that many of them are expected to be universal objects in crossover regimes of their respective universality classes, a phenomenon known as weak universality. One well-known example is the KPZ equation [14], formally given by

th=x2h+λ(xh)2+ξ,

where ξ is the one-dimensional space-time white noise. The equation is only formal since it involves the square of a distribution. Nevertheless, the solution can be rigorously constructed in a few different ways, including the Cole–Hopf transform [1], pathwise solutions via rough paths/regularity structures [3, 9, 10] or paracontrolled distributions [6], or the notion of energy solution through a martingale problem [4, 7].

The KPZ equation is expected to be the universal model for weakly asymmetric interface growth at large scales. In [12], the authors considered continuous microscopic models of the type

th~=x2h~+εF(xh~)+ξ~ 1.1

for any even polynomial F and smooth stationary Gaussian random field ξ~. The main result in [12] is that there exists Cε+ such that the rescaled and re-centered height function

hε(t,x):=ε12h~(t/ε2,x/ε)-Cεt

converges to the solution of the KPZ equation with

λ=12EF(Ψ~), 1.2

where Ψ~=xPξ~ and P is the heat kernel. Hairer and Xu [13] extended the result to arbitrary even functions F with sufficient regularity and polynomial growth. Similar results have also been obtained in [5] for models at stationarity.

To see why the convergence holds with λ given by (1.2), we write down the equation for hε:

thε=x2hε+ε-1Fεxhε+ξε-Cε,

where ξε(t,x)=ε-32ξ~(t/ε2,x/ε) approximates the space-time white noise ξ at scale ε. Let Ψε=xPξε, then εΨε is stationary Gaussian with finite variance. In addition, by analogy with the standard KPZ equation, it is reasonable to expect that the remainder xuε=xhε-Ψε is almost bounded. Hence, one can Taylor expand the nonlinearity ε-1F(εxhε) around εΨε and formally get

ε-1F(εxhε)-Cε=ε-1F(εΨε)-Cε+ε-12F(εΨε)·(xuε)+F(εΨε)·(xuε)2+O(ε12-).

One then needs to show the convergence of the objects ε-1F(εΨε)-Cε, ε-12F(εΨε), F(εΨε) as well as their products, which arise from the local expansion of xuε. Furthermore, such convergences need to be established in the optimal regularity space, which requires one to pth obtain moment bounds of these stochastic objects for arbitrarily large pth.

At least formally, by chaos expanding ε-1F(εΨε) and taking Cε=ε-1EF(εΨε), one can see that

ε-1F(εΨε)-CελΨ2, 1.3

where λ is given in (1.2) and Ψ=xPξ is the limit of Ψε. This is because all terms starting from the 4-th chaos vanish termwise as ε0, and only the second chaos component survives in the limit.

When F is even polynomial, this heuristic indeed gives a direct proof of the convergence of the term in (1.3). However, when F is not polynomial, the actual proof of the convergence becomes much subtler. The main obstacle is that F(εΨε) expands into an infinite chaos series. If we brutally control their high moments termwise as in the polynomial case, then in order for these termwise moment bounds to be summable, we need to impose very strong conditions on F (namely, its Fourier transform being compactly supported), which is clearly too restrictive.

Instead, in [13], the authors expanded F(εΨε) in terms of Fourier transform, developed a procedure in obtaining pointwise correlation bounds on trigonometric functions of Gaussians, and deduced the desired convergence from those bounds.

Similar universality results are also present in the dynamical Φ34 model. The weak universality of Φ34 equation for a large class of symmetric phase coexistence models with polynomial potential was established in [13] for Gaussian noise and then extended in [17] to non-Gaussian noise. The extension beyond polynomial potential (even with Gaussian noise) has the same difficulties as in the KPZ case discussed above. In the recent work [2], the authors developed different methods based on Malliavin calculus to control similar objects. The methods developed in [2, 13] to treat general nonlinearities are both robust enough to cover both KPZ and Φ34 equations as well as other similar situations.

In this article, we follow the ideas developed in [13] and prove a uniform bound in a special case considered in there. This special case is technically simpler to explain, but is also illustrative enough to reveal the main idea of the proof for the more general case. Furthermore, we obtain a better bound in this special case, thus yielding convergence results for functions F with lower regularity.

Main Statements

Fix a scaling s=(s1,,sd) on Rd, and let |s|=jsj. The metric induced by s is

|x|s:=|x1|1s1++|xd|1sd.

Since the scaling is fixed throughout the article, we simply write |x| instead of |x|s. For any Gaussian random field X, any function F:RR with at most exponential growth, and any integer m0, we write

HmF(X)=nmCnXn,

where Xn denotes the n-th Wick power of X, and Cn=1n!EF(n)(X) is the coefficient of Xn in the chaos expansion of F(X). In other words, Hm(F(X)) is F(X) with the first m-1 chaos removed. We refer to [16, Chapter 1] for more details on chaos expansion of random variables. We have the following bound.

Theorem 1.1

Let α(0,|s|), and {Φε}ε(0,1) be a class of centered Gaussian random fields satisfying

εαΛ|x-y|+εαEΦε(x)Φε(y)Λεα|x-y|+εα 1.4

for some Λ>1 and for all x,yRd and all ε(0,1). Then, for every K1 and m,rN, there exists C>0 depending on these parameters and Λ only such that

Ej=1KθrHmeiθΦε(xj)CEj=1KΦεm(xj)+Φε(m+1)(xj) 1.5

for all ε(0,1), θR and x=(xk)k=1K.

Theorem 1.1 is the main technical ingredient to establish that if {Ψε} approximates a certain Gaussian random field Ψ, then a large class of nonlinear functions of Ψε, after proper rescaling and re-centering, converges to certain Wick powers of Ψ. We first give the assumption on the random field Ψ.

Assumption 1.2

Ψ is a stationary Gaussian random field with correlation1

EΨ(x)Ψ(y)=G(x-y),

where G satisfies the bounds

c|x|αG(x)C|x|αand|(jG)(x)|C|x|-α-sj

for some α(0,|s|) and all xRd. In addition, there exists a locally integrable function g such that

εαGεs1x1,,εsdxdg(x) 1.6

in L1(Ω) for every bounded subset Ω of Rd.

For MN and open subset IR, we define the norm ·M,I on distributions on R by

ΥM,I:=sup0rMsupφCM(I)1φCcM(I):|Υ,φ(r)|.

Our assumption on the function F:RR is the following.

Assumption 1.3

There exists MN such that the Fourier transform of F satisfies

kZF^M,Ik<+,

where Ik=(k-1,k+1).

For every ρCc(Rd) and ε>0, let

ρε(x)=ε-|s|ρx1/εs1,,xd/εsd.

The main convergence theorem is the following.

Theorem 1.4

Let Ψ and F satisfy the above assumptions, and g be the limiting L1 function of εαG(ε·) as in Assumption 1.2. Let ρ be a mollifier on Rd and Ψε=Ψρε. For every integer m, define

am:=1m!F(m)μ(0), 1.7

where μN(0,σ2) is a Gaussian measure on R with variance

σ2=g(x-y)ρ(x)ρ(y)dxdy. 1.8

Then, for every m<|s|α and every sufficiently small κ, we have

ε-mα2HmF(εα2Ψε)amΨm

as ε0 almost surely in C-mα2-κ. Here, Ψm is the m-th Wick power of Ψ.

We will first prove the main bound (1.5) in Theorem 1.1 and then establish the convergence in Theorem1.4 by Fourier expanding F and applying (1.5) to Φε=εα2Ψε. Note that although the bound in Theorem 1.1 holds for every integer m, the convergence in Theorem 1.4 requires m<|s|α. This can be easily seen from the fact that if m|s|α, then Ψm would have divergent covariance and hence not well defined.

Example 1.5

One typical example of the random field Ψ satisfying Assumption 1.2 is Ψ=L-β2ξ, where ξ is the white noise on Rd, β=12(|s|-α), and L is the differential operator given by

L=j=1d-j21sj.

This is the fractional Gaussian field. In this case, the convolution kernel K of L-β2 is homogeneous (in the scaling s) of order -|s|+β in the sense that

K(λs1x1,,λsdxd)=λ-|s|+βK(x1,,xd)

for all λ>0. Hence, for gG as in Assumption 1.2, we have the expression

g(x)=G(x)=RdK(x+y)K(y)dy.

The same is true when Rd is given the parabolic scaling (2,1,,1) and L=t-Δ is the heat operator.

In the case of standard Euclidean scaling s=(1,,1), Ψ is simply the standard fractional Gaussian field (-Δ)-β2ξ. We refer to the survey [15] for more details on fractional Gaussian fields.

Example 1.6

As for the function F, all C1+ functions with polynomial growth fall in Assumption 1.3. More precisely, if fC1,β(R) for some β>0, and there exist C,M>0 such that

|f(x)|+|f(x)|+sup|h|<1|f(x+h)-f(x)||h|βC(1+|x|)M

for all xR, then F satisfies Assumption 1.3.

Example 1.7

One very interesting example of the microscopic model (1.1) is with F(x)=|x|. It is almost linear, but one still expects its large-scale behavior to be nonlinear as described by the KPZ equation. This function F even not C1, but we still have

F^1,IkC(1+|k|)-2,

which clearly satisfies Assumption 1.3. Hence, as a consequence of Theorem 1.1, if Ψ=xPξ where ξ is the space-time white noise with one space dimension, and P is the heat kernel, then we have

ε-12|Ψε|-E|Ψε|aΨ2

for some a>0 depending on the mollifier. This is the first step toward establishing convergence to the KPZ equation for the microscopic model of the form (1.1) with F(x)=|x|.

Remarks and Possible Generalizations

Theorem 1.1 is a special case of [13, Theorem 6.4] in that it allows only one frequency variable θ rather than multiple ones. On the other hand, it is also more general since it allows subtraction of Wiener chaos up to any order. Furthermore, the bound (1.5) is completely independent of θ, while the corresponding one in [13] is polynomial in θ. As a consequence of this improvement, the condition on F for the convergence in Theorem 1.4 to hold is weaker.

The main technical difference that results in this improvement, as we shall see later in Sect. 2, is that in the clustering procedure, we are able to take the clustering distance L being independent of θ rather than being quadratic in θ as in [13].

We shall note that the convergence results in this article are not sufficient to establish weak universality in general situations. These would require convergence of the products of the objects considered in Theorem 1.4, with possible subtraction of extra chaos components after taking product. The convergence of these products requires a more general bound than Theorem 1.1 and [13, Theorem 6.2]. We leave them to future work.

Proof of Theorem 1.1

This section is devoted to the proof of Theorem 1.1. Assumptions 1.2 and 1.3 on Ψ and F are irrelevant here. We fix α(0,|s|), and let {Φε}ε(0,1) be a family of Gaussian random fields with correlation functions satisfying (1.4). The following preliminary bounds on the correlation function will be used throughout the section.

Proposition 2.1

Let γ1. If |x-y|γ|x-y|, then

EΦε(x)Φε(y)γαΛ2EΦε(x)Φε(y). 2.1

The bound is uniform over all ε(0,1) and all pairs of points (x,y),(x,y)(Rd)2 satisfying the above constraint. As a consequence, we have

EΦε(x)Φε(y)EΦε(x)Φε(z)2αΛ3εα(|x-y||x-z|)+εα·EΦε(y)Φε(z) 2.2

for all ε(0,1) and all x,y,zRd.

Proof

The first bound follows from

EΦε(x)Φε(y)εαΛ|x-y|+εα1Λ2γα·Λεα|x-y|+εαEΦε(x)Φε(y)Λ2γα,

where we have used the assumption γ1 in the second inequality. As for the second one, it suffices to notice

|y-z|2max{|x-y|,|x-z|}

and then apply (2.1).

In what follows, we keep our notations same as in [13, Section 6]. For every finite set A, let NA be the set of multi-indices on A. For A-tuple of Gaussian random variables X=(Xa)aA and nNA, we write Inline graphic. Similarly, we write n!=aAna! and |n|=aAna. In general, we use standard letters for scalars and boldface ones to denote tuples.

Fix K1 and m,rN. Let [K]={1,,K}. We also fix θR and x=(xk)k[K]RK arbitrary. Write θ=1+|θ|. All the constants C below depend on Λ, K, m, and r only unless otherwise mentioned. We seek bounds that are uniform in ε, θ, and x. We also write Xj=Φε(xj) for simplicity since the bounds will be independent of ε.

Clustering and the First Bound

Let L>0 be a fixed large constant whose value, depending on Λ, K, m, and r only, will be specified later. Let be an equivalence relation on [K] such that jj if there exists kN and j0,,jk[K] with j0=j and jk=j such that

|xj+1-xj|Lε

for all =0,,k-1. We let C denote the partition of [K] into clusters obtained in this way. In other words, j and j belong to the same cluster if and only if starting from xj, one can reach xj by performing jumps with sizes at most Lε onto connecting points in x.

We distinguish two cases depending on whether C contains singletons or not. We first prove (1.5) when C has no singleton; that is, every cluster in C has at least two elements. In this case, we write down the explicit expression

θrHmeiθXj=(iXj)reiθXj-nm-1inn!θre-θ2EXj22θnXjn. 2.3

Since EXj2[Λ-1,Λ], the coefficients θr(e-θ2EXj22θn) are uniformly bounded in θ. We then plug the expansion (2.3) into the left-hand side of (1.5). The Gaussianity of the Xj’s and boundedness of the coefficients of the removed chaos imply

Ej=1KθrHmeiθXjC 2.4

for some C independent of ε, θ, and x. It then remains to show that the right-hand side of (1.5) is bounded by a constant from below. For this, we use the assumption that C contains no singletons.

Let uC be arbitrary, and we label its elements by u={j1,,j|u|}. Since C has no singleton set, we necessarily have |u|2. By clustering, any two points in u are at most KLε away from each other. Hence, the assumption (1.4) implies (recalling that Xj=Φε(xj))

EXjXjεαΛ|xj-xj|+εα1Λ(KL+1)α

for every two points j,ju. which implies

Λ(KL+1)α-m+12|u|=1|u|EXjXj+1m+12,

where we identified j|u|+1 with j1. Multiplying the above bound over all uC and using Wick’s formula and positivity of the correlations, we obtain

Λ(KL+1)α-m+12KuC=1|u|EXjXj+1m+12Ej=1KXjm+Xj(m+1). 2.5

This is the place where we use |u|2 for every uC, for otherwise the middle term above would contain the variance of a single random variable and the second inequality in (2.5) would be wrong. Combining (2.4) and (2.5), we obtain

Eθrj=1KHmeiθXjCΛ(KL+1)αKm+12·Ej=1KXjm+Xj(m+1), 2.6

which matches the right-hand side of (1.5). Since L (to be chosen later) is also independent of ε, θ, and x, this concludes the case when C contains no singleton. The rest of the section is devoted to establishing (1.5) when at least one cluster in C is singleton.

Expansion

Given the collection of points x and the clustering above, let

S=uC:|u|=1

be the set of singletons in C, and let U=C\S. We write sS for simplicity if {s} is a singleton set in C.

For X=(Xj)j[K] and n=(nj)j[K], we write Xu and nu for their restrictions to u, and Inline graphic. Splitting the left-hand side of (1.5) into sub-products within clusters uC and chaos expanding each sub-product, we can rewrite it as

Ej=1KθrHmeiθXj=N0|n|=NnNK:uCCnu(θ,Xu)EuCXunu. 2.7

Here, Cnu(θ,Xu) is the coefficient of Xunu in the chaos expansion of juθrHm(eiθXj) and has the expression

Cnu(θ,Xu)=1nu!EjuθrXjnjHmeiθXj. 2.8

Note the product involving the expectation on the right-hand side of (2.7) is 0 if |n| is odd. But we still sum over all integers N since this simplifies the notations later. The following lemma gives control on the coefficients Cnu.

Lemma 2.2

There exists C>0 depending on K, m, r, and Λ only such that

|Cnu(θ,Xu)|(Cθ)|nu|nu! 2.9

for all nuNu, where we recall θ=1+|θ|. As a consequence, we have

|n|=NuC|Cnu(θ,Xu)|(Cθ)NN!. 2.10

Furthermore, if S, then we have

|n|=NuC|Cnu(θ,Xu)|e-θ22Λ·(Cθ)NN!. 2.11

All the bounds are uniform in ε and θ, and in the location of x subject to whether C contains a singleton or not.

Proof

We express the right-hand side of (2.8) in a way that is convenient to estimate. For this, we introduce variables βRK. Let βu denote the restriction of β to u, and write βur=juβjr and βunu=juβjnj. Using the identity

XjnjHmeiβjXj=(iβj)njHm-njeiβjXj,

where Hm-n=H0 if nm, we can rewrite the right-hand side of (2.8) as

Cnu(θ,Xu)=i|nu|nu!βurβunu·EjuHm-njeiβjXj|βj=θ,ju.

When distributing r derivatives of each βj into the two terms in the parenthesis, the differentiation of the first term (βunu) yields an additional factor which is at most |nu|KrC|nu| for some fixed constant C, while the second term is uniformly bounded both in θ and nu since Xj’s all have bounded variance. This gives (2.9). The bound (2.10) follows from (2.9) and the multinomial theorem.

Finally, in order to obtain (2.11) when S, it suffices to note that for sS, we have

Cns(θ,Xs)=insns!θrθnse-θ2EXs22

if nsm, and is 0 otherwise. Since EXs21Λ, we gain an additional Gaussian factor e-θ22Λ for every sS, and hence e-θ2|S|2Λ in total. The bound (2.11) then follows from relaxing it to e-θ22Λ.

Representative Point

For |u|2, the corresponding term in the expectation on the right-hand side of (2.7) is a Wick product of multiple Gaussian random variables. We aim to reduce it to the Wick product of a single variable by choosing a representative point from each cluster.

For every uC, choose u(u)u arbitrary. The choice for u is unique if u is singleton. We have the following proposition.

Proposition 2.3

There exists C>0 such that

EuCXunuC|n|·EuCXu(u)|nu| 2.12

for every nNK and every choice of u(u)u.

Proof

If |n|=uC|nu| is odd, then both sides of (2.12) are 0, so we only need to consider the situation when |n| is even.

In this case, the left-hand side is the sum of products of pairwise expectations E(XjXj) for j and j belonging to different clusters. The right-hand side (without the factor C|n|) is the same except that each instance of Xj for ju is replaced by Xu(u). It then suffices to control the effects of such replacements.

Let u,v be two different clusters in C, and use u and v to denote u(u) and u(v), respectively. For every ju and jv, according to the clustering, we have

|xu-xj|(K-1)|xj-xj|,|xv-xj|(K-1)|xj-xj|,

which implies

|xu-xv||xu-xj|+|xj-xj|+|xv-xj|2K|xj-xj|.

Hence, by (2.1), we deduce that

E(XjXj)(2K)αΛ2E(XuXv).

This is the effect of one such replacement. The claim then follows since there are |n|2 pairwise expectations in each product in the sum. It also means we can take C=(2K)α2Λ in (2.12).

From now on, we restrict ourselves to the situation when |S|1, and recall the notation U=C\S. We need to split the product on the right-hand side of (2.7) into sub-products in S and in U. For this, we introduce multi-indices k=(ks)sS and =(u)uU and write |k|=sSks and ||=uUu. We then have the following proposition.

Proposition 2.4

Suppose |S|1. Then, the left-hand side of (1.5) can be controlled by

Ej=1KθrHmeiθXjCe-θ22ΛN0CθN+m|S|(N+m|S|)!×sup|k|+||=NEsSXs(m+ks)uUXu(u)u. 2.13

Proof

We start with the expression (2.7). Note that for sS, Cns(θ,Xs)=0 whenever ns<m, so we can relax the expression to

Ej=1KθrHmeiθXjNm|S|nuC|Cnu(θ,Xnu)|supnEuCXunu,

where both the sum and supremum are taken over |n|=N with the further restriction that nsm for all sS. The claim follows immediately by applying Lemma 2.2 and Proposition 2.3 to the right-hand side above and noting the range of the sum and supremum.

Graphic Representation

It remains to control the term involving the expectation on the right-hand side of (2.13). Since all Xj’s are Gaussian, it can be written as a sum over products of pairwise expectations. The number of terms in each product (and hence the total power) can be arbitrarily large since N will be summed over all integers. Following [13], we introduce graphic notations to describe these objects.

Given a set V, we write V2 for the set of all subsets of V with exactly two elements. A (generalized) graph is a triple Γ=(V,E,R). Here, V is the set of vertices, and E:V2N is the set of edges with multiplicities. More precisely, each edge {x,y}V2 has multiplicity E(x,y)=E(y,x). We do not allow self-loops, so E(x,x)=0 for all xV. Finally, R:V2R is a function that assigns a value to each pair of vertices.

Given a graph Γ=(V,E,R), we define the degree of a point xV and of Γ, respectively, by

deg(x):=yVE(x,y),deg(Γ):=xVdeg(x).

The value of Γ is defined by

|Γ|:=eV2R(e)E(e).

In what follows, we always take V={xj}j=1K fixed (so is the clusters in C), and R(xj,xj)=E(XjXj). We also fix the representative points u(u) chosen for each uC. Hence, the only variable in our graph is the multiplicity E of the edges. Recall the decomposition C=SU into singletons and clusters with at least two points. We introduce the following definition to characterize the pairings that appear in the expectation term on the right-hand side of (2.13).

Definition 2.5

For each kNS and NU, the set Ωk, consists of graphs with V and R specified above, and such that deg(xs)=m+ks for all sS, deg(xu(u))=u for all uU, and deg(x)=0 for all other xV.

Let Ω be the set of graphs Γ such that both of the following hold:

  1. ΓΩk, for some kNS and NU with the restriction that ks{0,1} for every sS and um+1 for each uU.

  2. If u1 for some uU, then there exists sS such that E(xs,xu(u))=u.

Remark 2.6

The first requirement for Ω above is equivalent to that deg(xs){m,m+1} for all sS, deg(xu(u))m+1 for all uU, and is 0 for all other points. The second requirement says that if xu(u) has a nonzero degree, then all its edges must be connected to a single point xs for some sS. We will see later that the definition of Ω corresponds to “minimal graphs” after the reduction procedure in the next subsection.

Remark 2.7

The clustering depends on the choice of L, and hence so do the definitions of Ωk, and Ω. On the other hand, these are just intermediate steps and our final bound (1.5) does not involve clustering at all. Furthermore, the choice of L later [in (2.18)] is also independent of the location of x. Hence, we omit the dependence of the clustering on L here for notational simplicity.

Reduction

We now start to control the right-hand side of (2.13). If m|S|+|k|+|| is odd, then the term with the expectation is 0. So we only need to deal with the case when m|S|+|k|+|| is even.

In that case, the number of different pairings contributing to the expectation in (2.13) is at most (m|S|+|k|+||-1)!!, so with Definition 2.5, we have

EsSXs(m+ks)uUXu(u)u(|k|+||+m|S|-1)!!·supΓΩk,|Γ|. 2.14

Comparing the above bound and the right-hand side of (2.13), we see that we need to control |Γ| for ΓΩk, with arbitrarily large k and . We first bound it by values of the graphs in Ω, which is done via a reduction procedure. After that, we enhance the graphs in Ω to match the right-hand side of (1.5) to conclude the proof.

We start with the reduction step. This is where we need to choose the clustering distance L sufficiently large, which will ensure the uniform in θ bound after summing over k and . We first give the following proposition, which reduces graphs in Ωk, to those in Ω.

Proposition 2.8

There exists C>0 depending on Λ only such that

maxΓΩk,|Γ|maxΓΩCL-α12(deg(Γ)-deg(Γ))·|Γ|

for every pair (k,) and every L>0. The constant C does not depend on the choice of L, though the clusters and the definitions of Ωk, and Ω do.

Proof

Fix kNS, NU, and ΓΩk, arbitrary. It suffices to show that if ΓΩ, then we can find a Γ¯Ωk¯,¯ with k¯k, ¯ and |k¯|+|¯|<|k|+|| strictly such that

|Γ|CL-α12(|k-k¯|+|-¯|)|Γ¯|. 2.15

One can then iterate this bound until the graph is reduced to some ΓΩ to conclude the proposition. This necessarily happens since each time the total degree of the graph decreases strictly. Here, the inequality on k and means the inequality in each component.

To see the existence of such a Γ¯ when ΓΩk,\Ω, we consider the two situations where either one of the two conditions for Ω in Definition 2.5 is violated. We first consider the violation of Condition 1. Since ΓΩk,, failure of Condition 1 means there exists jS{u(u):uU} such that deg(xj)m+2. We fix this j, and there are two possibilities in this situation.

Case 1. There exist ii such that E(xj,xi)1 and E(xj,xi)1. In this case, we let Γ¯ be the graph obtained from Γ by performing the following operations:

E(xj,xi)E(xj,xi)-1,E(xj,xi)E(xj,xi)-1,E(xi,xi)E(xi,xi)+1.

The only point whose degree has been changed in this operation is xj (reduced by 2). Hence, we have Γ¯Ωk¯,¯ with (k¯,¯)(k,) and |k-k¯|+|-¯|=2. To see the bound (2.15), we note that by definition of Ωk,, xj is at least Lε away from both xi and xi. Hence, by (2.2), we have

E(XjXi)·E(XjXi)2αΛ3(L+1)α·E(XiXi).

In graphic notation, this means

graphic file with name 40304_2018_162_Equ103_HTML.gif

where we have omitted x and simply write the indices to denote vertices. Since all the other parts of the graph remain unchanged, this operation gives a desired Γ¯ with (2.15).

Case 2.

If for the xj that violates Condition 1, all its edges are connected to another point xi, then we necessarily have deg(xi)m+2. Thus, we let Γ¯ be the graph obtained from Γ by reducing E(xj,xi) by two. Then, Γ¯Ωk¯,¯ with (k¯,¯)(k,) but this time |k-k¯|+|-¯|=4. Since |xj-xi|Lε, we also have the bound

|Γ|Λ2(L+1)2α|Γ¯|,

which is also of the form (2.15). This completes the treatment of the violation of Condition 1.

We now turn to the situation when Condition 2 is violated. This means there exists uU such that

  1. either xu(u) is connected to two other different points xi and xi;

  2. or xu(u) is connected to xu(u) for some uU.

For (a), we perform exactly the same operation as Case 1 in the above situation. This will give rise to a graph in Ωk¯,¯ with k¯=k, ¯u=u-2 and ¯u=u for all other uU, and satisfying (2.15). For (b), we simply reduce E(xu(u)xu(u)) by 1, which results a graph in Ωk¯,¯ with |k-k¯|+|-¯|=2 and the desired bound (2.15).

Since the above cases have covered all the possibilities for ΓΩk,\Ω, we have completed the proof of the proposition.

The following proposition is then a simple consequence.

Proposition 2.9

There exist C>0 and L>0 depending on Λ, K, m, and r only such that for every θR, every location x(Rd)K, and every ε(0,1), we have the bound

Ej=1KθrHmeiθXjCmaxΓΩ|Γ|. 2.16

Remark 2.10

The bound is completely independent of θ and ε, and its dependence on the location of x is via Ω only. Also note that the clustering, and hence Ω, depends on the choice of L.

Proof of Proposition 2.9

Note that graphs in Ωk, have degree |k|+||+m|S|, so by Proposition 2.8, there exists ΓΩ such that

maxΓΩk,|Γ|(CLα2)deg(Γ)·(CL-α)12(|k|+||+m|S|)·|Γ|

for all k and . Combining it with Proposition 2.4 and (2.14), we get

Ej=1KθrHmeiθXjCLα2·deg(Γ)·exp-θ22Λ+C0θ2Lα·maxΓΩ|Γ| 2.17

for some constant C0. One can choose L sufficiently large depending on C0 and Λ only such that

1Lα<14C0Λ. 2.18

This guarantees that the exponential term is uniformly bounded in θ. Since C0 depends on Λ, K, m, and r only, so does L. Finally, Lα2·deg(Γ) is also uniformly bounded since graphs in Ω have degrees at most (m+1)K. This completes the proof.

Remark 2.11

The reason why we need to choose L large is to ensure the exponential and hence the whole right-hand side of (2.17) being uniformly bounded in θ. As we see now, the Gaussian factor e-θ22Λ in (2.11) allows us to choose such L being independent of θ. Together with the enhancement procedure in Sect. 2.6, this ensures the bounds in Proposition 2.9 and hence in Theorem 1.1 are completely independent of θ.

Without the Gaussian factor, one would need to take L quadratic in θ to make the exponential in (2.17) bounded, and the enhancement procedure in below would produce a bound that is polynomial in θ with its degree depending on m and K.

Enhancement and Conclusion of the Proof

From now on, we fix the choice of L in (2.18). We need to control the right-hand side of (2.16) by that of (1.5). To achieve this, we enhance every ΓΩ to a graph Enh(Γ) where deg(xj){m,m+1} for every j[K], which matches the pairing occurring in the desired upper bound. The enhancement procedure will also be performed in such a way that |Enh(Γ)| is an upper bound for |Γ| up to some proportionality constant, which is uniform in ε, θ, and x subject to |S|1. This will lead to bound (1.5). The procedure is similar to the one used to obtain (2.6) when |S|=0.

Fix ΓΩ arbitrary, so in particular, ΓΩk, for some kNS and NU. By the definition of Ω, deg(xs){m,m+1} for all sS. For every uU, we have deg(xu)=um+1, and all of them are connected to one single xs for some sS if u1. All other points in u have degree 0. To construct Enh(Γ), we add new edges to vertices in uU and also move around existing edges, but keep deg(xs) unchanged for all sS throughout the procedure. We do this cluster by cluster and write u=u(u) for simplicity.

Fix uU arbitrary. To perform the enhancement operation for u, we let sS be such that xs is the unique singleton point connected to xu(u) if u1. This also includes u=0, in which case s could be arbitrary. We distinguish several situations depending on the number of points in u.

Case 1. |u|=2. Let ju(u) denote the other point in u. By definition of Ω, we have deg(xj)=0. We then perform the following operations. We move (u+1)/2 of the u edges between xs and xu to connecting xs and xj and add m-u edges between xu and xj. By clustering, we have |xu-xj|Lε and |xs-xj|2|xs-xu|. Hence, Proposition 2.1 gives the bounds

(EXsXu)uC(EXsXu)u2(EXsXj)u+12,1C(L+1)αE(XuXj)m-u2,

where L as chosen in (2.18) is independent of θ, ε, and x. So in graphic notation, the above operation gives

graphic file with name 40304_2018_162_Equ104_HTML.gif

where the gray area indicates the cluster u, and we have omitted drawing the remaining (m-u) or (m+1-u) edges from xs. We also drop |·| and simply use the graph itself to denote its value. Then, deg(xs)=m or m+1 is unchanged in the procedure. Furthermore, we have deg(xu)=m and deg(xj){m,m+1} after the operation. This also includes the situation u=0.

Case 2. |u|=3. Let ij denote the two other points in u. We then perform the operation

graphic file with name 40304_2018_162_Equ105_HTML.gif

We see deg(xs) is unchanged. One can also check that deg(xu(u))=m or m+1, and deg(xi)=deg(xj)=m. So we have the correct degrees of the vertices as well as the desired bound.

Case 3. |u|4. We denote the other |u|-1 points in the cluster by j1,,j|u|-1. For |u|-2 of them, say xj1,,xj|u|-2, we perform the same operation as in Sect. 2.1 by cyclically connecting them with edges of multiplicities m+12. This yields the bound

1CE(Xj1Xj2)E(Xj|u|-3Xj|u|-2)E(Xj|u|-2Xj1)m+12.

For the remaining points u and j|u|-1, we perform the same operation as in Case 1 above. This again raises the degrees of all points in u to m or m+1 with a desired bound.

Every cluster uU falls into one of the above three cases. The graph Enh(Γ) is obtained by performing the above operations to all uU. It is clear from the bounds in the above three situations that there exists C>0 such that

|Γ|C|Enh(Γ)|.

It is also straightforward to check that in Enh(Γ), we have deg(xj){m,m+1} for all j[K], and hence it represents one of the pairings from the expectation

Ej=1KXjm+Xj+1(m+1).

Hence, we deduce there exists C>0 such that

|Γ|C|Enh(Γ)|CEj=1KXjm+Xj+1(m+1) 2.19

for all θ, ε, and x, and this is true for all ΓΩ. Combining (2.19) and Proposition 2.9, we obtain the bound (1.5) in the case |S|1.

Since the bound when S= has already been established in (2.6), we have thus completed the proof of Theorem 1.1.

Convergence of the Fields—Proof of Theorem 1.4

We are now ready to prove Theorem 1.4. For notational simplicity, we write AαB to denote that ACB, where the constant C depends only on the parameter(s) in the subscripts of the symbol (and in this case α).

In order to apply the bound in Theorem 1.1, we use the convention for F^ such that

F(x)=RF^(θ)eiθxdθ.

But this only appears in intermediate steps, and the final statement does not depend on the definition of F^. For every φ:RdR, every xRd, and every λ>0, we let

φxλ(y)=λ-|s|φy1-x1λs1,,yd-xdλsd.

Recall that Ψε=ρεΨ, where ρε is the rescaled mollifier. Also recall the form of am in (1.7). We first give the convergence criterion.

Proposition 3.1

Let κ>0 and m<|s|α. If for every compact KRd and every nN, we have

supλ(ε,1)supxKsupφCmα21φCc(K):λmα2+κE|ε-mα2HmF(εα2Ψε)-amΨm,φxλ|2n12n0 3.1

as ε0, then ε-mα2Hm(F(εα2Ψε))amΨm in C-mα2-κ for every κ>κ.

The proof of the proposition is standard Kolmogorov’s criterion, and so it remains to prove (3.1). By stationarity, we can simply restrict to the case x=0 in (3.1). Writing ·2n:=(E|·|2n)12n as well as Φε=εα2Ψε, we need to show for all small κ that

λmα2+κε-mα2HmF(Φε)-amΨm,φλ2n0 3.2

as ε0, uniformly over λ(ε,1) and smooth φ supported in a ball of radius 1 such that φCmα21. The rest of the section is devoted to the proof of (3.2).

Since Ψ is stationary, so is Ψε=ρεΨ. Hence, Φε has stationary Gaussian distribution μεN(0,σε2) with

σε2=EΦε2=εαG(x-y)ρε(x)ρε(y)dxdy, 3.3

where G is the correlation function of Ψ as in Assumption 1.2. The coefficient of the m-th term in the chaos expansion of F(Φε) is given by

am(ε)=1m!F(m)με(0).

We split the difference ε-mα2HmF(Φε)-amΨm into three parts by

ε-mα2HmF(Φε)-amΨm=ε-mα2HmF(Φε)-am(ε)Ψεm+am(ε)Ψεm-Ψm+am(ε)-amΨm, 3.4

and we show that each of them satisfies a bound of the form of (3.2).

The latter two terms are simpler. For the second one, we notice that m<|s|α ensures Ψm is well defined, and for all sufficiently small κ, we have

Ψεm-Ψm,φλ2nnεκλ-mα2-κ

uniformly over λ(ε,1). Also, since am(ε) is uniformly bounded in ε, it then follows immediately that

λmα2+κΨεm-Ψm,φλ2n0

as ε0, uniformly over λ(ε,1) and φ in the range required in Proposition 3.1.

For the third term, it suffices to notice that assumption (1.6) on G guarantees that σε2σ2, where σε2 and σ2 are given by (3.3) and (1.8). Hence, we immediately have am(ε)am. The desired bound of the form (3.2) then follows immediately from the boundedness of Ψm in C-mα2-κ.

We now turn to the first term on the right-hand side of (3.4), which requires the use of the bound in Theorem 1.1. We first note that the covariance of Φε=εα2ρεΨ has the form

EΦε(x)Φε(y)=(ρε2G)(x-y),

where denotes the forward convolution in the sense that (fg)(x)=f(x+y)g(y)dy. Assumption 1.2 on G guarantees that Φε satisfies the assumption (1.4) in Theorem 1.1 with some Λ>1. Since Ψεm=ε-mα2Φεm, and am(ε) is precisely the m-th coefficient in the chaos expansion of F(Φε), we have

ε-mα2HmF(Φε)-am(ε)Ψεm=ε-mα2Hm+1F(Φε). 3.5

We leave aside the factor ε-mα2 and focus on Hm+1(F(Φε)) for a moment. Fourier expanding F and changing the order of integration, we get the identity

Hm+1F(Φε),φλ=F^,AΦεθ,

where

(AΦε)(θ)=(Aφ,λ,mΦε)(θ)=RdHm+1eiθΦε(x)φλ(x)dx, 3.6

and the subscript θ on the inner product indicates that the testing is taken with respect to the Fourier variable θR. We now omit the subscripts in A for simplicity. Recall that Ik=(k-1,k+1). Multiplying ÅΦε by a partition of unity subordinate to the intervals {Ik}kZ and separating these terms, we get the bound

|Hm+1F(Φε),φλ|CMkZF^M,Iksup0rMsupθIk|(AΦε)(r)(θ)|,

where MN is as in Assumption 1.3. Now, taking 2n-th moments on both sides and using triangle inequality, we get

Hm+1F(Φε),φλ2nCMkZF^M,IkEsup0rMsupθIk|(AΦε)(r)(θ)|2n12n. 3.7

There are two suprema inside the expectation. The first supremum is taken over M+1 elements, so we can move it out of (E|·|2n)12n at the cost of a constant multiple depending on M and n only. The second one is taken over an interval, so we need the following lemma to interchange it with the expectation.

Lemma 3.2

Suppose f is a random C1 function on an interval I. For every p1, there exists C depending on p and |I| only such that

EsupθI|f(θ)|pCp,|I|supθIE|f(θ)|p+|f(θ)|p.

Proof

Fix θ0I arbitrary. By fundamental theorem of calculus and Hölder’s inequality, we have

|f(θ)||f(θ0)|+|I|1-1pI|f(x)|pdx1p.

Raising both sides to p-th power, we get

supθ|f(θ)|pC|f(θ0)|p+I|f(θ)|pdθ,

where C depends on p and I. The assertion then follows by taking expectation on both sides and noting that

EI|f(θ)|pdθ=IE|f(θ)|pdθ|I|supθIE|f(θ)|p.

This completes the proof of the lemma.

Using Lemma 3.2 to interchange the expectation and supremum, we have

Esup0rMsupθIk|(AΦε)(r)(θ)|2nn,Msup0rM+1supθIkE|(AΦε)(r)(θ)|2n,

where the supremum over r is taken over rM+1 to include the one additional derivative required in the interchange. Plugging it back into the right-hand side of (3.7), we obtain

Hm+1F(Φε),φλ2nn,MkZF^M,Iksup0rM+1supθIkE|(AΦε)(r)(θ)|2n12n. 3.8

It then remains to control the quantity E|(AΦε)(r)(θ)|2n. Recalling the expression of AΦε in (3.6), we have

E|(AΦε)(r)(θ)|2n=(Rd)2nEj=12nθrHm+1eiθΦε(xj)·j=12nφλ(xj)dx,

where we used the shorthand notation x=(x1,,x2n). We now apply Theorem 1.1 to the expectation part above, so that we get

Ej=12nθrHm+1eiθΦε(xj)rEj=12nΦε(m+1)(xj)+Φε(m+2)(xj).

Plugging it into the integral on the right-hand side above and using the identity

Ej=12nΦε(m+1)(xj)+Φε(m+2)(xj)·j=12nφλ(xj)dx=E|Φε(m+1)+Φε(m+2),φλ|2n,

we get

E|(AΦε)(r)(θ)|2n12nr,n=12E|Φε(m+),φλ|2n12n. 3.9

In particular, the bound is uniform in both ε and θ. We have the following lemma controlling the right-hand side above.

Lemma 3.3

For every integer 1 and every sufficiently small κ, we have

E|Φε(m+),φλ|2n12nn,εmα2+κλ-mα2-κ

uniformly over ε,λ(0,1).

Proof

Since Φε is Gaussian, by equivalence of moments, the left-hand side above can be controlled by

E|Φε(m+),φλ|2n12nnE|Φε(m+),φλ|212,

so we only need to bound the second moment. By Wick’s formula, we have

E|Φε(m+),φλ|2=(m+)!EΦε(x)Φε(y)m+φλ(x)φλ(y)dxdy.

Since 1, we have

EΦε(x)Φε(y)m+Λm+εα(m+)(|x-y|+ε)α(m+)Λm+εmα+κ|x-y|mα+κ

for all κ(0,α). For all κ sufficiently small such that mα+κ<|s|, the singularity on the right-hand side above is integrable, so we have

E|Φε(m+),φλ|2εmα+κφλ(x)φλ(y)|x-y|mα+κdxdyεmα+κλ-mα-κ.

The proof is complete by taking square roots on both sides and replacing κ by 2κ.

Now, combining (3.8), (3.9) and Lemma 3.3, and using Assumption 1.3 on F, we get

Hm+1F(Φε),φλ2nn,Mεmα2+κλ-mα2-κkZF^M,Ikn,Mεmα2+κλ-mα2-κ.

Substituting the above bound back to (3.5), we deduce that

λmα2+κε-mα2HmF(Φε)-am(ε)Ψεm,φλ2nn,Mεκ,

which is the desired bound. The proof of Theorem 1.4 is thus complete.

Acknowledgements

The author acknowledges the support from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council through the fellowship EP/N021568/1. I also thank the anonymous referee for carefully reading the draft version of the article and providing helpful suggestions on improving the presentation.

Footnotes

1
A rigorous way of saying the correlation is G is that
EΨ,φΨ,ϕ=RdG(x-y)φ(x)ϕ(y)dxdy
for all φ,ϕCc(Rd).

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