Gaussian approximations for random vectors

TL;DR

This paper refines the understanding of how sequences of random vectors in Euclidean space converge to Gaussian distributions, providing bounds on convergence speed and analyzing tail deviations, with applications to various stochastic models.

Contribution

It introduces new conditions for convergence speed bounds and precise deviation analysis in multidimensional settings, extending previous one-dimensional results with novel phenomena.

Findings

Bounds on the speed of convergence to Gaussian distributions.

Quantification of symmetry breaking in tail deviations.

Application to random walks, random matrices, and graph patterns.

Abstract

We present several refinements on the fluctuations of sequences of random vectors (with values in the Euclidean space $\mathbb{R}^d$) which converge after normalization to a multidimensional Gaussian distribution. More precisely we refine such results in two directions: first we give conditions under which one can obtain bounds on the speed of convergence to the multidimensional Gaussian distribution, and then we provide a setting in which one can obtain precise moderate or large deviations (in particular we see at which scale the Gaussian approximation for the tails ceases to hold and how the symmetry of the Gaussian tails is then broken). These results extend some of our earlier works obtained for real valued random variables, but they are not simple extensions, as some new phenomena are observed that could not be visible in one dimension. Even for very simple objects such as the symmetric random walk in $\mathbb{Z}^d$, we observe a loss of symmetry that we can quantify for walks conditioned to be far away from the origin. Also, unlike the one dimensional case where the Kolmogorov distance is natural, in the multidimensional case there is no more such a canonical distance. We choose to work with the so-called convex distance, and as a consequence, the geometry of the Borel measurable sets that we consider shall play an important role (also making the proofs more complicated). We illustrate our results with some examples such as correlated random walks, the characteristic polynomials of random unitary matrices, or pattern countings in random graphs.