English

Approximation of stable law in Wasserstein-1 distance by Stein's method

Probability 2018-11-20 v4

Abstract

Let nNn \in \mathbb N, let ζn,1,...,ζn,n\zeta_{n,1},...,\zeta_{n,n} be a sequence of independent random variables with Eζn,i=0\mathbb E \zeta_{n,i}=0 and Eζn,i<\mathbb E |\zeta_{n,i}|<\infty for each ii, and let μ\mu be an α\alpha-stable distribution having characteristic function eλαe^{-|\lambda|^{\alpha}} with α(1,2)\alpha\in (1,2). Denote Sn=ζn,1+...+ζn,nS_{n}=\zeta_{n,1}+...+\zeta_{n,n} and its distribution by L(Sn)\mathcal L(S_n), we bound the Wasserstein distance of L(Sn)\mathcal L(S_{n}) and μ\mu essentially by an L1L^{1} discrepancy between two kernels, this bound can be interpreted as a generalization of the Stein discrepancy (in L2L^{2} sense) introduced by Ledoux, Nourdin and Peccati. More precisely, we prove the following inequality: \begin{equation} \begin{split} d_W\left(\mathcal L (S_n), \mu\right) \ \le C \left[\sum_{i=1}^n\int_{-N}^N \left|\frac{\mathcal K_\alpha(t,N)}n -\frac{ K_i(t,N)}{\alpha}\right| d t \ +\ \mathcal R_{N,n}\right], \end{split} \end{equation} where dWd_{W} is the Wasserstein distance of probability measures, Kα(t,N)\mathcal K_\alpha(t,N) is the kernel of a decomposition of the fractional Laplacian Δα2\Delta^{\frac \alpha2}, Ki(t,N) K_i(t,N) is a kernel introduced by Chen, Goldstein and Shao with a truncation which can be interpreted as an L1L^1 Stein kernel, and RN,n\mathcal R_{N,n} is a small remainder. The integral term i=1nNNKα(t,N)nKi(t,N)αdt\sum_{i=1}^n\int_{-N}^N \left|\frac{\mathcal K_\alpha(t,N)}n -\frac{ K_i(t,N)}{\alpha}\right| d t can be interpreted as an L1L^{1} Stein discrepancy. As an application, we prove a general theorem of stable law convergence rate when ζn,i\zeta_{n,i} are i.i.d. and the distribution falls in the normal domain of attraction of μ\mu. We also study four examples with comparing our convergence rates and those known for these examples, among which the distribution in the second example is not in the normal domain of attraction of μ\mu.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1709.00805,
  title  = {Approximation of stable law in Wasserstein-1 distance by Stein's method},
  author = {Lihu Xu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1709.00805},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

We corrected some small typos. Accepted by Annals of Applied Probability