Functional Gaussian Fields on Hyperspheres with their Equivalent Gaussian Measures
Abstract
We develop a general framework for isotropic functional Gaussian fields on the -dimensional sphere , where the field takes values in a separable Hilbert space . We establish an operator-valued extension of Schoenberg's theorem and show that the covariance structure of such fields admits a representation through a sequence of trace-class -Schoenberg operators, yielding an explicit spectral decomposition of the covariance operator on . We derive a functional version of the Feldman-H'ajek criterion and prove that equivalence of the Gaussian measures induced by two Hilbert-valued spherical fields is determined by a Hilbert summability condition involving Schoenberg functional sequences, extending classical results for scalar and vector fields to the infinite-dimensional setting. We further show how equivalence of all scalar projections is contained within, and dominated by, the functional criterion. The theory is illustrated through two models: (i) a multiquadratic bivariate family on , where the equivalence region has a closed-form description in terms of cross-correlation and geodesic decay parameters, and (ii) an infinite-dimensional Legendre-Mat'ern construction, where operator-valued spectra yield identifiability conditions on smoothness and scale. These examples show how operator-valued Schoenberg coefficients govern both geometry and measure-theoretic behavior of functional spherical fields. Overall, the results provide a unified spectral framework for Gaussian measures on , bridging harmonic analysis, operator theory, and stochastic geometry on manifolds, and offering tools for functional data analysis, spatial statistics, and kernel methods on spherical domains.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2511.23008,
title = {Functional Gaussian Fields on Hyperspheres with their Equivalent Gaussian Measures},
author = {Alessia Caponera and Vinicius Ferreira and Emilio Porcu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.23008},
year = {2025}
}