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Functional Gaussian Fields on Hyperspheres with their Equivalent Gaussian Measures

Statistics Theory 2025-12-01 v1 Statistics Theory

Abstract

We develop a general framework for isotropic functional Gaussian fields on the dd-dimensional sphere Sd\mathbb{S}^{d}, where the field takes values in a separable Hilbert space H\mathcal{H}. 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 dd-Schoenberg operators, yielding an explicit spectral decomposition of the covariance operator on L2(Sd;H)L^{2}(\mathbb{S}^{d};\mathcal{H}). 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 Sd\mathbb{S}^{d}, 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 L2(Sd;H)L^{2}(\mathbb{S}^{d};\mathcal{H}), 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}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T07:59:03.036Z