Stein-Malliavin Approximations for Nonlinear Functionals of Random Eigenfunctions on ${\mathbb{S}}^{d}$

Abstract: We investigate Stein-Malliavin approximations for nonlinear functionals of geometric interest of Gaussian random eigenfunctions on the unit $d$ -dimensional sphere ${\mathbb{S}}^{d},$ $d\geq 2.$ All our results are established in the high energy limit, i.e. for eigenfunctions corresponding to growing eigenvalues. More precisely, we provide an asymptotic analysis for the variance of random eigenfunctions, and also establish rates of convergence for various probability metrics for Hermite subordinated processes, arbitrary polynomials of finite order and square integral nonlinear transforms; the latter, for instance, allows to prove a quantitative Central Limit Theorem for the excursion area. Some related issues were already considered in the literature for the $2$-dimensional case ${\mathbb{S}}^{2}$; our results are new or improve the existing bounds even for this special case. Proofs are based on the asymptotic analysis of moments of all order for Gegenbauer polynomials, and make extensive use of the recent literature on so-called fourth-moment theorems by Nourdin and Peccati.