Concentration inequalities for Poisson $U$-statistics

Abstract: In this article we obtain concentration inequalities for Poisson $U$-statistics $F_m(f,\eta)$ of order $m\ge 1$ with kernels $f$ under general assumptions on $f$ and the intensity measure $\gamma \Lambda$ of underlying Poisson point process $\eta$. The main result are new concentration bounds of the form [ \mathbb{P}(|F_m ( f , \eta) -\mathbb{E} F_m ( f , \eta)| \ge t)\leq 2\exp(-I(\gamma,t)), ] where $I(\gamma,t)$ is of optimal order in $t$, namely it satisfies $I(\gamma,t)=\Theta(t^{1\over m}\log t)$ as $t\to\infty$ and $\gamma$ is fixed. The function $I(\gamma,t)$ is given explicitly in terms of parameters of the assumptions satisfied by $f$ and $\Lambda$. One of the key ingredients of the proof is bounding the centred moments of $F_m(f,\eta)$. We discuss the optimality of obtained concentration bounds and consider a number of applications related to Gilbert graphs and Poisson hyperplane processes in constant curvature spaces.