Cartan meets Cramér-Rao (2511.15612v1)

Abstract: This paper develops a jet bundle and Cartan geometric foundation for the curvature-aware refinements of the Cramér-Rao bound (CRB) introduced in our earlier work. We show that the extrinsic corrections to variance bounds, previously derived from the second fundamental form of the square root embedding $s_θ=\sqrt{f(\cdot;θ)}\in L^2(μ)$ for model density $f(\cdot;θ)$ with scalar parameter $θ$, admit an intrinsic formulation within the Cartan prolongation framework. Starting from the canonical contact forms and total derivative on the finite jet bundle $J^m(\mathbb{R}\times \mathbb{R})$, we construct the Cartan distribution and the associated Ehresmann connection, whose non-integrability and torsion encode the geometric source of curvature corrections in statistical estimation. In the statistical jet bundle $E=\mathbb{R}\times L^2(μ)$, we point out that the condition for an estimator error to lie in the span of derivatives of $s_θ$ up to order $m$ is equivalent to the square root map satisfying a linear differential equation of order~$m$. The corresponding submanifold of $J^m(E)$ defined by this equation represents the locus of $m$-th order efficient models, and the prolonged section must form an integral curve of the restricted Cartan vector field. This establishes a one-to-one correspondence between algebraic projection conditions underlying CRB and Bhattacharyya-type bounds and geometric integrability conditions for the statistical section in the jet bundle hierarchy. The resulting framework links variance bounds, curvature, and estimator efficiency through the geometry of Cartan distributions, offering a new differential equation and connection-theoretic interpretation of higher-order information inequalities.