CLT

5 Gaussian measures

Definition 5.1
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A measure on \(\mathbb {R}\) is Gaussian if it is equal to \(\mathcal{N}(m, \sigma ^2)\) for some \(m \in \mathbb {R}\) and \(\sigma ^2 \ge 0\), in which \(\mathcal{N}(m, \sigma ^2)\) is the measure absolutely continuous with respect to the Lebesgue measure with density \(x \mapsto \frac{1}{\sqrt{2 \pi \sigma ^2}}e^{- \frac{1}{2\sigma ^2}(x - m)^2}\) if \(\sigma ^2{\gt}0\) and the Dirac probability measure at \(m\) if \(\sigma ^2 = 0\).

Lemma 5.2

A real Gaussian measure is a probability measure.

Proof
Lemma 5.3

The Gaussian distribution \(\mathcal N(m, \sigma ^2)\) has characteristic function \(\phi (t) = e^{itm - \sigma ^2 t^2 /2}\).

Proof

The sum of two independent real Gaussian random variables is Gaussian.

Proof
Definition 5.5
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A Borel measure \(\mu \) on a separable Banach space \(E\) is said to be Gaussian if for all continuous linear maps \(\ell : E \to \mathbb {R}\), the pushforward \(\ell _*\mu \) is a real Gaussian measure.

Lemma 5.6

A Gaussian measure is a probability measure.

Proof
Lemma 5.7

The real Gaussian measures are Gaussian measures in the sense of Definition 5.5.

Proof
Lemma 5.8

The sum of two independent Gaussian random variables is Gaussian.

Proof
Lemma 5.9

Let \(E\) be a finite dimensional real inner product space and let \(b_1, \ldots , b_d\) be an orthonormal basis of \(E\). Let \(X_1, \ldots , X_d\) be independent standard Gaussian random variables on \(\mathbb {R}\). Then the law of \(X_1 b_1 + \ldots + X_d b_d\) is a Gaussian measure on \(E\).

Proof