Variance asymptotics and central limit theory for geometric functionals of Poisson cylinder processes

Abstract

This paper deals with the union set of a stationary Poisson process of cylinders in R n having an (n − m)-dimensional base and an m-dimensional direction space, where m ∈ {0, 1, . . . , n − 1} and n ≥ 2. The concept simultaneously generalises those of a Boolean model and a Poisson hyperplane or m-flat process. Under very general conditions on the typical cylinder base a Berry-Esseen bound for the volume of the union set within a sequence of growing test sets is derived. Assuming convexity of the cylinder bases and of the window a similar result is shown for a broad class of geometric functionals, including the intrinsic volumes. In this context the asymptotic variance constant is analysed in detail, which in contrast to the Boolean model leads to a new degeneracy phenomenon. A quantitative central limit theory is developed in a multivariate set-up as well.