No smooth Phase Transition for the Nodal Length of Band-limited Spherical Random Fields

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the variance of the nodal length for band-limited spherical random waves. When the frequency window includes a number of eigenfunctions that grows linearly, the variance of the nodal length is linear with respect to the frequency, while it is logarithmic when a single eigenfunction is considered. Then, it is natural to conjecture that there exists a smooth transition with respect to the number of eigenfunctions in the frequency window; however, we show here that the asymptotic variance is logarithmic whenever this number grows sublinearly, so that the window "shrinks". The result is achieved by exploiting the Christoffel-Darboux formula to establish the covariance function of the field and its first and second derivatives. This allows us to compute the two-point correlation function at high frequency and then to derive the asymptotic behaviour of the variance.