On permutations of lacunary series

Christoph Aistleitner, Istvan Berkes, Robert Tichy

Published 2013-11-20, updated 2014-01-10Version 2

It is a well known fact that for periodic measurable $f$ and rapidly increasing $(n_k)_{k \geq 1}$ the sequence $(f(n_kx))_{k\ge 1}$ behaves like a sequence of independent, identically distributed random variables. For example, if $f$ is a periodic Lipschitz function, then $(f(2^kx))_{k\ge 1}$ satisfies the central limit theorem, the law of the iterated logarithm and several further limit theorems for i.i.d.\ random variables. Since an i.i.d.\ sequence remains i.i.d.\ after any permutation of its terms, it is natural to expect that the asymptotic properties of lacunary series are also permutation-invariant. Recently, however, Fukuyama (2009) showed that a rearrangement of the sequence $(f(2^kx))_{k\ge 1}$ can change substantially its asymptotic behavior, a very surprising result. The purpose of the present paper is to investigate this interesting phenomenon in detail and to give necessary and sufficient criteria for the permutation-invariance of the CLT and LIL for $f(n_kx)$.