Three central limit theorems for the unbounded excursion component of a Gaussian field

Abstract

For a smooth, stationary Gaussian field $f$ on Euclidean space with fast correlation decay, there is a critical level ${\ell }_c$ such that the excursion set $\{f\ge \ell \}$ contains a (unique) unbounded component if and only if $\ell <{\ell }_c$. We prove central limit theorems for the volume, surface area and Euler characteristic of this unbounded component restricted to a growing box. For planar fields, the results hold at all supercritical levels (i.e. all $\ell <{\ell }_c$). In higher dimensions the results hold at all sufficiently low levels (all $\ell <-{\ell }_c<{\ell }_c$) but could be extended to all supercritical levels by proving the decay of truncated connection probabilities. Our proof is based on the martingale central limit theorem.