Normalized inner product of two Gaussian vectors vs. Gaussian random variable (in high dimensions)

probability theory

Let $X$ and $Y$ be two independent Gaussian vectors of dimension $n$ (i.e. the entries are i.i.d. standard normal random variables). I wonder if the normalized inner product
$\frac{1}{\sqrt{n}}\langle X,Y \rangle$ converges to a standard normal random variable (in distribution) as $n$ goes to infinity. If the factor should be something other than $1/ \sqrt n$, please correct me.

The inspiration comes from the fact that if $u$ is a deterministic vector in $\mathbb R^n$, then

$$\langle X,u \rangle \sim N(0,\|u\|^2_2)$$

and the fact that the norm of Y is close to $\sqrt{n}$ in subgaussian norms (Vershynin's High Dimensional Probability Thm 3.1.1.)

Best Answer

Yes. Let $X_n\sim N_n(0,I)$ and $Y_n\sim N_n(0,I)$. Since $X_n^TY_n=\sum_{i=1}^nX_{n,i}Y_{n,i}$ and by independence $E[X_{n,i}Y_{n,i}]=0$ and $E[(X_{n,i}Y_{n,i})^2]=1$ for each $i$, applying directly the Central Limit Theorem yields $$ \dfrac{1}{\sqrt{n}}\langle X_n,Y_n\rangle = \dfrac{X_n^TY_n-n\cdot E[X_{n,i}Y_{n,i}]}{\sqrt{n}\sqrt{Var(X_{n,i}Y_{n,i})}}\overset{d}{\longrightarrow}N(0,1),\quad n\to\infty. $$

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