$L^2$ Asymptotics for High-Dimensional Data

Abstract: We develop an asymptotic theory for $L^2$ norms of sample mean vectors of high-dimensional data. An invariance principle for the $L^2$ norms is derived under conditions that involve a delicate interplay between the dimension $p$, the sample size $n$ and the moment condition. Under proper normalization, central and non-central limit theorems are obtained. To facilitate the related statistical inference, we propose a plug-in calibration method and a re-sampling procedure to approximate the distributions of the $L^2$ norms. Our results are applied to multiple tests and inference of covariance matrix structures.