Concentration for Poisson functionals: component counts in random geometric graphs

Abstract: Upper bounds for the probabilities $\mathbb{P}(F\geq \mathbb{E} F + r)$ and $\mathbb{P}(F\leq \mathbb{E} F - r)$ are proved, where $F$ is a certain component count associated with a random geometric graph built over a Poisson point process on $\mathbb{R}^d$. The bounds for the upper tail decay exponentially, and the lower tail estimates even have a Gaussian decay. For the proof of the concentration inequalities, recently developed methods based on logarithmic Sobolev inequalities are used and enhanced. A particular advantage of this approach is that the resulting inequalities even apply in settings where the underlying Poisson process has infinite intensity measure.