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Gaussian mixture identifiability from degree 6 moments

Alexander Taveira Blomenhofer

Vol. 16 (2025), No. 1, 1–28
DOI: 10.2140/astat.2025.16.1
Abstract

We resolve most cases of identifiability from sixth-order moments for Gaussian mixtures on spaces of large dimensions. Our results imply that for a mixture of m Gaussians on an n-dimensional space, the means and covariances can be uniquely recovered from the mixture moments of degree 6, as long as m is bounded by some function in Ω(n4). The constant hidden in the 𝒪-notation is optimal and equals the one in the upper bound from counting parameters. We give an argument that degree-4 moments never suffice in any nontrivial case, and we conduct some numerical experiments indicating that degree 5 is minimal for identifiability.

Keywords
secant varieties, Gaussian mixtures, Waring decomposition
Mathematical Subject Classification
Primary: 14N07
Secondary: 15A69, 62H12
Milestones
Received: 29 September 2023
Revised: 27 September 2024
Accepted: 30 September 2024
Published: 10 December 2024
Authors
Alexander Taveira Blomenhofer
Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica
Amsterdam
Netherlands
QMATH
University of Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Denmark