Poisson limits and nonparametric estimation for pairwise interaction point processes

Abstract

The distribution of the interpoint distance process of a sequence of pairwise interaction point processes is considered. It is shown that, if the interaction function is piecewise-continuous, then the sequence of interpoint distance processes converges weakly to an inhomogeneous Poisson process under certain sparseness conditions. Convergence of the expectation of the interpoint distance process to the mean of the limiting Poisson process is also established. This suggests a new nonparametric estimator for the interaction function if independent identically distributed samples of the point process are available.