We consider the discrete Gaussian Free Field in a square box in ( Z ^2 ) of side length N with zero boundary conditions and study the joint law of its properly-centered extreme values (h) and their scaled spatial positions (x) in the limit as ( N ). Restricting attention to extreme local maxima, i.e., the extreme points that are maximal in an r N -neighborhood thereof, we prove that the associated process tends, whenever ( r_N ) and ( r_N N 0 ), to a Poisson point process with intensity measure ( Z ( dx) e ^ - h d h ), where ( := 2 g ) with g: = 2 π and where Z(dx) is a random Borel measure on [0, 1]2. In particular, this yields an integral representation of the law of the absolute maximum, similar to that found in the context of Branching Brownian Motion. We give evidence that the random measure Z is a version of the derivative martingale associated with the continuum Gaussian Free Field.
@cite_4: We consider in this paper the collection of near maxima of the discrete, two dimensional Gaussian free field in a box with Dirichlet boundary conditions. We provide a rough description of the geometry of the set of near maxima, estimates on the gap between the two largest maxima, and an estimate for the right tail up to a multiplicative constant on the law of the centered maximum.
The existing work has not been limited to the maximum @math only. Indeed, Ding and Zeitouni @cite_4 have also studied the structure of the level sets close to the maximal value (or @math above) where @math . In particular, they derived exponential estimates (in @math ) on the size of @math and controlled distances between the points of @math . We restate these results nearly verbatim: