Pair correlations of Halton and Niederreiter Sequences are not Poissonian

Mon Hefte Math. 2021;194(4):789-809. doi: 10.1007/s00605-021-01531-x. Epub 2021 Feb 13.

Abstract

Niederreiter and Halton sequences are two prominent classes of higher-dimensional sequences which are widely used in practice for numerical integration methods because of their excellent distribution qualities. In this paper we show that these sequences-even though they are uniformly distributed-fail to satisfy the stronger property of Poissonian pair correlations. This extends already established results for one-dimensional sequences and confirms a conjecture of Larcher and Stockinger who hypothesized that the Halton sequences are not Poissonian. The proofs rely on a general tool which identifies a specific regularity of a sequence to be sufficient for not having Poissonian pair correlations.

Keywords: Halton sequences; Low-discrepancy sequences; Niederreiter sequences; Poissonian pair correlations.