Point-Process Principal Components Analysis via Geometric Optimization

There has been a fast-growing demand for analysis tools for multivariate point-process data driven by work in neural coding and, more recently, high-frequency finance. Here we develop a true or exact (as opposed to one based on time binning) principal components analysis for preliminary processing of multivariate point processes. We provide a maximum likelihood estimator, an algorithm for maximization involving steepest ascent on two Stiefel manifolds, and novel constrained asymptotic analysis. The method is illustrated with a simulation and compared with a binning approach.