Exact variable selection in sparse nonparametric models

We study the problem of adaptive variable selection in a Gaussian white noise model of intensity $\varepsilon$ under certain sparsity and regularity conditions on an unknown regression function $f$. The $d$-variate regression function $f$ is assumed to be a sum of functions each depending on a smaller number $k$ of variables ($1 \leq k \leq d$). These functions are unknown to us and only few of them are non-zero. We assume that $d=d_\varepsilon \to \infty$ as $\varepsilon \to 0$ and consider the cases when $k$ is fixed and when $k=k_\varepsilon \to \infty$ and $k=o(d)$ as $\varepsilon \to 0$. In this work, we introduce an adaptive selection procedure that, under some model assumptions, identifies exactly all non-zero $k$-variate components of $f$. In addition, we establish conditions under which exact identification of the non-zero components is impossible. These conditions ensure that the proposed selection procedure is the best possible in the asymptotically minimax sense with respect to the Hamming risk.