Uniform asymptotics and entropy structure of the Bingham distribution in arbitrary dimensions

Abstract

The Bingham distribution is widely used to model directional data with antipodal symmetry, and its normalizing constant $Z$ and moments play a central role in statistical inference and closure models. Their behavior becomes singular when one or more eigenvalue gaps of the parameter matrix become unbounded. In this work, we develop a uniform asymptotic framework for the Bingham distribution in arbitrary dimensions. Starting from an inverse-Laplace integral representation, we derive asymptotic expansions with explicit remainder estimates that are uniform with respect to arbitrary relative scales among multiple diverging eigenvalues. In a particular regime, the asymptotic series becomes absolutely convergent with an exponentially small remainder. These results yield precise asymptotic profiles of the Bingham moments and characterize the degeneration of higher-dimensional distributions to lower-dimensional counterparts. As an application to the Bingham closure, we prove that the entropy admits a decomposition into an explicit logarithmic leading term and a residual that is uniformly Lipschitz continuous on the moment simplex. Moreover, on each boundary face, the residual agrees with its lower-dimensional version up to an explicit additive constant. The results provide a unified description of the singular structure of the Bingham distribution and have implications for numerical closure and $Q$-tensor models of nematic liquid crystals.