 Log-stretch fluctuations in an isotropic renovating shear

The logarithm of the stretch after $N$ independent uniform renovations is a sum of independent identically distributed bounded increments. For singular stretching $e^{\gamma }$, $\gamma =\mathrm{arsinh}(|a|/2)$, the increment has Fourier expansion $r+{\sum }_{n\ge 1}(-1{)}^{n+1}{q}^n\cos (2n\theta )/n$, with $q=\tanh \gamma$ and $r=\frac{1}{2}\log (1+a^2/4)$. Orthogonality proves the displayed variance. The central limit theorem gives an approximate central log-normal distribution of ${\lambda }_N$, not an exact description of extreme tails. For $|a|\ll 1$, both the mean and variance of $\log {\lambda }_N$ are $N{a}^2/8$ to leading order. Direct expansion of fixed-power moments gives $⟨{\lambda }_N^p⟩=\exp [Np(p+2)a^2/16+O(N{a}^4)]$; in particular mean stretch grows faster than typical stretch.