A simple proof of local universality for roots of Kac polynomials
Probability
2026-04-23 v2 Complex Variables
Abstract
Let be a random polynomial of degree with i.i.d. mean-zero and finite variance random coefficients. It is well known that the roots of cluster uniformly around the unit circle as grows large. We give a simple and self-contained proof of local universality for the correlation functions of the roots at the microscopic scale around a fixed point on the circle. While previous proofs of local universality were focused on studying the logarithmic potential of , we instead directly compare the scaled random polynomial to a limiting Gaussian analytic function, and establish convergence of correlations via a soft argument, using only basic complex analysis and an anti-concentration bound of Esseen.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2511.21455,
title = {A simple proof of local universality for roots of Kac polynomials},
author = {Marcus Michelen and Oren Yakir},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.21455},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
10 pages