English

Local law and Tracy-Widom limit for sparse sample covariance matrices

Probability 2018-08-06 v2

Abstract

We consider spectral properties of sparse sample covariance matrices, which includes biadjacency matrices of the bipartite Erd\H{o}s-R\'enyi graph model. We prove a local law for the eigenvalue density up to the upper spectral edge. Under a suitable condition on the sparsity, we also prove that the limiting distribution of the rescaled, shifted extremal eigenvalues is given by the GOE Tracy-Widom law with an explicit formula on the deterministic shift of the spectral edge. For the biadjacency matrix of an Erd\H{o}s-R\'enyi graph with two vertex sets of comparable sizes MM and NN, this establishes Tracy-Widom fluctuations of the second largest eigenvalue when the connection probability pp is much larger than N2/3N^{-2/3} with a deterministic shift of order (Np)1(Np)^{-1}.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1806.03186,
  title  = {Local law and Tracy-Widom limit for sparse sample covariance matrices},
  author = {Jong Yun Hwang and Ji Oon Lee and Kevin Schnelli},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1806.03186},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

20 pages, corrected typos, removed appendix to the supplementary material

R2 v1 2026-06-23T02:23:44.065Z