English

The cokernel of a polynomial push-forward of a random integral matrix with concentrated residue

Number Theory 2025-04-30 v3 Commutative Algebra Probability

Abstract

We prove new statistical results about the distribution of the cokernel of a random integral matrix with a concentrated residue. Given a prime pp and a positive integer nn, consider a random n×nn \times n matrix XnX_n over the ring Zp\mathbb{Z}_p of pp-adic integers whose entries are independent. Previously, Wood showed that regardless of the distribution of XnX_n, as long as each entry of XnX_n is not too concentrated on a single residue modulo pp, the distribution of the cokernel cok(Xn)\mathrm{cok}(X_n) of XnX_n, up to isomorphism, weakly converges to the Cohen--Lenstra distribution, as nn \rightarrow \infty. In this paper, we consider the case when XnX_n has a concentrated residue AnA_n so that Xn=An+pBnX_n = A_n + pB_n, where BnB_n is a random n×nn \times n matrix over Zp\mathbb{Z}_p. We show that for every fixed nn and a non-constant monic polynomial P(t)Zp[t]P(t) \in \mathbb{Z}_p[t], we can explicitly compute the distribution of cok(P(Xn))\mathrm{cok}(P(X_n)) when BnB_n is a Haar-random matrix. Using this, we also show that for specific choices of AnA_n a much wider class of random matrices BnB_n gives the same distribution of cok(P(Xn))\mathrm{cok}(P(X_n)). For the Haar-random BnB_n, we deduce our result from an interesting equidistribution result for matrices over Zp[t]/(P(t))\mathbb{Z}_p[t]/(P(t)), which we prove by establishing a version of the Weierstrass preparation theorem for the noncommutative ring Mn(Zp)\mathrm{M}_n(\mathbb{Z}_p) of n×nn \times n matrices over Zp\mathbb{Z}_p.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2310.09491,
  title  = {The cokernel of a polynomial push-forward of a random integral matrix with concentrated residue},
  author = {Gilyoung Cheong and Yifeng Huang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2310.09491},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

25 pages; comments are welcome! Edit: some typos in our main theorems are fixed