No Arabic abstract
We consider large complex random sample covariance matrices obtained from spiked populations, that is when the true covariance matrix is diagonal with all but finitely many eigenvalues equal to one. We investigate the limiting behavior of the largest eigenvalues when the population and the sample sizes both become large. Under some conditions on moments of the sample distribution, we prove that the asymptotic fluctuations of the largest eigenvalues are the same as for a complex Gaussian sample with the same true covariance. The real setting is also considered.
We study the asymptotic distributions of the spiked eigenvalues and the largest nonspiked eigenvalue of the sample covariance matrix under a general covariance matrix model with divergent spiked eigenvalues, while the other eigenvalues are bounded but otherwise arbitrary. The limiting normal distribution for the spiked sample eigenvalues is established. It has distinct features that the asymptotic mean relies on not only the population spikes but also the nonspikes and that the asymptotic variance in general depends on the population eigenvectors. In addition, the limiting Tracy-Widom law for the largest nonspiked sample eigenvalue is obtained. Estimation of the number of spikes and the convergence of the leading eigenvectors are also considered. The results hold even when the number of the spikes diverges. As a key technical tool, we develop a Central Limit Theorem for a type of random quadratic forms where the random vectors and random matrices involved are dependent. This result can be of independent interest.
We consider general high-dimensional spiked sample covariance models and show that their leading sample spiked eigenvalues and their linear spectral statistics are asymptotically independent when the sample size and dimension are proportional to each other. As a byproduct, we also establish the central limit theorem of the leading sample spiked eigenvalues by removing the block diagonal assumption on the population covariance matrix, which is commonly needed in the literature. Moreover, we propose consistent estimators of the $L_4$ norm of the spiked population eigenvectors. Based on these results, we develop a new statistic to test the equality of two spiked population covariance matrices. Numerical studies show that the new test procedure is more powerful than some existing methods.
We generally study the density of eigenvalues in unitary ensembles of random matrices from the recurrence coefficients with regularly varying conditions for the orthogonal polynomials. First we calculate directly the moments of the density. Then, by studying some deformation of the moments, we get a family of differential equations of first order which the densities satisfy (see Theorem 1.2), and give the densities by solving them. Further, we prove that the density is invariant after the polynomial perturbation of the weight function (see Theorem 1.5).
We study point process convergence for sequences of iid random walks. The objective is to derive asymptotic theory for the extremes of these random walks. We show convergence of the maximum random walk to the Gumbel distribution under the existence of a $(2+delta)$th moment. We make heavily use of precise large deviation results for sums of iid random variables. As a consequence, we derive the joint convergence of the off-diagonal entries in sample covariance and correlation matrices of a high-dimensional sample whose dimension increases with the sample size. This generalizes known results on the asymptotic Gumbel property of the largest entry.
This is an elementary review, aimed at non-specialists, of results that have been obtained for the limiting distribution of eigenvalues and for the operator norms of real symmetric random matrices via the method of moments. This method goes back to a remarkable argument of Eugen Wigner some sixty years ago which works best for independent matrix entries, as far as symmetry permits, that are all centered and have the same variance. We then discuss variations of this classical result for ensembles for which the variance may depend on the distance of the matrix entry to the diagonal, including in particular the case of band random matrices, and/or for which the required independence of the matrix entries is replaced by some weaker condition. This includes results on ensembles with entries from Curie-Weiss random variables or from sequences of exchangeable random variables that have been obtained quite recently.