Geneva mathematical physics seminar

Mondays at 4.15pm in room 1.15.

Upcoming seminar:

Monday 15th of April: Raphael Ducatez (Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1)

Full large deviation principles for the largest eigenvalue of sub-Gaussian Wigner matrices


Abstract: We establish precise estimates for the probability of rare events of the largest eigenvalue of Wigner matrices with sub-Gaussian entries. In contrast to the case of Wigner matrices with heavier tails, where deviations are governed by the appearance of a few large entries, and the sharp sub-Gaussian case that is governed by the collective deviation of entries in a delocalized rank-one pattern, we show that in the general sub-Gaussian case that deviations can be caused by a mixture of localized and delocalized changes in the entries. Our key result is a finite-N approximation for the probability of rare events by an optimization problem involving restricted annealed free energies for a spherical spin glass model. This allows us to derive full large deviation principles for the largest eigenvalue in several cases, including when the law of the matrix entries is compactly supported and symmetric, as well as the case of randomly sparsified GOE matrices. 

Joint work with A. Guionnet and N. Cook.

Contact:

 trishen.gunaratnam@unige.ch / romain.panis@unige.ch / alexis.prevost@unige.ch