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Smallest Gaps between Eigenvalues of Wigner Matrices without Smoothness Assumptions

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Abstract

We determine the asymptotic distribution of the smallest gaps between eigenvalues in the bulk of the spectrum of real symmetric Wigner matrices, including Bernoulli matrices. After multiplication by N3/2N^{3/2}, the gaps and their locations converge to a Poisson point process with the same intensity as for the Gaussian orthogonal ensemble. Since changing a single entry can move eigenvalues by an amount comparable to the smallest gaps, standard perturbative comparison estimates do not directly resolve this scale for arbitrary entry distributions. Instead, we use that resampling a few random entries does not change the law of the matrix, and we show that the resampling moves each pair of nearby eigenvalues by a random walk that satisfies a local limit theorem; this requires excluding arithmetic structure in the eigenvectors. We also prove a law of large numbers for the number of gaps at all scales between N−3/2N^{-3/2} and N−1N^{-1}, and we sketch the proof of the analogous smallest-gap result for complex Hermitian Wigner matrices.

Author’s note

With the exception of this note, the entire document is machine-written. I have carefully supervised its preparation to ensure that the proofs are readable and that previous literature is appropriately cited. I welcome suggestions concerning mathematical corrections, omitted citations, and attribution of ideas.

The author was partially supported by NSF grant DMS-2450004.

Introduction

Background

The statistics of spacings between consecutive energy levels have been studied since Wigner proposed to model the spectra of heavy nuclei by the eigenvalues of large random matrices [78, 80, 81]. A basic feature of such spectra is the rarity of very close neighboring levels, which is known as level repulsion. The origin of level repulsion goes back to an observation of von Neumann and Wigner [76]. Real symmetric matrices with a repeated eigenvalue form a set of codimension two, and complex Hermitian matrices with a repeated eigenvalue form a set of codimension three. Heuristically, the probability that a given spacing of a random matrix is smaller than ss therefore behaves like sβ+1s^{\beta+1}, where β=1\beta=1 in the real symmetric case and β=2\beta=2 in the complex Hermitian case, and the density of spacings vanishes like sβs^\beta near zero [36, 37]. The same exponent appears in Wigner’s surmise for the spacing distribution [80] and in the factor ∏i<j∣λi−λj∣β\prod_{i<j}|\lambda_i-\lambda_j|^\beta in the eigenvalue densities of Dyson’s ensembles [20, 21, 56].

The real symmetric case corresponds to systems with time-reversal symmetry. For such systems, Bohigas, Giannoni, and Schmit conjectured that quantum spectra whose classical dynamics is chaotic share the local statistics of the Gaussian orthogonal ensemble (GOE) [8], in contrast with the Poisson statistics, without repulsion, expected for integrable systems [6]. This picture is supported by experimental data (see, for example, [38, 66] for nuclear spectra and microwave billiards).

This paper concerns the smallest spacings in a spectrum of NN levels. If the spacings were independent, with a density proportional to sβs^\beta near zero, then the smallest spacing would be of order N−1/(β+1)N^{-1/(\beta+1)} times the mean spacing, and the smallest spacings, suitably rescaled, would form a Poisson process with an intensity proportional to sβ dss^\beta\,\mathrm{d}s. This heuristic is described in [35, 63], and numerical simulations agree with it [49, 63]. (We emphasize that this Poisson process describes the rare small spacings. Its intensity vanishes at zero because of level repulsion, and it should not be confused with the Poisson level statistics of integrable systems.) Smallest gaps also appear in numerical linear algebra. For example, the rate at which the Toda flow, which is closely related to the QR algorithm, diagonalizes a symmetric matrix is governed by its smallest eigenvalue gap [3, 17, 18], and numerical experiments suggest that the resulting running times are universal for Wigner matrices, including matrices with discrete entries [59].

We call real symmetric or complex Hermitian random matrices with independent entries on and above the diagonal Wigner matrices. The class considered in this paper is specified in Definition 1.1 below. In mathematics, the local eigenvalue statistics of Wigner matrices are now known to be universal, in the sense that under mild conditions on the entry distributions they agree asymptotically with those of the Gaussian ensembles. This was established through the work of many authors. We mention [25, 26, 27, 28, 41, 70] for the averaged bulk statistics, [22, 69] for the distribution of a single gap, and [12, 46, 47] for statistics at a fixed energy, and we refer to the book [23] for an account of the dynamical approach. Matrices with discrete entries are natural in this context. Wigner’s first paper on the semicircle law concerns real symmetric matrices whose off-diagonal entries are ±1\pm1 with random signs [79], and the centered and rescaled adjacency matrix of a dense Erdős–Rényi graph has independent Bernoulli entries above the diagonal.

Universality of a single gap does not determine the smallest gap among NN gaps, since the latter depends on rare events. For the classical ensembles, the smallest gaps have been computed from explicit formulas for the correlation functions. When these functions are determinants, as for the circular unitary ensemble (CUE) and the Gaussian unitary ensemble (GUE), Vinson found the limiting law of the smallest gap [75]. Building on Soshnikov’s analysis of extreme spacings in determinantal point processes [65], Ben Arous and Bourgade [3] obtained the joint limit of the smallest gaps of the CUE and the GUE together with their locations, and Figalli and Guionnet [34] carried these results over to several-matrix models. Determinantal structure is also behind the results of Shi and Jiang [62] for complex Ginibre matrices and those of Charlier [14] for the two-dimensional Coulomb gas at β=2\beta= 2 with a general potential, which describes the eigenvalues of random normal matrices.

For the Gaussian orthogonal ensemble (GOE), the correlation functions are Pfaffians, and the smallest gaps were determined by Feng, Tian, and Wei [32]. Feng, Li, and Yao [33] gave a detailed treatment of the Gaussian symplectic ensemble, together with a sketch of a GOE version that also records the locations of the gaps, and the smallest gaps of real Gaussian matrices were studied in [52]. Feng and Wei [30] treated the circular β\beta-ensembles for every positive integer β\beta. For the largest gaps of the CUE and the GUE, Ben Arous and Bourgade [3] determined the leading order, and Feng and Wei [31] determined the fluctuations.

For Wigner matrices, Bourgade [10] proved universality of the smallest gaps for both real symmetric and complex Hermitian generalized Wigner matrices under smoothness assumptions on the entry distributions. Bourgade also proved universality of the largest gaps in the complex Hermitian case under a smoothness assumption. Landon, Lopatto, and Marcinek [48] proved a comparison theorem that removes this smoothness assumption. In both works, the explicit largest-gap limit laws were stated for complex Hermitian matrices because the corresponding limiting distribution for the GOE was not known at the time; their comparison arguments also apply to real symmetric matrices. Whether the smallest gaps are universal without smoothness assumptions was raised in [10]. Recently, Zhang [82] proved universality of the smallest gaps for complex Hermitian Wigner matrices whose entries have real and imaginary parts with sufficiently many well-separated atoms (at least ten suffice), through a comparison argument that matches many moments of the entries. In [82 Conjecture 1.6], he conjectured the analogous result for real symmetric matrices, noting that it does not seem accessible by his methods, and he further conjectured that two atoms suffice.

For real symmetric matrices with discrete entries, the strongest results available were lower bounds. Nguyen, Tao, and Vu [57] proved tail bounds for gaps that imply, in the normalization of this paper, that the smallest gap is at least N−2−o(1)N^{-2-o(1)} with probability tending to one, and related bounds were obtained in [13, 51, 64]. The absence of repeated eigenvalues was proved in [13, 53, 71]. These lower bounds are smaller than the true order N−3/2N^{-3/2} of the smallest gaps by a factor N1/2N^{1/2}.

Main results

We now state our results. We begin with the definition of the matrices we consider.

Definition 1.1. Let XX and ZZ be real random variables such that EX=EZ=0\mathbb{E}X=\mathbb{E}Z=0, EX2=1\mathbb{E}X^2=1, and EZ2>0\mathbb{E}Z^2>0, and such that there exist constants c0,C0>0c_0,C_0>0 with

P(∣X∣>y)+P(∣Z∣>y)≤C0e−c0y2for all y≥0.(1)\mathbb{P}(|X|>y)+\mathbb{P}(|Z|>y)\le C_0e^{-c_0y^2}\qquad\text{for all }y\ge0. \tag*{(1)}

For every integer N≥2N\ge2, let (Xab)1≤a<b≤N(X_{ab})_{1\le a<b\le N} be independent copies of XX, and let (Za)1≤a≤N(Z_a)_{1\le a\le N} be independent copies of ZZ, independent of the XabX_{ab}. We call the N×NN\times N real symmetric matrix H=HNH=H_N with entries

Hab=Hba=N−1/2Xab(1≤a<b≤N),Haa=N−1/2Za(1≤a≤N),(2)H_{ab}=H_{ba}=N^{-1/2}X_{ab}\quad(1\le a<b\le N),\qquad H_{aa}=N^{-1/2}Z_a\quad(1\le a\le N), \tag*{(2)}

the real symmetric Wigner matrix associated with XX and $Z.

No assumption on the symmetry, smoothness, or support of the laws of XX and ZZ is made beyond (1.1). In particular, XX may take only two values, and EX3\mathbb{E}X^3 may be nonzero; for example, XX may be a centered and normalized Bernoulli variable with any parameter. The law of ZZ may equal that of XX, in which case all entries on and above the diagonal are identically distributed.

For a matrix HH as in Definition 1.1, let λ1≤⋯≤λN\lambda_1\le\cdots\le\lambda_N denote its eigenvalues. For every positive integer nn, we set [n]={1,…,n}[n]=\{1,\ldots,n\}. For i∈[N−1]i\in[N-1], we let gi=λi+1−λig_i=\lambda_{i+1}-\lambda_i denote the ii-th gap. We let

ρsc(E)=12πmax⁡{4−E2,0},c(E)=π26ρsc(E)3(E∈R)(3)\rho_{\mathrm{sc}}(E)=\frac{1}{2\pi}\sqrt{\max\{4-E^2,0\}},\qquad c(E)=\frac{\pi^2}{6}\rho_{\mathrm{sc}}(E)^3\qquad(E\in\mathbb{R}) \tag*{(3)}

denote the semicircle density and the function that determines the intensity in our main result. We identify a locally finite point configuration on [0,∞)×(−2,2)[0,\infty) \times(-2,2) with its counting measure. We equip the set of such measures with the vague topology, which we define as the coarsest topology for which the maps μ↦∫f dμ\mu\mapsto\int f\,\mathrm{d}\mu are continuous for all continuous functions ff with compact support in [0,∞)×(−2,2)[0,\infty) \times(-2,2). We use the convention that the minimum over the empty set is +∞+\infty. Our main result is the following theorem.

Theorem 1.2. Let HH be as in Definition 1.1. Then the point processes

ΞN=∑i∈[N−1]:λi∈(−2,2)δ(N3/2gi,λi)(4)\Xi_N = \sum_{i\in[N-1]:\lambda_i\in(-2,2)} \delta_{(N^{3/2}g_i,\lambda_i)} \tag*{(4)}

on [0,∞)×(−2,2)[0,\infty) \times(-2,2) converge in distribution, with respect to the vague topology, to a Poisson point process with intensity

ν(dx dE)=c(E)x dx dE.(5)\nu(\mathrm{d}x\,\mathrm{d}E) = c(E)x\,\mathrm{d}x\,\mathrm{d}E. \tag*{(5)}

Consequently, for every nonempty interval II whose closure is contained in (−2,2)(-2,2) and every x≥0x \ge0,

lim⁡N→∞P(N3/2min⁡i∈[N−1]:λi∈Igi>x)=exp⁡(−π2x212∫Iρsc(E)3 dE).(6)\lim_{N\to\infty} \mathbb{P}\left(N^{3/2}\min_{i\in[N-1]:\lambda_i\in I} g_i > x\right) = \exp\left(-\frac{\pi^2x^2}{12}\int_I \rho_{\mathrm{sc}}(E)^3\,\mathrm{d}E\right). \tag*{(6)}

Theorem 1.2 identifies the smallest gaps in the bulk of the spectrum for every matrix as in Definition 1.1, including Bernoulli matrices. It settles [82 Conjecture 1.6], together with the stronger version with two atoms, for the matrices of Definition 1.1. The conjecture concerns real generalized Wigner matrices whose entries have tails at most c−1e−xcc^{-1}e^{-xc} and laws supported on sufficiently many well-separated atoms (two atoms in the stronger version), whereas Theorem 1.2 requires sub-Gaussian entries, EZ2>0\mathbb{E}Z^2 > 0, and identically distributed entries above the diagonal. The limit agrees with the one obtained for the GOE in [32, 33] and with the one obtained under smoothness assumptions in [10]. For every interval II of positive length whose closure is contained in (−2,2)(-2,2), the Poisson limit determines the joint limiting law of the kk smallest gaps in II for every kk. We assign +∞+\infty to the kk-th smallest gap when fewer than kk gaps have left endpoints in II. For example, as in [10 Corollary 1.3], which gives the limiting law of the kk-th smallest gap, the kk-th smallest value of N3/2(2−1∫Ic(E) dE)1/2giN^{3/2}(2^{-1}\int_I c(E)\,\mathrm{d}E)^{1/2}g_i over ii with λi∈I\lambda_i \in I converges in law to the distribution with density 2x2k−1e−x2/(k−1)!2x^{2k-1}e^{-x^2}/(k-1)! on (0,∞)(0,\infty).

We have not attempted to optimize the assumptions. The sub-Gaussian condition (1.1) is used in several places, for instance through the results of [57]. The condition EZ2>0\mathbb{E}Z^2 > 0 is used through results on generalized Wigner matrices [10, 29], which assume that all entry variances are bounded below by a multiple of N−1N^{-1}; in particular, Theorem 1.2 does not apply directly to centered adjacency matrices of random graphs, whose diagonal vanishes. We assume that the entries above the diagonal are identically distributed because the resampling argument of this paper and the results of [57] use this property.

Our second result is a law of large numbers for the number of gaps at scales between the smallest gaps and the typical spacing. It is the main input to the proof of Theorem 1.2 and may be of independent interest. We let Ei=(λi+λi+1)/2E_i=(\lambda_i+\lambda_{i+1})/2 denote the midpoint of the ii-th gap. We extend every function on (−2,2)(-2,2) by zero to a function on R\mathbb{R}, and every function on [0,∞)×(−2,2)[0,\infty)\times(-2,2) by zero to a function on [0,∞)×R[0,\infty)\times\mathbb{R}.

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