Edge Universality for Deformed Wigner Matrices

Ji Oon Lee, Kevin Schnelli, Horng-Tzer Yau

Published 2014-07-30, updated 2014-11-01Version 2

We consider $N\times N$ random matrices of the form $H = W + V$ where $W$ is a real symmetric Wigner matrix and $V$ a random or deterministic, real, diagonal matrix whose entries are independent of $W$. We assume subexponential decay for the matrix entries of $W$ and we choose $V$ so that the eigenvalues of $W$ and $V$ are typically of the same order. For a large class of diagonal matrices $V$ we show that the rescaled distribution of the extremal eigenvalues is given by the Tracy-Widom distribution $F_1$ in the limit of large $N$. Our proofs also apply to the complex Hermitian setting, i.e., when $W$ is a complex Hermitian Wigner matrix.