In the course of a physics problem (arXiv:1206.6687), I stumbled on a curious correspondence between the eigenvalue distributions of the matrix product $U\bar{U}$, with $U$ a random unitary matrix and $\bar{U}$ its complex conjugate, on the one hand, and the random orthogonal matrix $O$ with determinant $-1$, on the other hand. The random matrices $U$ and $O$ are uniformly distributed with respect to the Haar measure on the unitary group $U(N)$ and the orthogonal group $O(N+1)$.
One eigenvalue of $O$ is fixed at $-1$ (to ensure that det $O=-1$). The other $N$ eigenvalues have a distribution $p_O$ which was known since Girko (1985). We calculated the distribution $p_{U\bar{U}}$ of the eigenvalues of $U\bar{U}$ (which we did not find in the literature --- has anyone seen it before?). We discovered to our surprise that $p_{U\bar{U}}=p_O$. This holds for both $N$ even and odd (in the latter case both $U\bar{U}$ and $O$ have an eigenvalue fixed at $+1$).
Question: Is there a more direct route to arrive at this identity between the two eigenvalue distributions, without going through a separate calculation of each one? (You can find two such separate calculations in the Appendix of arXiv:1206.6687, but this seems a rather unsatisfactory way of understanding the correspondence.)
Some intuition for what is going on: for both $U\bar{U}$ and $O$ the eigenvalues different from $\pm 1$ come in complex conjugate pairs $e^{\pm i\theta}$. The matrix $O$ has an unpaired eigenvalue at $-1$, which repels $\theta$ from $\pi$. The matrix $U\bar{U}$ cannot have an unpaired eigenvalue at $-1$ by construction and somehow this leads to a repulsion of $\theta$ from $\pi$ which is mathematically equivalent to what happens for the matrix $O$.
For example, when $N=2$ the eigenvalue $e^{i\theta}$ has the same distribution
$P(\theta)=(2\pi)^{-1}(1+\cos\theta)$ for both $U\bar{U}$ and $O$. For $N=3$ the distribution is $P(\theta)=\pi^{-1}(1-\cos^2\theta)$, in addition to an eigenvalue fixed at $+1$, again the same for $U\bar{U}$ and $O$. The correspondence continues for larger $N$, when factors $(\cos\theta_k-\cos\theta_l)^2$ appear in both distributions.
This post imported from StackExchange MathOverflow at 2014-10-21 10:54 (UTC), posted by SE-user Carlo Beenakker