Quantcast
  • Register
PhysicsOverflow is a next-generation academic platform for physicists and astronomers, including a community peer review system and a postgraduate-level discussion forum analogous to MathOverflow.

Welcome to PhysicsOverflow! PhysicsOverflow is an open platform for community peer review and graduate-level Physics discussion.

Please help promote PhysicsOverflow ads elsewhere if you like it.

News

PO is now at the Physics Department of Bielefeld University!

New printer friendly PO pages!

Migration to Bielefeld University was successful!

Please vote for this year's PhysicsOverflow ads!

Please do help out in categorising submissions. Submit a paper to PhysicsOverflow!

... see more

Tools for paper authors

Submit paper
Claim Paper Authorship

Tools for SE users

Search User
Reclaim SE Account
Request Account Merger
Nativise imported posts
Claim post (deleted users)
Import SE post

Users whose questions have been imported from Physics Stack Exchange, Theoretical Physics Stack Exchange, or any other Stack Exchange site are kindly requested to reclaim their account and not to register as a new user.

Public \(\beta\) tools

Report a bug with a feature
Request a new functionality
404 page design
Send feedback

Attributions

(propose a free ad)

Site Statistics

206 submissions , 164 unreviewed
5,103 questions , 2,249 unanswered
5,355 answers , 22,798 comments
1,470 users with positive rep
820 active unimported users
More ...

  random matrix ensembles from BMN model

+ 3 like - 0 dislike
552 views

My friends working on Thermalization of Black Holes explained solutions to their matrix-valued differential equations (from numerical implementation of the Berenstein-Maldacena-Nastase matrix model) result in chaotic solutions. They are literally getting random matrices. For the eigenvalue spectrum, would expect a semicircle distribution but for finite N get something slightly different.


The proof of the Wigner Semicircle Law comes from studying the GUE Kernel \[ K_N(\mu, \nu)=e^{-\frac{1}{2}(\mu^2+\nu^2)} \cdot \frac{1}{\sqrt{\pi}} \sum_{j=0}^{N-1}\frac{H_j(\lambda)H_j(\mu)}{2^j j!} \] The eigenvalue density comes from setting $\mu = \nu$. The Wigner semicircle identity is a Hermite polynomial identity \[ \rho(\lambda)=e^{-\mu^2} \cdot \frac{1}{\sqrt{\pi}} \sum_{j=0}^{N-1}\frac{H_j(\lambda)^2}{2^j j!} \approx \left\{\begin{array}{cc} \frac{\sqrt{2N}}{\pi} \sqrt{1 - \lambda^2/2N} & \text{if }|\lambda|< 2\sqrt{N} \\ 0 & \text{if }|\lambda| > 2 \sqrt{N} \end{array} \right. \] The asymptotics come from calculus identities like Christoffel-Darboux formula.
For finite size matrices the eigenvalue distribution is a semicircle yet.

Plotting the eigenvalues of a random $4 \times 4$ matrix, the deviations from semicircle law are noticeable with 100,000 trials and 0.05 bin size. GUE is in brown, GUE|trace=0 is in orange.

Axes not scaled, sorry!

Mathematica Code:

num[] := RandomReal[NormalDistribution[0, 1]]
herm[N_] := (h = 
   Table[(num[] + I num[])/Sqrt[2], {i, 1, N}, {j, 1, N}]; (h + 
     Conjugate[Transpose[h]])/2)

n = 4;
trials = 100000;

eigen = {};
Do[eigen = 
   Join[(mat = herm[n]; mat = mat - Tr[mat] IdentityMatrix[n]/n ; 
     Re[Eigenvalues[mat]]), eigen], {k, 1, trials}];
Histogram[eigen, {-5, 5, 0.05}]
BinCounts[eigen, {-5, 5, 0.05}];
a = ListPlot[%, Joined -> True, PlotStyle -> Orange]

eigen = {};
Do[eigen = 
   Join[(mat = herm[n]; mat = mat; Re[Eigenvalues[mat]]), eigen], {k, 
   1, trials}];
Histogram[eigen, {-5, 5, 0.05}]
BinCounts[eigen, {-5, 5, 0.05}];
b = ListPlot[%, Joined -> True, PlotStyle -> Brown]

Show[a, b]


My friend asks if traceless GUE ensemble $H - \frac{1}{N} \mathrm{tr}(H)$ can be analyzed. The charts suggest we should still get a semicircle in the large $N$ limit. For finite $N$, the oscillations (relative to semicircle) are very large. Maybe has something to do with the related harmonic oscillator eigenstates.
The trace is the average eigenvalue & The eigenvalues are being "recentered". We could imagine 4 perfectly centered fermions - they will repel each other. Joint distribution is: \[ e^{-\lambda_1^2 -\lambda_2^2 - \lambda_3^2 - \lambda_4^2} \prod_{1 \leq i,j \leq 4} |\lambda_i - \lambda_j|^2 \] On average, the fermions will sit where the humps are. Their locations should be more pronounced now that their "center of mass" is fixed. This post has been migrated from (A51.SE)
asked Jan 29, 2012 in Theoretical Physics by john mangual (310 points) [ no revision ]
retagged Apr 19, 2014 by dimension10
Interesting. Of course in the large dimension limit one expects no difference. However I am quite surprised to see such a big differences for N=4. Sorry I have no answer for the time being, but I will follow this post.

This post has been migrated from (A51.SE)

Your answer

Please use answers only to (at least partly) answer questions. To comment, discuss, or ask for clarification, leave a comment instead.
To mask links under text, please type your text, highlight it, and click the "link" button. You can then enter your link URL.
Please consult the FAQ for as to how to format your post.
This is the answer box; if you want to write a comment instead, please use the 'add comment' button.
Live preview (may slow down editor)   Preview
Your name to display (optional):
Privacy: Your email address will only be used for sending these notifications.
Anti-spam verification:
If you are a human please identify the position of the character covered by the symbol $\varnothing$ in the following word:
p$\hbar$ys$\varnothing$csOverflow
Then drag the red bullet below over the corresponding character of our banner. When you drop it there, the bullet changes to green (on slow internet connections after a few seconds).
Please complete the anti-spam verification




user contributions licensed under cc by-sa 3.0 with attribution required

Your rights
...