Bulk universality for generalized Wigner matrices

Abstract

Consider $N\times N$ Hermitian or symmetric random matrices $H$ where the distribution of the $(i,j)$ matrix element is given by a probability measure $ν_{ij}$ with a subexponential decay. Let $σ_{ij}^2$ be the variance for the probability measure $ν_{ij}$ with the normalization property that $\sum_{i} σ^2_{ij} = 1$ for all $j$. Under essentially the only condition that $c\le N σ_{ij}^2 \le c^{-1}$ for some constant $c>0$, we prove that, in the limit $N \to \infty$, the eigenvalue spacing statistics of $H$ in the bulk of the spectrum coincide with those of the Gaussian unitary or orthogonal ensemble (GUE or GOE). We also show that for band matrices with bandwidth $M$ the local semicircle law holds to the energy scale $M^{-1}$.

Appendix B is simplified; an extra Assumption IV was added to Thm 6.2. On Sep 17, 2011 a small error in the conditions of Lemma 7.8 was fixed and the proof of Lemma 7.5 in pages 38-39 adjusted