Dyson's constants in the asymptotics of the determinants of Wiener-Hopf-Hankel operators with the sine kernel

Abstract

In this paper we are going to prove two asymptotic formulas for determinants det(I-K_s), as s goes to infinity, where K_s are the Wiener-Hopf-Hankel operators acting on L^2[0,s] with the kernels K(x-y)+K(x+y) and K(x-y)-K(x+y), respectively, and K(t):=sin(t)/(π*t). These formulas were conjectured by Dyson. The identification of the constant term in the asymptotics was an open problem for a long time.

proof of Thm. 3.2 corrected; introduction extended