CHARACTERISTIC POLYNOMIALS OF SAMPLE COVARIANCE MATRICES:

Abstract. We consider the sample covariance matrices of large data matrices which have i.i.d. complex matrix entries and which are non-square in the sense that the difference between the number of rows and the number of columns tends to infinity. We show that the second-order correlation function of the charac-teristic polynomial of the sample covariance matrix is asymptotically given by the sine kernel in the bulk of the spectrum and by the Airy kernel at the edge of the spectrum. Similar results are given for real sample covariance matrices. 1