Extreme singular values of inhomogeneous sparse random rectangular matrices
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We develop a unified approach to bounding the largest and smallest singular values of an inhomogeneous random rectangular matrix, based on the non-backtracking operator and the Ihara-Bass formula for general Hermitian matrices with a bipartite block structure. Our main results are probabilistic upper (respectively, lower) bounds for the largest (respectively, smallest) singular values of a large rectangular random matrix X. These bounds are given in terms of the maximal and minimal ℓ_2-norms of the rows and columns of the variance profile of X. The proofs involve finding probabilistic upper bounds on the spectral radius of an associated non-backtracking matrix B. The two-sided bounds can be applied to the centered adjacency matrix of sparse inhomogeneous Erdős-Rényi bipartite graphs for a wide range of sparsity. In particular, for Erdős-Rényi bipartite graphs 𝒢(n,m,p) with p=ω(log n)/n, and m/n→ y ∈ (0,1), our sharp bounds imply that there are no outliers outside the support of the Marčenko-Pastur law almost surely. This result extends the Bai-Yin theorem to sparse rectangular random matrices.
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