Fluctuations for linear eigenvalue statistics of sample covariance matrices

Abstract

We prove a central limit theorem for the difference of linear eigenvalue statistics of a sample covariance matrix $\widetilde{W}$ and its minor $W$. We find that the fluctuation of this difference is much smaller than those of the individual linear statistics, as a consequence of the strong correlation between the eigenvalues of $\widetilde{W}$ and $W$. Our result identifies the fluctuation of the spatial derivative of the approximate Gaussian field in the recent paper by Dumitru and Paquette. Unlike in a similar result for Wigner matrices, for sample covariance matrices the fluctuation may entirely vanish.