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Let ${G}$ be a Lie group with Lie algebra ${{\mathfrak g}}$. As is well known, the exponential map ${\exp: {\mathfrak g} \rightarrow G}$ is a local homeomorphism near the identity. As such, the group law on ${G}$ can be locally pulled back to an operation ${*: U \times U \rightarrow {\mathfrak g}}$ defined on a neighbourhood ${U}$ of the identity in ${G}$, defined as

$\displaystyle x * y := \log( \exp(x) \exp(y) )$

where ${\log}$ is the local inverse of the exponential map. One can view ${*}$ as the group law expressed in local exponential coordinates around the origin.

An asymptotic expansion for ${x*y}$ is provided by the Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff (BCH) formula

$\displaystyle x*y = x+y+ \frac{1}{2} [x,y] + \frac{1}{12}[x,[x,y]] - \frac{1}{12}[y,[x,y]] + \ldots$

for all sufficiently small ${x,y}$, where ${[,]: {\mathfrak g} \times {\mathfrak g} \rightarrow {\mathfrak g}}$ is the Lie bracket. More explicitly, one has the Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff-Dynkin formula

$\displaystyle x * y = x + \int_0^1 F( \hbox{Ad}_x \hbox{Ad}_{ty} ) y\ dt \ \ \ \ \ (1)$

for all sufficiently small ${x,y}$, where ${\hbox{Ad}_x = \exp( \hbox{ad}_x )}$, ${\hbox{ad}_x: {\bf R}^d \rightarrow {\bf R}^d}$ is the adjoint representation ${\hbox{ad}_x(y) := [x,y]}$, and ${F}$ is the function

$\displaystyle F( t ) := \frac{t \log t}{t-1}$

which is real analytic near ${t=1}$ and can thus be applied to linear operators sufficiently close to the identity. One corollary of this is that the multiplication operation ${*}$ is real analytic in local coordinates, and so every smooth Lie group is in fact a real analytic Lie group.

It turns out that one does not need the full force of the smoothness hypothesis to obtain these conclusions. It is, for instance, a classical result that ${C^2}$ regularity of the group operations is already enough to obtain the Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff formula. Actually, it turns out that we can weaken this a bit, and show that even ${C^{1,1}}$ regularity (i.e. that the group operations are continuously differentiable, and the derivatives are locally Lipschitz) is enough to make the classical derivation of the Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff formula work. More precisely, we have

Theorem 1 (${C^{1,1}}$ Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff formula) Let ${{\bf R}^d}$ be a finite-dimensional vector space, and suppose one has a continuous operation ${*: U \times U \rightarrow {\bf R}^d}$ defined on a neighbourhood ${U}$ around the origin, which obeys the following three axioms:

• (Approximate additivity) For ${x,y}$ sufficiently close to the origin, one has

$\displaystyle x*y = x+y+O(|x| |y|). \ \ \ \ \ (2)$

(In particular, ${0*x=x*0=x}$ for ${x}$ sufficiently close to the origin.)

• (Associativity) For ${x,y,z}$ sufficiently close to the origin, ${(x*y)*z = x*(y*z)}$.
• (Radial homogeneity) For ${x}$ sufficiently close to the origin, one has

$\displaystyle (sx) * (tx) = (s+t)x \ \ \ \ \ (3)$

for all ${s,t \in [-1,1]}$. (In particular, ${x * (-x) = (-x) * x = 0}$ for all ${x}$ sufficiently close to the origin.)

Then ${*}$ is real analytic (and in particular, smooth) near the origin. (In particular, ${*}$ gives a neighbourhood of the origin the structure of a local Lie group.)

Indeed, we will recover the Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff-Dynkin formula (after defining ${\hbox{Ad}_x}$ appropriately) in this setting; see below the fold.

The reason that we call this a ${C^{1,1}}$ Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff formula is that if the group operation ${*}$ has ${C^{1,1}}$ regularity, and has ${0}$ as an identity element, then Taylor expansion already gives (2), and in exponential coordinates (which, as it turns out, can be defined without much difficulty in the ${C^{1,1}}$ category) one automatically has (3).

We will record the proof of Theorem 1 below the fold; it largely follows the classical derivation of the BCH formula, but due to the low regularity one will rely on tools such as telescoping series and Riemann sums rather than on the fundamental theorem of calculus. As an application of this theorem, we can give an alternate derivation of one of the components of the solution to Hilbert’s fifth problem, namely the construction of a Lie group structure from a Gleason metric, which was covered in the previous post; we discuss this at the end of this article. With this approach, one can avoid any appeal to von Neumann’s theorem and Cartan’s theorem (discussed in this post), or the Kuranishi-Gleason extension theorem (discussed in this post).

Recall that a (complex) abstract Lie algebra is a complex vector space ${{\mathfrak g}}$ (either finite or infinite dimensional) equipped with a bilinear antisymmetric form ${[]: {\mathfrak g} \times {\mathfrak g} \rightarrow {\mathfrak g}}$ that obeys the Jacobi identity

$\displaystyle [[X,Y],Z] + [[Y,Z],X] + [[Z,X],Y] = 0. \ \ \ \ \ (1)$

(One can of course define Lie algebras over other fields than the complex numbers ${{\bf C}}$, but in order to avoid some technical issues we shall work solely with the complex case in this post.)

An important special case of the abstract Lie algebras are the concrete Lie algebras, in which ${{\mathfrak g} \subset \hbox{End}(V)}$ is a vector space of linear transformations ${X: V \rightarrow V}$ on a vector space ${V}$ (which again can be either finite or infinite dimensional), and the bilinear form is given by the usual Lie bracket

$\displaystyle [X,Y] := XY-YX.$

It is easy to verify that every concrete Lie algebra is an abstract Lie algebra. In the converse direction, we have

Theorem 1 Every abstract Lie algebra is isomorphic to a concrete Lie algebra.

To prove this theorem, we introduce the useful algebraic tool of the universal enveloping algebra ${U({\mathfrak g})}$ of the abstract Lie algebra ${{\mathfrak g}}$. This is the free (associative, complex) algebra generated by ${{\mathfrak g}}$ (viewed as a complex vector space), subject to the constraints

$\displaystyle [X,Y] = XY - YX. \ \ \ \ \ (2)$

This algebra is described by the Poincaré-Birkhoff-Witt theorem, which asserts that given an ordered basis ${(X_i)_{i \in I}}$ of ${{\mathfrak g}}$ as a vector space, that a basis of ${U({\mathfrak g})}$ is given by “monomials” of the form

$\displaystyle X_{i_1}^{a_1} \ldots X_{i_m}^{a_m} \ \ \ \ \ (3)$

where ${m}$ is a natural number, the ${i_1 < \ldots < i_m}$ are an increasing sequence of indices in ${I}$, and the ${a_1,\ldots,a_m}$ are positive integers. Indeed, given two such monomials, one can express their product as a finite linear combination of further monomials of the form (3) after repeatedly applying (2) (which we rewrite as ${XY = YX + [X,Y]}$) to reorder the terms in this product modulo lower order terms until one all monomials have their indices in the required increasing order. It is then a routine exercise in basic abstract algebra (using all the axioms of an abstract Lie algebra) to verify that this is multiplication rule on monomials does indeed define a complex associative algebra which has the universal properties required of the universal enveloping algebra.

The abstract Lie algebra ${{\mathfrak g}}$ acts on its universal enveloping algebra ${U({\mathfrak g})}$ by left-multiplication: ${X: M \mapsto XM}$, thus giving a map from ${{\mathfrak g}}$ to ${\hbox{End}(U({\mathfrak g}))}$. It is easy to verify that this map is a Lie algebra homomorphism (so this is indeed an action (or representation) of the Lie algebra), and this action is clearly faithful (i.e. the map from ${{\mathfrak g}}$ to ${\hbox{End}(U{\mathfrak g})}$ is injective), since each element ${X}$ of ${{\mathfrak g}}$ maps the identity element ${1}$ of ${U({\mathfrak g})}$ to a different element of ${U({\mathfrak g})}$, namely ${X}$. Thus ${{\mathfrak g}}$ is isomorphic to its image in ${\hbox{End}(U({\mathfrak g}))}$, proving Theorem 1.

In the converse direction, every representation ${\rho: {\mathfrak g} \rightarrow \hbox{End}(V)}$ of a Lie algebra “factors through” the universal enveloping algebra, in that it extends to an algebra homomorphism from ${U({\mathfrak g})}$ to ${\hbox{End}(V)}$, which by abuse of notation we shall also call ${\rho}$.

One drawback of Theorem 1 is that the space ${U({\mathfrak g})}$ that the concrete Lie algebra acts on will almost always be infinite-dimensional, even when the original Lie algebra ${{\mathfrak g}}$ is finite-dimensional. However, there is a useful theorem of Ado that rectifies this:

Theorem 2 (Ado’s theorem) Every finite-dimensional abstract Lie algebra is isomorphic to a concrete Lie algebra over a finite-dimensional vector space ${V}$.

Among other things, this theorem can be used (in conjunction with the Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff formula) to show that every abstract (finite-dimensional) Lie group (or abstract local Lie group) is locally isomorphic to a linear group. (It is well-known, though, that abstract Lie groups are not necessarily globally isomorphic to a linear group, but we will not discuss these global obstructions here.)

Ado’s theorem is surprisingly tricky to prove in general, but some special cases are easy. For instance, one can try using the adjoint representation ${\hbox{ad}: {\mathfrak g} \rightarrow \hbox{End}({\mathfrak g})}$ of ${{\mathfrak g}}$ on itself, defined by the action ${X: Y \mapsto [X,Y]}$; the Jacobi identity (1) ensures that this indeed a representation of ${{\mathfrak g}}$. The kernel of this representation is the centre ${Z({\mathfrak g}) := \{ X \in {\mathfrak g}: [X,Y]=0 \hbox{ for all } Y \in {\mathfrak g}\}}$. This already gives Ado’s theorem in the case when ${{\mathfrak g}}$ is semisimple, in which case the center is trivial.

The adjoint representation does not suffice, by itself, to prove Ado’s theorem in the non-semisimple case. However, it does provide an important reduction in the proof, namely it reduces matters to showing that every finite-dimensional Lie algebra ${{\mathfrak g}}$ has a finite-dimensional representation ${\rho: {\mathfrak g} \rightarrow \hbox{End}(V)}$ which is faithful on the centre ${Z({\mathfrak g})}$. Indeed, if one has such a representation, one can then take the direct sum of that representation with the adjoint representation to obtain a new finite-dimensional representation which is now faithful on all of ${{\mathfrak g}}$, which then gives Ado’s theorem for ${{\mathfrak g}}$.

It remains to find a finite-dimensional representation of ${{\mathfrak g}}$ which is faithful on the centre ${Z({\mathfrak g})}$. In the case when ${{\mathfrak g}}$ is abelian, so that the centre ${Z({\mathfrak g})}$ is all of ${{\mathfrak g}}$, this is again easy, because ${{\mathfrak g}}$ then acts faithfully on ${{\mathfrak g} \times {\bf C}}$ by the infinitesimal shear maps ${X: (Y,t) \mapsto (tX, 0)}$. In matrix form, this representation identifies each ${X}$ in this abelian Lie algebra with an “upper-triangular” matrix:

$\displaystyle X \equiv \begin{pmatrix} 0 & X \\ 0 & 0 \end{pmatrix}.$

This construction gives a faithful finite-dimensional representation of the centre ${Z({\mathfrak g})}$ of any finite-dimensional Lie algebra. The standard proof of Ado’s theorem (which I believe dates back to work of Harish-Chandra) then proceeds by gradually “extending” this representation of the centre ${Z({\mathfrak g})}$ to larger and larger sub-algebras of ${{\mathfrak g}}$, while preserving the finite-dimensionality of the representation and the faithfulness on ${Z({\mathfrak g})}$, until one obtains a representation on the entire Lie algebra ${{\mathfrak g}}$ with the required properties. (For technical inductive reasons, one also needs to carry along an additional property of the representation, namely that it maps the nilradical to nilpotent elements, but we will discuss this technicality later.)

This procedure is a little tricky to execute in general, but becomes simpler in the nilpotent case, in which the lower central series ${{\mathfrak g}_1 := {\mathfrak g}; {\mathfrak g}_{n+1} := [{\mathfrak g}, {\mathfrak g}_n]}$ becomes trivial for sufficiently large ${n}$:

Theorem 3 (Ado’s theorem for nilpotent Lie algebras) Let ${{\mathfrak n}}$ be a finite-dimensional nilpotent Lie algebra. Then there exists a finite-dimensional faithful representation ${\rho: {\mathfrak n} \rightarrow \hbox{End}(V)}$ of ${{\mathfrak n}}$. Furthermore, there exists a natural number ${k}$ such that ${\rho({\mathfrak n})^k = \{0\}}$, i.e. one has ${\rho(X_1) \ldots \rho(X_k)=0}$ for all ${X_1,\ldots,X_k \in {\mathfrak n}}$.

The second conclusion of Ado’s theorem here is useful for induction purposes. (By Engel’s theorem, this conclusion is also equivalent to the assertion that every element of ${\rho({\mathfrak n})}$ is nilpotent, but we can prove Theorem 3 without explicitly invoking Engel’s theorem.)

Below the fold, I give a proof of Theorem 3, and then extend the argument to cover the full strength of Ado’s theorem. This is not a new argument – indeed, I am basing this particular presentation from the one in Fulton and Harris – but it was an instructive exercise for me to try to extract the proof of Ado’s theorem from the more general structural theory of Lie algebras (e.g. Engel’s theorem, Lie’s theorem, Levi decomposition, etc.) in which the result is usually placed. (However, the proof I know of still needs Engel’s theorem to establish the solvable case, and the Levi decomposition to then establish the general case.)

I’ve just uploaded to the arXiv my paper “Outliers in the spectrum of iid matrices with bounded rank perturbations“, submitted to Probability Theory and Related Fields. This paper is concerned with outliers to the circular law for iid random matrices. Recall that if ${X_n}$ is an ${n \times n}$ matrix whose entries are iid complex random variables with mean zero and variance one, then the ${n}$ complex eigenvalues of the normalised matrix ${\frac{1}{\sqrt{n}} X_n}$ will almost surely be distributed according to the circular law distribution ${\frac{1}{\pi} 1_{|z| \leq 1} d^2 z}$ in the limit ${n \rightarrow \infty}$. (See these lecture notes for further discussion of this law.)

The circular law is also stable under bounded rank perturbations: if ${C_n}$ is a deterministic rank ${O(1)}$ matrix of polynomial size (i.e. of operator norm ${O(n^{O(1)})}$), then the circular law also holds for ${\frac{1}{\sqrt{n}} X_n + C_n}$ (this is proven in a paper of myself, Van Vu, and Manjunath Krisnhapur). In particular, the bulk of the eigenvalues (i.e. ${(1-o(1)) n}$ of the ${n}$ eigenvalues) will lie inside the unit disk ${\{ z \in {\bf C}: |z| \leq 1 \}}$.

However, this leaves open the possibility for one or more outlier eigenvalues that lie significantly outside the unit disk; the arguments in the paper cited above give some upper bound on the number of such eigenvalues (of the form ${O(n^{1-c})}$ for some absolute constant ${c>0}$) but does not exclude them entirely. And indeed, numerical data shows that such outliers can exist for certain bounded rank perturbations.

In this paper, some results are given as to when outliers exist, and how they are distributed. The easiest case is of course when there is no bounded rank perturbation: ${C_n=0}$. In that case, an old result of Bai and Yin and of Geman shows that the spectral radius of ${\frac{1}{\sqrt{n}} X_n}$ is almost surely ${1+o(1)}$, thus all eigenvalues will be contained in a ${o(1)}$ neighbourhood of the unit disk, and so there are no significant outliers. The proof is based on the moment method.

Now we consider a bounded rank perturbation ${C_n}$ which is nonzero, but which has a bounded operator norm: ${\|C_n\|_{op} = O(1)}$. In this case, it turns out that the matrix ${\frac{1}{\sqrt{n}} X_n + C_n}$ will have outliers if the deterministic component ${C_n}$ has outliers. More specifically (and under the technical hypothesis that the entries of ${X_n}$ have bounded fourth moment), if ${\lambda}$ is an eigenvalue of ${C_n}$ with ${|\lambda| > 1}$, then (for ${n}$ large enough), ${\frac{1}{\sqrt{n}} X_n + C_n}$ will almost surely have an eigenvalue at ${\lambda+o(1)}$, and furthermore these will be the only outlier eigenvalues of ${\frac{1}{\sqrt{n}} X_n + C_n}$.

Thus, for instance, adding a bounded nilpotent low rank matrix to ${\frac{1}{\sqrt{n}} X_n}$ will not create any outliers, because the nilpotent matrix only has eigenvalues at zero. On the other hand, adding a bounded Hermitian low rank matrix will create outliers as soon as this matrix has an operator norm greater than ${1}$.

When I first thought about this problem (which was communicated to me by Larry Abbott), I believed that it was quite difficult, because I knew that the eigenvalues of non-Hermitian matrices were quite unstable with respect to general perturbations (as discussed in this previous blog post), and that there were no interlacing inequalities in this case to control bounded rank perturbations (as discussed in this post). However, as it turns out I had arrived at the wrong conclusion, especially in the exterior of the unit disk in which the resolvent is actually well controlled and so there is no pseudospectrum present to cause instability. This was pointed out to me by Alice Guionnet at an AIM workshop last week, after I had posed the above question during an open problems session. Furthermore, at the same workshop, Percy Deift emphasised the point that the basic determinantal identity

$\displaystyle \det(1 + AB) = \det(1 + BA) \ \ \ \ \ (1)$

for ${n \times k}$ matrices ${A}$ and ${k \times n}$ matrices ${B}$ was a particularly useful identity in random matrix theory, as it converted problems about large (${n \times n}$) matrices into problems about small (${k \times k}$) matrices, which was particularly convenient in the regime when ${n \rightarrow \infty}$ and ${k}$ was fixed. (Percy was speaking in the context of invariant ensembles, but the point is in fact more general than this.)

From this, it turned out to be a relatively simple manner to transform what appeared to be an intractable ${n \times n}$ matrix problem into quite a well-behaved ${k \times k}$ matrix problem for bounded ${k}$. Specifically, suppose that ${C_n}$ had rank ${k}$, so that one can factor ${C_n = A_n B_n}$ for some (deterministic) ${n \times k}$ matrix ${A_n}$ and ${k \times n}$ matrix ${B_n}$. To find an eigenvalue ${z}$ of ${\frac{1}{\sqrt{n}} X_n + C_n}$, one has to solve the characteristic polynomial equation

$\displaystyle \det( \frac{1}{\sqrt{n}} X_n + A_n B_n - z ) = 0.$

This is an ${n \times n}$ determinantal equation, which looks difficult to control analytically. But we can manipulate it using (1). If we make the assumption that ${z}$ is outside the spectrum of ${\frac{1}{\sqrt{n}} X_n}$ (which we can do as long as ${z}$ is well away from the unit disk, as the unperturbed matrix ${\frac{1}{\sqrt{n}} X_n}$ has no outliers), we can divide by ${\frac{1}{\sqrt{n}} X_n - z}$ to arrive at

$\displaystyle \det( 1 + (\frac{1}{\sqrt{n}} X_n-z)^{-1} A_n B_n ) = 0.$

Now we apply the crucial identity (1) to rearrange this as

$\displaystyle \det( 1 + B_n (\frac{1}{\sqrt{n}} X_n-z)^{-1} A_n ) = 0.$

The crucial point is that this is now an equation involving only a ${k \times k}$ determinant, rather than an ${n \times n}$ one, and is thus much easier to solve. The situation is particularly simple for rank one perturbations

$\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{n}} X_n + u_n v_n^*$

in which case the eigenvalue equation is now just a scalar equation

$\displaystyle 1 + \langle (\frac{1}{\sqrt{n}} X_n-z)^{-1} u_n, v_n \rangle = 0$

that involves what is basically a single coefficient of the resolvent ${(\frac{1}{\sqrt{n}} X_n-z)^{-1}}$. (It is also an instructive exercise to derive this eigenvalue equation directly, rather than through (1).) There is by now a very well-developed theory for how to control such coefficients (particularly for ${z}$ in the exterior of the unit disk, in which case such basic tools as Neumann series work just fine); in particular, one has precise enough control on these coefficients to obtain the result on outliers mentioned above.

The same method can handle some other bounded rank perturbations. One basic example comes from looking at iid matrices with a non-zero mean ${\mu}$ and variance ${1}$; this can be modeled by ${\frac{1}{\sqrt{n}} X_n + \mu \sqrt{n} \phi_n \phi_n^*}$ where ${\phi_n}$ is the unit vector ${\phi_n := \frac{1}{\sqrt{n}} (1,\ldots,1)^*}$. Here, the bounded rank perturbation ${\mu \sqrt{n} \phi_n \phi_n^*}$ has a large operator norm (equal to ${|\mu| \sqrt{n}}$), so the previous result does not directly apply. Nevertheless, the self-adjoint nature of the perturbation has a stabilising effect, and I was able to show that there is still only one outlier, and that it is at the expected location of ${\mu \sqrt{n}+o(1)}$.

If one moves away from the case of self-adjoint perturbations, though, the situation changes. Let us now consider a matrix of the form ${\frac{1}{\sqrt{n}} X_n + \mu \sqrt{n} \phi_n \psi_n^*}$, where ${\psi_n}$ is a randomised version of ${\phi_n}$, e.g. ${\psi_n := \frac{1}{\sqrt{n}} (\pm 1, \ldots, \pm 1)^*}$, where the ${\pm 1}$ are iid Bernoulli signs; such models were proposed recently by Rajan and Abbott as a model for neural networks in which some nodes are excitatory (and give columns with positive mean) and some are inhibitory (leading to columns with negative mean). Despite the superficial similarity with the previous example, the outlier behaviour is now quite different. Instead of having one extremely large outlier (of size ${\sim\sqrt{n}}$) at an essentially deterministic location, we now have a number of eigenvalues of size ${O(1)}$, scattered according to a random process. Indeed, (in the case when the entries of ${X_n}$ were real and bounded) I was able to show that the outlier point process converged (in the sense of converging ${k}$-point correlation functions) to the zeroes of a random Laurent series

$\displaystyle g(z) = 1 - \mu \sum_{j=0}^\infty \frac{g_j}{z^{j+1}}$

where ${g_0,g_1,g_2,\ldots \equiv N(0,1)}$ are iid real Gaussians. This is basically because the coefficients of the resolvent ${(\frac{1}{\sqrt{n}} X_n - zI)^{-1}}$ have a Neumann series whose coefficients enjoy a central limit theorem.

On the other hand, as already observed numerically (and rigorously, in the gaussian case) by Rajan and Abbott, if one projects such matrices to have row sum zero, then the outliers all disappear. This can be explained by another appeal to (1); this projection amounts to right-multiplying ${\frac{1}{\sqrt{n}} X_n + \mu \sqrt{n} \phi_n \psi_n^*}$ by the projection matrix ${P}$ to the zero-sum vectors. But by (1), the non-zero eigenvalues of the resulting matrix ${(\frac{1}{\sqrt{n}} X_n + \mu \sqrt{n} \phi_n \psi_n^*)P}$ are the same as those for ${P (\frac{1}{\sqrt{n}} X_n + \mu \sqrt{n} \phi_n \psi_n^*)}$. Since ${P}$ annihilates ${\phi_n}$, we thus see that in this case the bounded rank perturbation plays no role, and the question reduces to obtaining a circular law with no outliers for ${P \frac{1}{\sqrt{n}} X_n}$. As it turns out, this can be done by invoking the machinery of Van Vu and myself that we used to prove the circular law for various random matrix models.

In the previous lectures, we have focused mostly on the equidistribution or linear patterns on a subset of the integers ${{\bf Z}}$, and in particular on intervals ${[N]}$. The integers are of course a very important domain to study in additive combinatorics; but there are also other fundamental model examples of domains to study. One of these is that of a vector space ${V}$ over a finite field ${{\bf F} = {\bf F}_p}$ of prime order. Such domains are of interest in computer science (particularly when ${p=2}$) and also in number theory; but they also serve as an important simplified “dyadic model” for the integers. See this survey article of Green for further discussion of this point.

The additive combinatorics of the integers ${{\bf Z}}$, and of vector spaces ${V}$ over finite fields, are analogous, but not quite identical. For instance, the analogue of an arithmetic progression in ${{\bf Z}}$ is a subspace of ${V}$. In many cases, the finite field theory is a little bit simpler than the integer theory; for instance, subspaces are closed under addition, whereas arithmetic progressions are only “almost” closed under addition in various senses. (For instance, ${[N]}$ is closed under addition approximately half of the time.) However, there are some ways in which the integers are better behaved. For instance, because the integers can be generated by a single generator, a homomorphism from ${{\bf Z}}$ to some other group ${G}$ can be described by a single group element ${g}$: ${n \mapsto g^n}$. However, to specify a homomorphism from a vector space ${V}$ to ${G}$ one would need to specify one group element for each dimension of ${V}$. Thus we see that there is a tradeoff when passing from ${{\bf Z}}$ (or ${[N]}$) to a vector space model; one gains a bounded torsion property, at the expense of conceding the bounded generation property. (Of course, if one wants to deal with arbitrarily large domains, one has to concede one or the other; the only additive groups that have both bounded torsion and boundedly many generators, are bounded.)

The starting point for this course (Notes 1) was the study of equidistribution of polynomials ${P: {\bf Z} \rightarrow {\bf R}/{\bf Z}}$ from the integers to the unit circle. We now turn to the parallel theory of equidistribution of polynomials ${P: V \rightarrow {\bf R}/{\bf Z}}$ from vector spaces over finite fields to the unit circle. Actually, for simplicity we will mostly focus on the classical case, when the polynomials in fact take values in the ${p^{th}}$ roots of unity (where ${p}$ is the characteristic of the field ${{\bf F} = {\bf F}_p}$). As it turns out, the non-classical case is also of importance (particularly in low characteristic), but the theory is more difficult; see these notes for some further discussion.

Our study of random matrices, to date, has focused on somewhat general ensembles, such as iid random matrices or Wigner random matrices, in which the distribution of the individual entries of the matrices was essentially arbitrary (as long as certain moments, such as the mean and variance, were normalised). In these notes, we now focus on two much more special, and much more symmetric, ensembles:

• The Gaussian Unitary Ensemble (GUE), which is an ensemble of random ${n \times n}$ Hermitian matrices ${M_n}$ in which the upper-triangular entries are iid with distribution ${N(0,1)_{\bf C}}$, and the diagonal entries are iid with distribution ${N(0,1)_{\bf R}}$, and independent of the upper-triangular ones; and
• The Gaussian random matrix ensemble, which is an ensemble of random ${n \times n}$ (non-Hermitian) matrices ${M_n}$ whose entries are iid with distribution ${N(0,1)_{\bf C}}$.

The symmetric nature of these ensembles will allow us to compute the spectral distribution by exact algebraic means, revealing a surprising connection with orthogonal polynomials and with determinantal processes. This will, for instance, recover the semi-circular law for GUE, but will also reveal fine spacing information, such as the distribution of the gap between adjacent eigenvalues, which is largely out of reach of tools such as the Stieltjes transform method and the moment method (although the moment method, with some effort, is able to control the extreme edges of the spectrum).

Similarly, we will see for the first time the circular law for eigenvalues of non-Hermitian matrices.

There are a number of other highly symmetric ensembles which can also be treated by the same methods, most notably the Gaussian Orthogonal Ensemble (GOE) and the Gaussian Symplectic Ensemble (GSE). However, for simplicity we shall focus just on the above two ensembles. For a systematic treatment of these ensembles, see the text by Deift.

One of the most basic theorems in linear algebra is that every finite-dimensional vector space has a finite basis. Let us give a statement of this theorem in the case when the underlying field is the rationals:

Theorem 1 (Finite generation implies finite basis, infinitary version) Let ${V}$ be a vector space over the rationals ${{\mathbb Q}}$, and let ${v_1,\ldots,v_n}$ be a finite collection of vectors in ${V}$. Then there exists a collection ${w_1,\ldots,w_k}$ of vectors in ${V}$, with ${1 \leq k \leq n}$, such that

• (${w}$ generates ${v}$) Every ${v_j}$ can be expressed as a rational linear combination of the ${w_1,\ldots,w_k}$.
• (${w}$ independent) There is no non-trivial linear relation ${a_1 w_1 + \ldots + a_k w_k = 0}$, ${a_1,\ldots,a_k \in {\mathbb Q}}$ among the ${w_1,\ldots,w_m}$ (where non-trivial means that the ${a_i}$ are not all zero).

In fact, one can take ${w_1,\ldots,w_m}$ to be a subset of the ${v_1,\ldots,v_n}$.

Proof: We perform the following “rank reduction argument”. Start with ${w_1,\ldots,w_k}$ initialised to ${v_1,\ldots,v_n}$ (so initially we have ${k=n}$). Clearly ${w}$ generates ${v}$. If the ${w_i}$ are linearly independent then we are done. Otherwise, there is a non-trivial linear relation between them; after shuffling things around, we see that one of the ${w_i}$, say ${w_k}$, is a rational linear combination of the ${w_1,\ldots,w_{k-1}}$. In such a case, ${w_k}$ becomes redundant, and we may delete it (reducing the rank ${k}$ by one). We repeat this procedure; it can only run for at most ${n}$ steps and so terminates with ${w_1,\ldots,w_m}$ obeying both of the desired properties. $\Box$

In additive combinatorics, one often wants to use results like this in finitary settings, such as that of a cyclic group ${{\mathbb Z}/p{\mathbb Z}}$ where ${p}$ is a large prime. Now, technically speaking, ${{\mathbb Z}/p{\mathbb Z}}$ is not a vector space over ${{\mathbb Q}}$, because one only multiply an element of ${{\mathbb Z}/p{\mathbb Z}}$ by a rational number if the denominator of that rational does not divide ${p}$. But for ${p}$ very large, ${{\mathbb Z}/p{\mathbb Z}}$ “behaves” like a vector space over ${{\mathbb Q}}$, at least if one restricts attention to the rationals of “bounded height” – where the numerator and denominator of the rationals are bounded. Thus we shall refer to elements of ${{\mathbb Z}/p{\mathbb Z}}$ as “vectors” over ${{\mathbb Q}}$, even though strictly speaking this is not quite the case.

On the other hand, saying that one element of ${{\mathbb Z}/p{\mathbb Z}}$ is a rational linear combination of another set of elements is not a very interesting statement: any non-zero element of ${{\mathbb Z}/p{\mathbb Z}}$ already generates the entire space! However, if one again restricts attention to rational linear combinations of bounded height, then things become interesting again. For instance, the vector ${1}$ can generate elements such as ${37}$ or ${\frac{p-1}{2}}$ using rational linear combinations of bounded height, but will not be able to generate such elements of ${{\mathbb Z}/p{\mathbb Z}}$ as ${\lfloor\sqrt{p}\rfloor}$ without using rational numbers of unbounded height.

For similar reasons, the notion of linear independence over the rationals doesn’t initially look very interesting over ${{\mathbb Z}/p{\mathbb Z}}$: any two non-zero elements of ${{\mathbb Z}/p{\mathbb Z}}$ are of course rationally dependent. But again, if one restricts attention to rational numbers of bounded height, then independence begins to emerge: for instance, ${1}$ and ${\lfloor\sqrt{p}\rfloor}$ are independent in this sense.

Thus, it becomes natural to ask whether there is a “quantitative” analogue of Theorem 1, with non-trivial content in the case of “vector spaces over the bounded height rationals” such as ${{\mathbb Z}/p{\mathbb Z}}$, which asserts that given any bounded collection ${v_1,\ldots,v_n}$ of elements, one can find another set ${w_1,\ldots,w_k}$ which is linearly independent “over the rationals up to some height”, such that the ${v_1,\ldots,v_n}$ can be generated by the ${w_1,\ldots,w_k}$ “over the rationals up to some height”. Of course to make this rigorous, one needs to quantify the two heights here, the one giving the independence, and the one giving the generation. In order to be useful for applications, it turns out that one often needs the former height to be much larger than the latter; exponentially larger, for instance, is not an uncommon request. Fortunately, one can accomplish this, at the cost of making the height somewhat large:

Theorem 2 (Finite generation implies finite basis, finitary version) Let ${n \geq 1}$ be an integer, and let ${F: {\mathbb N} \rightarrow {\mathbb N}}$ be a function. Let ${V}$ be an abelian group which admits a well-defined division operation by any natural number of size at most ${C(F,n)}$ for some constant ${C(F,n)}$ depending only on ${F,n}$; for instance one can take ${V = {\mathbb Z}/p{\mathbb Z}}$ for ${p}$ a prime larger than ${C(F,n)}$. Let ${v_1,\ldots,v_n}$ be a finite collection of “vectors” in ${V}$. Then there exists a collection ${w_1,\ldots,w_k}$ of vectors in ${V}$, with ${1 \leq k \leq n}$, as well an integer ${M \geq 1}$, such that

• (Complexity bound) ${M \leq C(F,n)}$ for some ${C(F,n)}$ depending only on ${F, n}$.
• (${w}$ generates ${v}$) Every ${v_j}$ can be expressed as a rational linear combination of the ${w_1,\ldots,w_k}$ of height at most ${M}$ (i.e. the numerator and denominator of the coefficients are at most ${M}$).
• (${w}$ independent) There is no non-trivial linear relation ${a_1 w_1 + \ldots + a_k w_k = 0}$ among the ${w_1,\ldots,w_k}$ in which the ${a_1,\ldots,a_k}$ are rational numbers of height at most ${F(M)}$.

In fact, one can take ${w_1,\ldots,w_k}$ to be a subset of the ${v_1,\ldots,v_n}$.

Proof: We perform the same “rank reduction argument” as before, but translated to the finitary setting. Start with ${w_1,\ldots,w_k}$ initialised to ${v_1,\ldots,v_n}$ (so initially we have ${k=n}$), and initialise ${M=1}$. Clearly ${w}$ generates ${v}$ at this height. If the ${w_i}$ are linearly independent up to rationals of height ${F(M)}$ then we are done. Otherwise, there is a non-trivial linear relation between them; after shuffling things around, we see that one of the ${w_i}$, say ${w_k}$, is a rational linear combination of the ${w_1,\ldots,w_{k-1}}$, whose height is bounded by some function depending on ${F(M)}$ and ${k}$. In such a case, ${w_k}$ becomes redundant, and we may delete it (reducing the rank ${k}$ by one), but note that in order for the remaining ${w_1,\ldots,w_{k-1}}$ to generate ${v_1,\ldots,v_n}$ we need to raise the height upper bound for the rationals involved from ${M}$ to some quantity ${M'}$ depending on ${M, F(M), k}$. We then replace ${M}$ by ${M'}$ and continue the process. We repeat this procedure; it can only run for at most ${n}$ steps and so terminates with ${w_1,\ldots,w_m}$ and ${M}$ obeying all of the desired properties. (Note that the bound on ${M}$ is quite poor, being essentially an ${n}$-fold iteration of ${F}$! Thus, for instance, if ${F}$ is exponential, then the bound on ${M}$ is tower-exponential in nature.) $\Box$

(A variant of this type of approximate basis lemma was used in my paper with Van Vu on the singularity probability of random Bernoulli matrices.)

Looking at the statements and proofs of these two theorems it is clear that the two results are in some sense the “same” result, except that the latter has been made sufficiently quantitative that it is meaningful in such finitary settings as ${{\mathbb Z}/p{\mathbb Z}}$. In this note I will show how this equivalence can be made formal using the language of non-standard analysis. This is not a particularly deep (or new) observation, but it is perhaps the simplest example I know of that illustrates how nonstandard analysis can be used to transfer a quantifier-heavy finitary statement, such as Theorem 2, into a quantifier-light infinitary statement, such as Theorem 1, thus lessening the need to perform “epsilon management” duties, such as keeping track of unspecified growth functions such as ${F}$. This type of transference is discussed at length in this previous blog post of mine.

In this particular case, the amount of effort needed to set up the nonstandard machinery in order to reduce Theorem 2 from Theorem 1 is too great for this transference to be particularly worthwhile, especially given that Theorem 2 has such a short proof. However, when performing a particularly intricate argument in additive combinatorics, in which one is performing a number of “rank reduction arguments”, “energy increment arguments”, “regularity lemmas”, “structure theorems”, and so forth, the purely finitary approach can become bogged down with all the epsilon management one needs to do to organise all the parameters that are flying around. The nonstandard approach can efficiently hide a large number of these parameters from view, and it can then become worthwhile to invest in the nonstandard framework in order to clean up the rest of a lengthy argument. Furthermore, an advantage of moving up to the infinitary setting is that one can then deploy all the firepower of an existing well-developed infinitary theory of mathematics (in this particular case, this would be the theory of linear algebra) out of the box, whereas in the finitary setting one would have to painstakingly finitise each aspect of such a theory that one wished to use (imagine for instance trying to finitise the rank-nullity theorem for rationals of bounded height).

The nonstandard approach is very closely related to use of compactness arguments, or of the technique of taking ultralimits and ultraproducts; indeed we will use an ultrafilter in order to create the nonstandard model in the first place.

I will also discuss a two variants of both Theorem 1 and Theorem 2 which have actually shown up in my research. The first is that of the regularity lemma for polynomials over finite fields, which came up when studying the equidistribution of such polynomials (in this paper with Ben Green). The second comes up when is dealing not with a single finite collection ${v_1,\ldots,v_n}$ of vectors, but rather with a family ${(v_{h,1},\ldots,v_{h,n})_{h \in H}}$ of such vectors, where ${H}$ ranges over a large set; this gives rise to what we call the sunflower lemma, and came up in this recent paper of myself, Ben Green, and Tamar Ziegler.

This post is mostly concerned with nonstandard translations of the “rank reduction argument”. Nonstandard translations of the “energy increment argument” and “density increment argument” were briefly discussed in this recent post; I may return to this topic in more detail in a future post.

Ben Green, Tamar Ziegler and I have just uploaded to the arXiv our paper “An inverse theorem for the Gowers $U^4$ norm“.  This paper establishes the next case of the inverse conjecture for the Gowers norm for the integers (after the $U^3$ case, which was done by Ben and myself a few years ago).  This conjecture has a number of combinatorial and number-theoretic consequences, for instance by combining this new inverse theorem with previous results, one can now get the correct asymptotic for the number of arithmetic progressions of primes of length five in any large interval $[N] = \{1,\ldots,N\}$.

To state the inverse conjecture properly requires a certain amount of notation.  Given a function $f: {\Bbb Z} \to {\Bbb C}$ and a shift $h \in {\Bbb Z}$, define the multiplicative derivative

$\Delta_h f(x) := f(x+h) \overline{f(x)}$

and then define the Gowers $U^{s+1}[N]$ norm of a function $f: [N] \to {\Bbb C}$ to (essentially) be the quantity

$\| f\|_{U^{s+1}[N]} := ({\Bbb E}_{h_1,\ldots,h_{s+1} \in [-N,N]} {\Bbb E}_{x \in [N]} |\Delta_{h_1} \ldots \Delta_{h_{s+1}} f(x)|)^{1/2^{s+1}},$

where we extend f by zero outside of $[N]$.  (Actually, we use a slightly different normalisation to ensure that the function 1 has a $U^{s+1}$ norm of 1, but never mind this for now.)

Informally, the Gowers norm $\|f\|_{U^{s+1}[N]}$ measures the amount of bias present in the $(s+1)^{st}$ multiplicative derivatives of $f$.  In particular, if $f = e(P) := e^{2\pi i P}$ for some polynomial $P: {\Bbb Z} \to {\Bbb C}$, then the $(s+1)^{th}$ derivative of $f$ is identically 1, and so is the Gowers norm.

However, polynomial phases are not the only functions with large Gowers norm.  For instance, consider the function $f(n) := e( \lfloor \sqrt{2} n \rfloor \sqrt{3} n )$, which is what we call a quadratic bracket polynomial phase.  This function isn’t quite quadratic, but it is close enough to being quadratic (because one has the approximate linearity relationship $\lfloor x+y \rfloor = \lfloor x \rfloor + \lfloor y \rfloor$ holding a good fraction of the time) that it turns out that third derivative is trivial fairly often, and the Gowers norm $\|f\|_{U^3[N]}$ is comparable to 1.  This bracket polynomial phase can be modeled as a nilsequence $n \mapsto F( g(n) \Gamma )$, where $n \mapsto g(n) \Gamma$ is a polynomial orbit on a nilmanifold $G/\Gamma$, which in this case has step 2.  (The function F is only piecewise smooth, due to the discontinuity in the floor function $\lfloor \rfloor$, so strictly speaking we would classify this as an almost nilsequence rather than a nilsequence, but let us ignore this technical issue here.)  In fact, there is a very close relationship between nilsequences and bracket polynomial phases, but I will detail this in a later post.

The inverse conjecture for the Gowers norm, GI(s), asserts that such nilsequences are the only obstruction to the Gowers norm being small.  Roughly speaking, it goes like this:

Inverse conjecture, GI(s). (Informal statement)  Suppose that $f: [N] \to {\Bbb C}$ is bounded but has large $U^{s+1}[N]$ norm.  Then there is an s-step nilsequence $n \mapsto F( g(n) \Gamma )$ of “bounded complexity” that correlates with f.

This conjecture is trivial for s=0, is a short consequence of Fourier analysis when s=1, and was proven for s=2 by Ben and myself.  In this paper we establish the s=3 case.  An equivalent formulation in this case is that any bounded function $f$ of large $U^4$ norm must correlate with a “bracket cubic phase”, which is the product of a bounded number of phases from the following list

$e( \alpha n^3 + \beta n^2 + \gamma n), e( \lfloor \alpha n \rfloor \beta n^2 ), e( \lfloor \alpha n \rfloor \lfloor \beta n \rfloor \gamma n ), e( \lfloor \alpha n \rfloor \beta n )$ (*)

for various real numbers $\alpha,\beta,\gamma$.

It appears that our methods also work in higher step, though for technical reasons it is convenient to make a number of adjustments to our arguments to do so, most notably a switch from standard analysis to non-standard analysis, about which I hope to say more later.  But there are a number of simplifications available on the s=3 case which make the argument significantly shorter, and so we will be writing the higher s argument in a separate paper.

The arguments largely follow those for the s=2 case (which in turn are based on this paper of Gowers).  Two major new ingredients are a deployment of a normal form and equidistribution theory for bracket quadratic phases, and a combinatorial decomposition of frequency space which we call the sunflower decomposition.  I will sketch these ideas below the fold.

A (concrete) Boolean algebra is a pair $(X, {\mathcal B})$, where X is a set, and ${\mathcal B}$ is a collection of subsets of X which contain the empty set $\emptyset$, and which is closed under unions $A, B \mapsto A \cup B$, intersections $A, B \mapsto A \cap B$, and complements $A \mapsto A^c := X \backslash A$. The subset relation $\subset$ also gives a relation on ${\mathcal B}$. Because the ${\mathcal B}$ is concretely represented as subsets of a space X, these relations automatically obey various axioms, in particular, for any $A,B,C \in {\mathcal B}$, we have:

1. $\subset$ is a partial ordering on ${\mathcal B}$, and A and B have join $A \cup B$ and meet $A \cap B$.
2. We have the distributive laws $A \cup (B \cap C) = (A \cup B) \cap (A \cup C)$ and $A \cap (B \cup C) = A \cup (B \cap C)$.
3. $\emptyset$ is the minimal element of the partial ordering $\subset$, and $\emptyset^c$ is the maximal element.
4. $A \cap A^c = \emptyset$ and $A \cup A^c = \emptyset^c$.

(More succinctly: ${\mathcal B}$ is a lattice which is distributive, bounded, and complemented.)

We can then define an abstract Boolean algebra ${\mathcal B} = ({\mathcal B}, \emptyset, \cdot^c, \cup, \cap, \subset)$ to be an abstract set ${\mathcal B}$ with the specified objects, operations, and relations that obey the axioms 1-4. [Of course, some of these operations are redundant; for instance, intersection can be defined in terms of complement and union by de Morgan’s laws. In the literature, different authors select different initial operations and axioms when defining an abstract Boolean algebra, but they are all easily seen to be equivalent to each other. To emphasise the abstract nature of these algebras, the symbols $\emptyset, \cdot^c, \cup, \cap, \subset$ are often replaced with other symbols such as $0, \overline{\cdot}, \vee, \wedge, <$.]

Clearly, every concrete Boolean algebra is an abstract Boolean algebra. In the converse direction, we have Stone’s representation theorem (see below), which asserts (among other things) that every abstract Boolean algebra is isomorphic to a concrete one (and even constructs this concrete representation of the abstract Boolean algebra canonically). So, up to (abstract) isomorphism, there is really no difference between a concrete Boolean algebra and an abstract one.

Now let us turn from Boolean algebras to $\sigma$-algebras.

A concrete $\sigma$-algebra (also known as a measurable space) is a pair $(X,{\mathcal B})$, where X is a set, and ${\mathcal B}$ is a collection of subsets of X which contains $\emptyset$ and are closed under countable unions, countable intersections, and complements; thus every concrete $\sigma$-algebra is a concrete Boolean algebra, but not conversely. As before, concrete $\sigma$-algebras come equipped with the structures $\emptyset, \cdot^c, \cup, \cap, \subset$ which obey axioms 1-4, but they also come with the operations of countable union $(A_n)_{n=1}^\infty \mapsto \bigcup_{n=1}^\infty A_n$ and countable intersection $(A_n)_{n=1}^\infty \mapsto \bigcap_{n=1}^\infty A_n$, which obey an additional axiom:

5. Any countable family $A_1, A_2, \ldots$ of elements of ${\mathcal B}$ has supremum $\bigcup_{n=1}^\infty A_n$ and infimum $\bigcap_{n=1}^\infty A_n$.

As with Boolean algebras, one can now define an abstract $\sigma$-algebra to be a set ${\mathcal B} = ({\mathcal B}, \emptyset, \cdot^c, \cup, \cap, \subset, \bigcup_{n=1}^\infty, \bigcap_{n=1}^\infty )$ with the indicated objects, operations, and relations, which obeys axioms 1-5. Again, every concrete $\sigma$-algebra is an abstract one; but is it still true that every abstract $\sigma$-algebra is representable as a concrete one?

The answer turns out to be no, but the obstruction can be described precisely (namely, one needs to quotient out an ideal of “null sets” from the concrete $\sigma$-algebra), and there is a satisfactory representation theorem, namely the Loomis-Sikorski representation theorem (see below). As a corollary of this representation theorem, one can also represent abstract measure spaces $({\mathcal B},\mu)$ (also known as measure algebras) by concrete measure spaces, $(X, {\mathcal B}, \mu)$, after quotienting out by null sets.

In the rest of this post, I will state and prove these representation theorems. They are not actually used directly in the rest of the course (and they will also require some results that we haven’t proven yet, most notably Tychonoff’s theorem), and so these notes are optional reading; but these theorems do help explain why it is “safe” to focus attention primarily on concrete $\sigma$-algebras and measure spaces when doing measure theory, since the abstract analogues of these mathematical concepts are largely equivalent to their concrete counterparts. (The situation is quite different for non-commutative measure theories, such as quantum probability, in which there is basically no good representation theorem available to equate the abstract with the classically concrete, but I will not discuss these theories here.)

I’ve uploaded a new paper to the arXiv entitled “The sum-product phenomenon in arbitrary rings“, and submitted to Contributions to Discrete Mathematics. The sum-product phenomenon asserts, very roughly speaking, that given a finite non-empty set A in a ring R, then either the sum set $A+A := \{ a+b: a, b \in A \}$ or the product set $A \cdot A := \{ ab: a, b \in A \}$ will be significantly larger than A, unless A is somehow very close to being a subring of R, or if A is highly degenerate (for instance, containing a lot of zero divisors). For instance, in the case of the integers $R = {\Bbb Z}$, which has no non-trivial finite subrings, a long-standing conjecture of Erdös and Szemerédi asserts that $|A+A| + |A \cdot A| \gg_\varepsilon |A|^{2-\varepsilon}$ for every finite non-empty $A \subset {\Bbb Z}$ and every $\varepsilon > 0$. (The current best result on this problem is a very recent result of Solymosi, who shows that the conjecture holds for any $\varepsilon$ greater than 2/3.) In recent years, many other special rings have been studied intensively, most notably finite fields and cyclic groups, but also the complex numbers, quaternions, and other division algebras, and continuous counterparts in which A is now (for instance) a collection of intervals on the real line. I will not try to summarise all the work on sum-product estimates and their applications (which range from number theory to graph theory to ergodic theory to computer science) here, but I discuss this in the introduction to my paper, which has over 50 references to this literature (and I am probably still missing out on a few).

I was recently asked the question as to what could be said about the sum-product phenomenon in an arbitrary ring R, which need not be commutative or contain a multiplicative identity. Once one makes some assumptions to avoid the degenerate case when A (or related sets, such as A-A) are full of zero-divisors, it turns out that there is in fact quite a bit one can say, using only elementary methods from additive combinatorics (in particular, the Plünnecke-Ruzsa sum set theory). Roughly speaking, the main results of the paper assert that in an arbitrary ring, a set A which is non-degenerate and has small sum set and product set must be mostly contained inside a subring of R of comparable size to A, or a dilate of such a subring, though in the absence of invertible elements one sometimes has to enlarge the ambient ring R slightly before one can find the subring. At the end of the paper I specialise these results to specific rings, such as division algebras or products of division algebras, cyclic groups, or finite-dimensional algebras over fields. Generally speaking, the methods here give very good results when the set of zero divisors is sparse and easily describable, but poor results otherwise. (In particular, the sum-product theory in cyclic groups, as worked out by Bourgain and coauthors, is only recovered for groups which are the product of a bounded number of primes; the case of cyclic groups whose order has many factors seems to require a more multi-scale analysis which I did not attempt to perform in this paper.)
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This week I am at Rutgers University, giving the Lewis Memorial Lectures for this year, which are also concurrently part of a workshop in random matrices. I gave four lectures, three of which were on random matrices, and one of which was on the Szemerédi regularity lemma.

The titles, abstracts, and slides of these talks are as follows.

1. Szemerédi’s lemma revisited. In this general-audience talk, I discuss the Szemerédi regularity lemma (which, roughly speaking, shows that an arbitrary large dense graph can always be viewed as the disjoint union of a bounded number of pseudorandom components), and how it has recently been reinterpreted in a more analytical (and infinitary) language using the theory of graph limits or of exchangeable measures. I also discuss arithmetic analogues of this lemma, including one which (implicitly) underlies my result with Ben Green that the primes contain arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions.
2. Singularity and determinant of random matrices. Here, I present recent progress in understanding the question of how likely a random matrix (e.g. one whose entries are all +1 or -1 with equal probability) is to be invertible, as well as the related question of how large the determinant should be. The case of continuous matrix ensembles (such as the Gaussian ensemble) is well understood, but the discrete case contains some combinatorial difficulties and took longer to understand properly. In particular I present the results of Kahn-Komlós-Szemerédi and later authors showing that discrete random matrices are invertible with exponentially high probability, and also give some results for the distribution of the determinant.
3. The least singular value of random matrices. A more quantitative version of the question “when is a matrix invertible?” is “what is the least singular value of that matrix”? I present here the recent results of Litvak-Pajor-Rudelson-Tomczak-Jaegermann, Rudelson, myself and Vu, and Rudelson-Vershynin on addressing this question in the discrete case. A central role is played by the inverse Littlewood-Offord theorems of additive combinatorics, which give reasonably sharp necessary conditions for a discrete random walk to concentrate in a small ball.
4. The circular law. One interesting application of the above theory is to extend the circular law for the spectrum of random matrices from the continuous case to the discrete case. Previous arguments of Girko and Bai for the continuous case can be transplanted to the discrete case, but the key new ingredient needed is a least singular value bound for shifted matrices $M-\lambda I$ in order to avoid the spectrum being overwhelmed by pseudospectrum. It turns out that the results of the preceding lecture are almost precisely what are needed to accomplish this.

[Update, Mar 31: first lecture slides corrected.  Thanks to Yoshiyasu Ishigami for pointing out a slight inaccuracy in the text.]