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A determinantal process on the line is a random collection of points on $\mathbb{R}$ such that the probability of $x_1, \dots, x_n$ lying on the random set is $\det (K(x_i, x_j))_{(i,j)}$. Examples of determinantal processes include the eigenvalues of random Hermitean matrices with Gaussian entries and non-intersecting random walks. I'm interested in sampling random points on the line according to the sine kernel $k(x,y) = \frac{\sin(x-y)}{\pi(x-y)}$ or the Airy Kernel (see p 6 of the slides) which are related to the Gaussian Unitary Ensemble.

I thought there are algorithms for sampling from general discrete and continuous determinantal processes. Maybe it's be better to sample a processes directly using Coupling from the Past and other procedures.

Mainly,

  • how does one sample points on the real line with respect to the sine kernel?
  • is there a general way of sampling determinantal processes based or arbitrary kernel?

It is known these types of processes demonstrate repulsion (compared to the Poisson process) and I would like to demonstrate this in the classroom.

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For a general algorithm for simulating points from a determinantal process, see Algorithm 18 in the paper "Determinantal Processes and Independence" by Hough, Krishnapur, Peres and Virag:

arXiv link

This algorithm was actually implemented by some physicists at Princeton (I believe) but I am not sure if their code is publicly available.

For the sine kernel, depending on how many points you want to sample, Matlab is pretty good at computing eigenvalues of a large GUE matrix in a decently short amount of time. That would require much less work than implementing the algorithm above.

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