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I am recently reading about random matrix theory in engineering applications. I come up with the following question. I have been trying to find any references but it doesn't help. Hopefully, anyone can give me any reference or suggestion to approach this question.

Does Bernoulli random matrix belong to the rotationally-invariant random ensemble?

Where a random matrix $\mathbf{A} \in \mathbb {R}^{m \times n}$ is called a Bernoulli random matrix if its entry $A_{ij}$ is independent and is either $+1$ or $-1$ with equal probability. A random matrix $\mathbf{A}\in \mathbb {R}^{m \times n}$ is called rotationally-invariant if it satisfies $P(\mathbf{A}) = P(\mathbf{U}\mathbf{A}\mathbf{V^T})$, where $\mathbf{U}$ and $\mathbf{V}$ are deterministic orthogonal matrices.

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  • $\begingroup$ What is $P$ in the context? (Is it a measure on the space of all $m\times n$ matrices with real coefficients? Here $UAV^T$ may have entries $\ne\pm 1$.) Please give some reference(s) for the definitions and the framework around the question. $\endgroup$
    – dan_fulea
    Commented Dec 31, 2021 at 17:58
  • $\begingroup$ $P(\mathbf{A})$ is the PDF of matrix $\mathbf{A}$ $\endgroup$
    – Quicky2357
    Commented Jan 6, 2022 at 16:55

1 Answer 1

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For $m>1$ or $n>1$ the answer is, ``no.'' The definition of rotationally invariant is if the distribution of $A$ is the same as the distribution of $U A V^T$ for every pair of matrices $U$ and $V$ which are non-random and orthogonal matrices on $\mathbb{R}^m$ and $\mathbb{R}^n$, respectively. If $n\geq 2$, take a 1-parameter family of orthogonal matrices $V(\theta) = (v_{ij}(\theta))_{i,j=1}^n$ for $\theta \in [0,2\pi)$ such that $$ \left(\begin{matrix} v_{11}(\theta) & v_{12}(\theta) \\ v_{21}(\theta) & v_{22}(\theta) \end{matrix}\right)\, =\, \left(\begin{matrix} \cos(\theta) & -\sin(\theta) \\ \sin(\theta) & \cos(\theta) \end{matrix}\right) $$ and $v_{ij}(\theta) = \delta_{ij}$ if $i>2$ or $j>2$. Take $U$ to be the identity. Let $B = U A V^T$. Then if $A$ has all entries either $+1$ or $-1$ then $b_{11}$ must have distribution equal to the distribution of $a_{11} \cos(\theta) + a_{12} \sin(\theta)$ as $\theta$ varies over $[0,2\pi)$ and $a_{11}$, $a_{12}$ take their values $\{+1,-1\}$ equally likely, IID. In particular, it is easy to see that $b_{11}$ has a continuous distribution with probability density function $f(x)=\pi^{-1} (2-x^2)^{-1/2} \mathbf{1}_{(-\sqrt{2},\sqrt{2})}(x)$, because $b_{11}$ can be written as $\sqrt{2} \sin(\theta+\phi)$ for some $\phi\in\{\pi/4,3\pi/4,5\pi/4,7\pi/4\}$ depending on $a_{11}$ and $a_{12}$. In particular, this is not discrete. It is not just $+1$ and $-1$ like one had for $a_{11}$.

The symmetry that is there for this ensemble is if $U$ is an $m\times m$ non-random permutation matrix, and if $V$ is an $n\times n$ non-random permutation matrix, then $A$ is distributed as $U A V^{T}$ because of permutation-invariance (exchangeability) of the IID product measure on $\{+1,-1\}$. There is undoubtedly a large literature on this ensemble within random matrix theory. For example, there is this paper of Tao and Vu https://arxiv.org/pdf/0903.0614.pdf for the case $m=n$ with interest in the asymptotic behavior of the smallest singular value for large $n$.

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