Spectra of Overlapping Wishart Matrices and the Gaussian Free Field

Abstract: Consider a doubly-infinite array of iid centered variables with moment conditions, from which one can extract a finite number of rectangular, overlapping submatrices, and form the corresponding Wishart matrices. We show that under basic smoothness assumptions, centered linear eigenstatistics of such matrices converge jointly to a Gaussian vector with an interesting covariance structure. This structure, which is similar to those appearing in work of Borodin, Borodin and Gorin, and Johnson and Pal can be described in terms of the height function, and leads to a connection with the Gaussian Free Field on the upper half-plane. Finally, we generalize our results from univariate polynomials to a special class of planar functions.