An upper bound on the smallest singular value of a square random matrix

Abstract: Let $A = (a_{ij})$ be a square $n\times n$ matrix with i.i.d. zero mean and unit variance entries. Rudelson and Vershynin showed that the upper bound for a smallest singular value $s_n(A)$ is of order $n^{-\frac12}$ with probability close to one under additional assumption on entries of $A$ that $\mathbb{E}a^4_{11} < \infty$. We remove the assumption on the fourth moment and show the upper bound assuming only $\mathbb{E}a^2_{11} = 1.$