Melonic dominance and the largest eigenvalue of a large random tensor

Abstract: We consider a Gaussian rotationally invariant ensemble of random real totally symmetric tensors with independent normally distributed entries, and estimate the largest eigenvalue of a typical tensor in this ensemble by examining the rate of growth of a random initial vector under successive applications of a nonlinear map defined by the random tensor. In the limit of a large number of dimensions, we observe that a simple form of melonic dominance holds, and the quantity we study is effectively determined by a single Feynman diagram arising from the Gaussian average over the tensor components. This computation suggests that the largest tensor eigenvalue in our ensemble in the limit of a large number of dimensions is proportional to the square root of the number of dimensions, as it is for random real symmetric matrices.