Spectral approximation for the separable covariance mixture model

Abstract

This paper introduces the separable covariance mixture model, which assumes a data-matrix $Y$ to be of the form $$ \sum\limits_{r=1}^R A_r X B_r $$ for one random $(d \times n)$-matrix $X$ with independent centered variance-one entries, and for two families of deterministic matrices $A_1,\dots,A_R \in \mathbb{C}^{d \times d}$ and $B_1,\dots,B_R \in \mathbb{C}^{n \times n}$. Under certain assumptions, it is shown that the resolvents $(\frac{1}{n} Y Y^* - z \operatorname{Id}_d)^{-1}$ and $(\frac{1}{n} Y^* Y - z \operatorname{Id}_n)^{-1}$ respectively approximate the deterministic matrices $$ -\frac{1}{z}\Big( \operatorname{Id}_d + \sum\limits_{r,s=1}^R \delta^{(B)}_{r,s}(z) A_{r} A_{s}^* \Big)^{-1} \ \ \text{ and } \ \ -\frac{1}{z}\Big( \operatorname{Id}_n + \sum\limits_{r,s=1}^R \delta^{(A)}_{r,s}(z) B_{s}^*B_{r} \Big)^{-1} \ , $$ where $\delta^{(A)}, \delta^{(B)} \in \mathbb{C}^{R \times R}$ are uniquely defined solutions to a certain dual system of equations. The results are non-asymptotic and do not require simultaneous diagonalizability of the families $(A_r)_{r \leq R}$ or $(B_r)_{r \leq R}$, as was required in previous works such as [Hazarika and Paul (2025)] or [Mei et al. (2023)]. An asymptotic application, which describes the limiting spectral distribution of the sample covariance matrix analogues $\frac{1}{n} Y Y^*$ or $\frac{1}{n} Y^* Y$, is included.