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Gaussian fluctuations for linear spectral statistics of large random covariance matrices

Consider a $N\times n$ matrix $Σ_n=\frac{1}{\sqrt{n}}R_n^{1/2}X_n$, where $R_n$ is a nonnegative definite Hermitian matrix and $X_n$ is a random matrix with i.i.d. real or complex standardized entries. The fluctuations of the linear statistics of the eigenvalues \[\operatorname {Trace}f \bigl(Σ_nΣ_n^*\bigr)=\sum_{i=1}^Nf(λ_i),\qquad (λ_i)\ eigenvalues\ of\ Σ_nΣ_n^*,\] are shown to be Gaussian, in the regime where both dimensions of matrix $Σ_n$ go to infinity at the same pace and in the case where $f$ is of class $C^3$, that is, has three continuous derivatives. The main improvements with respect to Bai and Silverstein's CLT [Ann. Probab. 32 (2004) 553-605] are twofold: First, we consider general entries with finite fourth moment, but whose fourth cumulant is nonnull, that is, whose fourth moment may differ from the moment of a (real or complex) Gaussian random variable. As a consequence, extra terms proportional to $ \vert \mathcal{V}\vert ^2=\bigl|\mathbb{E}\bigl(X_{11}^n\bigr) ^2\bigr|^2$ and $κ=\mathbb{E}\bigl \vert X_{11}^n\bigr \vert ^4-\vert {\mathcal{V}}\vert ^2-2$ appear in the limiting variance and in the limiting bias, which not only depend on the spectrum of matrix $R_n$ but also on its eigenvectors. Second, we relax the analyticity assumption over $f$ by representing the linear statistics with the help of Helffer-Sjöstrand's formula. The CLT is expressed in terms of vanishing Lévy-Prohorov distance between the linear statistics' distribution and a Gaussian probability distribution, the mean and the variance of which depend upon $N$ and $n$ and may not converge.