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Tracy-Widom Distribution for the Largest Eigenvalue of Real Sample Covariance Matrices with General Population

We consider sample covariance matrices of the form $\mathcal{Q}=(Σ^{1/2}X)(Σ^{1/2} X)^*$, where the sample $X$ is an $M\times N$ random matrix whose entries are real independent random variables with variance $1/N$ and where $Σ$ is an $M\times M$ positive-definite deterministic matrix. We analyze the asymptotic fluctuations of the largest rescaled eigenvalue of $\mathcal{Q}$ when both $M$ and $N$ tend to infinity with $N/M\to d\in(0,\infty)$. For a large class of populations $Σ$ in the sub-critical regime, we show that the distribution of the largest rescaled eigenvalue of $\mathcal{Q}$ is given by the type-1 Tracy-Widom distribution under the additional assumptions that (1) either the entries of $X$ are i.i.d. Gaussians or (2) that $Σ$ is diagonal and that the entries of $X$ have a subexponential decay.