Smallest eigenvalue of large Hankel matrices at critical point: Comparing conjecture with parallelised computation

We propose a novel parallel numerical algorithm for calculating the smallest eigenvalues of highly ill-conditioned Hankel matrices. It is based on the LDLT decomposition and involves finding a k × k sub-matrix of the inverse of the original N × N Hankel matrix HN−1. The computation involves extremely high precision arithmetic, message passing interface, and shared memory parallelisation. We demonstrate that this approach achieves good scalability on a high performance computing cluster (HPCC) which constitutes a major improvement of the earlier approaches. We use this method to study a family of Hankel matrices generated by the weight w(x)=e−xβ, supported on [0, ∞) and β > 0. Such weight generates a Hankel determinant, a fundamental object in random matrix theory. In the situation where β > 1/2, the smallest eigenvalue tends to 0 exponentially fast. If β < 1/2, which is the situation where the classical moment problem is indeterminate, then the smallest eigenvalue is bounded from below by a positive number. If β=1/2, it is conjectured that the smallest eigenvalue tends to 0 algebraically, with a precise exponent. The algorithm run on the HPCC producing a fantastic match between the theoretical value of 2/π and the numerical result.