Generic Features in the Spectral Decomposition of Correlation Matrices

Abstract

We show that correlation matrices with particular average and variance of the correlation coefficients have a notably restricted spectral structure. Applying geometric methods, we derive lower bounds for the largest eigenvalue and the alignment of the corresponding eigenvector. We explain how and to which extent, a distinctly large eigenvalue and an approximately diagonal eigenvector generically occur for specific correlation matrices independently of the correlation matrix dimension.