Universal distribution of Lyapunov exponents for products of Ginibre matrices

Abstract: Starting from exact analytical results on singular values and complex eigenvalues of products of independent Gaussian complex random $N\times N$ matrices also called Ginibre ensemble we rederive the Lyapunov exponents for an infinite product. We show that for a large number $t$ of product matrices the distribution of each Lyapunov exponent is normal and compute its $t$-dependent variance as well as corrections in a $1/t$ expansion. Originally Lyapunov exponents are defined for singular values of the product matrix that represents a linear time evolution. Surprisingly a similar construction for the moduli of the complex eigenvalues yields the very same exponents and normal distributions to leading order. We discuss a general mechanism for $2\times 2$ matrices why the singular values and the radii of complex eigenvalues collapse onto the same value in the large-$t$ limit. Thereby we rederive Newman's triangular law which has a simple interpretation as the radial density of complex eigenvalues in the circular law and study the commutativity of the two limits $t\to\infty$ and $N\to\infty$ on the global and the local scale. As a mathematical byproduct we show that a particular asymptotic expansion of a Meijer G-function with large index leads to a Gaussian.