Delocalization of Two-Dimensional Random Band Matrices

Abstract: We study a random band matrix $H=(H_{xy}){x,y}$ of dimension $N\times N$ with mean-zero complex Gaussian entries, where $x,y$ belong to the discrete torus $(\mathbb{Z}/\sqrt{N}\mathbb{Z})^{2}$. The variance profile $\mathbb{E}|H{xy}|^{2}=S_{xy}$ vanishes when the distance between $x,y$ is larger than some band-width parameter $W$ depending on $N$. We show that if the band-width satisfies $W\geq N^{\mathfrak{c}}$ for some $\mathfrak{c}>0$, then in the large-$N$ limit, we have the following results. The first result is a local semicircle law in the bulk down to scales $N^{-1+\varepsilon}$. The second is delocalization of bulk eigenvectors. The third is a quantum unique ergodicity for bulk eigenvectors. The fourth is universality of local bulk eigenvalue statistics. The fifth is a quantum diffusion profile for the associated $T$ matrix. Our method is based on embedding $H$ inside a matrix Brownian motion $H_{t}$ as done in [Dubova-Yang '24] and [Yau-Yin '25] for band matrices on the one-dimensional torus. In this paper, the key additional ingredient in our analysis of $H_{t}$ is a new CLT-type estimate for polynomials in the entries of the resolvent of $H_{t}$.