Tail Bounds on the Spectral Norm of Sub-Exponential Random Matrices

Let $X$ be an $n\times n$ symmetric random matrix with independent but non-identically distributed entries. The deviation inequalities of the spectral norm of $X$ with Gaussian entries have been obtained by using the standard concentration of Gaussian measure results. This paper establishes an upper tail bound of the spectral norm of $X$ with sub-Exponential entries. Our method relies upon a crucial ingredient of a novel chaining argument that essentially involves both the particular structure of the sets used for the chaining and the distribution of coordinates of a point on the unit sphere.