Cokernels of random $p$-adic orthogonal matrices and their linearizations

Source abstract

We study the linearization of the random $p$-adic orthogonal matrix model. Let $A_n$ and $B_n$ be Haar-random $n\times n$ special orthogonal and alternating matrices over $\mathbb{Z}_p$, respectively. For an odd prime $p$, we prove that $\mathrm{cok}(A_n-I_n)$ and $\mathrm{cok}(B_n)$ have the same limiting distribution as $n \to \infty$ through integers of the same parity. The two parity-dependent limits are interchanged for orthogonal matrices of determinant $-1$, while the full orthogonal group gives their equal mixture. For $p=2$, linearization does not preserve the limiting cokernel distribution, and we explicitly determine the limiting distributions for the special orthogonal model in terms of the spinor norm, which controls the parity of the $2$-adic valuation of the order of the torsion subgroup.