Spectrum of a Feinberg-Zee random hopping matrix (Q421852)

The authors consider the almost sure spectrum of a special class of non-self-adjoint, random, tridiagonal matrices that are called random hopping matrices and were introduced by \textit{J. Feinberg} and \textit{A. Zee} [Phys. Rev. E 59, 6433--6443 (1999)]. They generalize and reprove a result from \textit{S. N. Chandler-Wilde}, \textit{R. Chonchaiya} and \textit{M. Lindner} [Oper. Matrices 5, No. 4, 633--648 (2011; Zbl 1301.47050)] which says that the spectrum of a random hopping matrix almost surely contains the unit disc. For the spectra of a more general class of such matrices they first show that they contain a hole around the origin which is no larger then a specific set \(H\). Then they prove that the part of the unit disc without the set \(H\) is almost surely contained in the spectrum.