It was conjectured in the early 1950¡¯s that the empirical spectral distribution (ESD) of an $n \times n$ matrix whose entries are independent and identically distributed with mean zero and variance one, normalized by a factor of $\frac{1}{\sqrt{n}}$, converges to the uniform distribution over the unit disk on the complex plane, which is called the circular law. The goal of this thesis is to prove the so called Replacement Principle introduced by Tao and Vu which is a crucial step in their recent proof of the circular law in full generality. It gives a general criterion for the difference of the ESDs of two normalised random matrices $\frac{1}{\sqrt{n}}A_n$, $\frac{1}{\sqrt{n}}B_n$ to converge to 0. / Thesis (Master, Mathematics & Statistics) -- Queen's University, 2009-07-11 14:57:44.225

[pt] Nessa dissertação vamos abordar a famosa lei do Semicírculo de Wigner, que dá uma descrição do comportamento do espectro de autovalores de matrizes aleatórias simétricas. A demonstração combina ideias e técnicas de Combinatória e Probabilidade, incluindo uma analise cautelosa dos momentos da distribuição de autovalores. / [en] In this dissertation we will approach the famous Wigner s Semicircle Law, which gives a description of the behavior of the eigenvalue spectrum of symmetric random matrices. The proof combines ideas and techniques from Combinatorics and Probability, including a careful analysis of the moments of the eigenvalue distribution.