High-dimensional ridgeless least squares interpolation under spiked covariance structures

This paper investigates the asymptotic behavior of the out-of-sample prediction risk of the high-dimensional ridgeless least-squares estimator when the feature dimension $p$ and the sample size $n$ grow proportionally. We consider a generalized spiked population covariance model with multiple latent factors, where the number of spiked eigenvalues may remain finite or increase with $n$, and the spiked eigenvalues may be bounded or diverge at arbitrary rates. Beyond characterizing the impact of covariance spectra, we reveal a new mechanism underlying benign overfitting: the prediction behavior of ridgeless interpolation is fundamentally governed by the alignment between the regression coefficient $\boldsymbolβ$ and the spiked eigenspaces of the population covariance matrix. In particular, we show that the signal energy distributed along latent spike directions determines whether interpolation leads to benign, tempered, or catastrophic overfitting. Our theoretical framework establishes sharp prediction risk limits under minimal moment conditions, requiring only finite fourth moments rather than Gaussianity. We characterize how the number, strength, and geometric structure of the spikes jointly influence the double-descent phenomenon. These results provide a unified understanding of when latent covariance structures facilitate or hinder generalization in overparameterized regression.

Transfer Learning for Linear Discriminant Analysis with a Shared Classification Signal

This paper studies transfer learning for linear discriminant analysis in high-dimensional two-class classification. We consider one target domain and several source domains, where the mean difference in each domain is decomposed into a deterministic common component and a domain-specific random deviation. The common component represents a shared classification signal across domains, while the random deviation captures domain-specific heterogeneity. Under spiked covariance models, we derive deterministic limits for the target-domain Gaussian-calibrated error of weighted transfer classifiers under both homogeneous and heterogeneous covariance settings. These limits quantify the effects of the shared signal, domain-specific variation, dimension-to-sample-size ratios, and spike structures on transfer performance. They further lead to oracle transfer weights and consistent data-driven plug-in estimators. We also characterize the intercept bias induced by unbalanced target-domain class sample sizes and provide an asymptotically optimal correction.