The moduli space of twisted Laplacians and random matrix theory

Rudnick recently proved that the spectral number variance for the Laplacian of a large compact hyperbolic surface converges, in a certain scaling limit and when averaged with respect to the Weil–Petersson measure on moduli space, to the number variance of the Gaussian Orthogonal Ensemble of random matrix theory. In this article we extend Rudnick’s approach to show convergence to the Gaussian Unitary Ensemble for twisted Laplacians that break time-reversal symmetry, and to the Gaussian Symplectic Ensemble for Dirac operators. This addresses a question of Naud, who obtained analogous results for twisted Laplacians on high degree random covers of a fixed compact surface.