We consider a general class of symmetric or Hermitian random band matrices $H=(h_{xy})_{x,y \in \llbracket 1,N\rrbracket^d}$ in any dimension $d\ge 1$, where the entries are independent, centered random variables with variances $s_{xy}=\mathbb E|h_{xy}|^2$. We assume that $s_{xy}$ vanishes if $|x-y|$ exceeds the band width $W$, and we are interested in the mesoscopic scale with $1\ll W\ll N$. Define the {\it{generalized resolvent}} of $H$ as $G(H,Z):=(H - Z)^{-1}$, where $Z$ is a deterministic diagonal matrix with entries $Z_{xx}\in \mathbb C_+$ for all $x$. Then we establish a precise high-probability bound on certain averages of polynomials of the resolvent entries. As an application of this fluctuation averaging result, we give a self-contained proof for the delocalization of random band matrices in dimensions $d\ge 2$. More precisely, for any fixed $d\ge 2$, we prove that the bulk eigenvectors of $H$ are delocalized in certain averaged sense if $N\le W^{1+\frac{d}{2}}$. This improves the corresponding results in \cite{HeMa2018} under the assumption $N\ll W^{1+\frac{d}{d+1}}$, and in \cite{ErdKno2013,ErdKno2011} under the assumption $N\ll W^{1+\frac{d}{6}}$. For 1D random band matrices, our fluctuation averaging result was used in \cite{PartII,PartI} to prove the delocalization conjecture and bulk universality for random band matrices with $N\ll W^{4/3}$.

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This is the second part of a three part series of papers. In this paper, we consider a general class of $N\times N$ random band matrices $H=(H_{ij})$ whose entries are centered random variables, independent up to a symmetry constraint. We assume that the variances $\mathbb E |H_{ij}|^2$ form a band matrix with typical band width $1\ll W\ll N$. We consider the generalized resolvent of $H$ defined as $G(Z):=(H - Z)^{-1}$, where $Z$ is a deterministic diagonal matrix such that $Z_{ij}=\left(z\mathds{1}_{1\le i \le W}+\wt z\mathds{1}_{ i > W} \right) \delta_{ij}$, with two distinct spectral parameters $z\in \mathbb C_+:=\{z\in \mathbb C:\im z>0\}$ and $\wt z\in \mathbb C_+\cup \mathbb R$. In this paper, we prove a sharp bound for the local law of the generalized resolvent $G$ for $W\gg N^{3/4}$. This bound is a key input for the proof of delocalization and bulk universality of random band matrices in [2]. Our proof depends on a fluctuations averaging bound on certain averages of polynomials in the resolvent entries, which will be proved in [10].

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We establish necessary and sufficient conditions for consistent root reconstruction in continuous-time Markov models with countable state space on bounded-height trees. Here a root state estimator is said to be consistent if the probability that it returns to the true root state converges to 1 as the number of leaves tends to infinity. We also derive quantitative bounds on the error of reconstruction. Our results answer a question of Gascuel and Steel [GS10] and have implications for ancestral sequence reconstruction in a classical evolutionary model of nucleotide insertion and deletion [TKF91].