In this paper we prove the universality of covariance matrices of the form $H_{Ntimes N}={X}^{dagger}X$ where $X$ is an ${Mtimes N}$ rectangular matrix with independent real valued entries $x_{ij}$ satisfying $mathbb{E}x_{ij}=0$ and $mathbb{E}x^2_{ij}={frac{1}{M}}$, $N$, $Mto infty$. Furthermore it is assumed that these entries have sub-exponential tails or sufficiently high number of moments. We will study the asymptotics in the regime $N/M=d_Nin(0,infty),lim_{Ntoinfty}d_Nneq0,infty$. Our main result is the edge universality of the sample covariance matrix at both edges of the spectrum. In the case $lim_{Ntoinfty}d_N=1$, we only focus on the largest eigenvalue. Our proof is based on a novel version of the Green function comparison theorem for data matrices with dependent entries. En route to proving edge universality, we establish that the Stieltjes transform of the empirical eigenvalue distribution of $H$ is given by the Marcenko-Pastur law uniformly up to the edges of the spectrum with an error of order $(Neta)^{-1}$ where $eta$ is the imaginary part of the spectral parameter in the Stieltjes transform. Combining these results with existing techniques we also show bulk universality of covariance matrices. All our results hold for both real and complex valued entries.

The {\it{eigenvector empirical spectral distribution}} (VESD) is a useful tool in studying the limiting behavior of eigenvalues and eigenvectors of covariance matrices. In this paper, we study the convergence rate of the VESD of sample covariance matrices to the deformed Mar{\v c}enko-Pastur (MP) distribution. Consider sample covariance matrices of the form $\Sigma^{1/2} X X^* \Sigma^{1/2}$, where $X=(x_{ij})$ is an $M\times N$ random matrix whose entries are independent random variables with mean zero and variance $N^{-1}$, and $\Sigma$ is a deterministic positive-definite matrix. We prove that the Kolmogorov distance between the {\it{expected VESD}} and the deformed MP distribution is bounded by $N^{-1+\epsilon}$ for any fixed $\epsilon>0$, provided that the entries $\sqrt{N}x_{ij}$ have uniformly bounded 6th moments and $|N/M-1|\ge \tau$ for some constant $\tau>0$. This result improves the previous one obtained in [44], which gave the convergence rate $O(N^{-1/2})$ assuming $i.i.d.$ $X$ entries, bounded 10th moment, $\Sigma=I$ and $M<N$. Moreover, we also prove that under the finite $8$th moment assumption, the convergence rate of the VESD is $O(N^{-1/2+\epsilon})$ almost surely for any fixed $\epsilon>0$, which improves the previous bound $N^{-1/4+\epsilon}$ in [44].

In 1979, G. Parisi predicted a variational formula for the thermodynamic limit of the free energy in the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model and described the role played by its minimizer. This formula was verified in the seminal work of Talagrand and later generalized to the mixed p-spin models by Panchenko. In this paper, we prove that the minimizer in Parisi's formula is unique at any temperature and external field by establishing the strict convexity of the Parisi functional.