Tail Bounds for Matrix Quadratic Forms and Bias Adjusted Spectral Clustering in Multi-layer Stochastic Block Models

We develop tail probability bounds for matrix linear combinations with matrix-valued coefficients and matrix-valued quadratic forms. These results extend well-known scalar case results such as the Hanson--Wright inequality, and matrix concentration inequalities such as the matrix Bernstein inequality. A key intermediate result is a deviation bound for matrix-valued $U$-statistics of order two and their independent sums. As an application of these probability tools in statistical inference, we establish the consistency of a novel bias-adjusted spectral clustering method in multi-layer stochastic block models with general signal structures.