Robust test for independence in high dimensions

This article develops a new test based on Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients for total independence in high dimensions. The test is robust to the non normality and heavy tails of the data, which is a merit that is not shared by the existing tests in literature. Simulation results suggest that the new test performs well under several typical null and alternative hypotheses. Besides, we employ a real data set to illustrate the use of the new test.