In this paper, we establish the limit of empirical spectral distributions of quaternion sample covariance matrices. Motivated by Bai and Silverstein (Spectral analysis of large dimensional random matrices, Springer, New York, 2010) and Marčenko and Pastur (Matematicheskii Sb, 114:507–536, 1967), we can extend the results of the real or complex sample covariance matrix to the quaternion case. Suppose Xn=(xjk(n))p×n\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}
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\begin{document}$$\mathbf X_n = ({x_{jk}^{(n)}})_{p\times n}$$\end{document} is a quaternion random matrix. For each n\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}
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\begin{document}$$n$$\end{document}, the entries {xij(n)}\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}
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\begin{document}$$\{x_{ij}^{(n)}\}$$\end{document} are independent random quaternion variables with a common mean μ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}
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\begin{document}$$\mu $$\end{document} and variance σ2>0\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}
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\begin{document}$$\sigma ^2>0$$\end{document}. It is shown that the empirical spectral distribution of the quaternion sample covariance matrix Sn=n-1XnXn∗\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}
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\begin{document}$$\mathbf S_n=n^{-1}\mathbf X_n\mathbf X_n^*$$\end{document} converges to the Marčenko–Pastur law as p→∞\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}
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\begin{document}$$p\rightarrow \infty $$\end{document}, n→∞\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}
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\begin{document}$$n\rightarrow \infty $$\end{document} and p/n→y∈(0,+∞)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}
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\begin{document}$$p/n\rightarrow y\in (0,+\infty )$$\end{document}.