In this paper, we study limiting laws and consistent estimation criteria for the extreme eigenvalues in a spiked covariance model of dimension $p$. Firstly, for fixed $p$, we propose a generalized estimation criterion that can consistently estimate, $k$, the number of spiked eigenvalues. Compared with the existing literature, we show that consistency can be achieved under weaker conditions on the penalty term. Next, allowing both $p$ and $k$ to diverge, we derive limiting distributions of the spiked sample eigenvalues using random matrix theory techniques. Notably, our results do not require the spiked eigenvalues to be uniformly bounded from above or tending to infinity, as have been assumed in the existing literature. Based on the above derived results, we formulate a generalized estimation criterion and show that it can consistently estimate $k$, while $k$ can be fixed or grow at an order of $k=o(n^{1/3})$. We further show that the results in our work continue to hold under a general population distribution without assuming normality. The efficacy of the proposed estimation criteria is illustrated through comparative simulation studies.

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