  The statistical properties of the spectrum of the staggered Dirac operator in
an SU(2) lattice gauge theory are analyzed both in the bulk of the spectrum and
at the spectrum edge. Two commonly used statistics, the number variance and the
spectral rigidity, are investigated. While the spectral fluctuations at the
edge are suppressed to the same extent as in the bulk, the spectra are more
rigid at the edge. To study this effect, we introduce a microscopic unfolding
procedure to separate the variation of the microscopic spectral density from
the fluctuations. For the unfolded data, the number variance shows oscillations
of the same kind as before unfolding, and the average spectral rigidity becomes
larger than the one in the bulk. In addition, the short-range statistics at the
origin is studied. The lattice data are compared to predictions of chiral
random-matrix theory, and agreement with the chiral Gaussian Symplectic
Ensemble is found.
