On Solving Asymmetric Diagonally Dominant Linear Systems in Sublinear Time

Abstract

We initiate a study of solving a row/column diagonally dominant (RDD/CDD) linear system $Mx=b$ in sublinear time, with the goal of estimating $t^{\top}x^*$ for a given vector $t\in R^n$ and a specific solution $x^*$. This setting naturally generalizes the study of sublinear-time solvers for symmetric diagonally dominant (SDD) systems [AKP19] to the asymmetric case. Our first contributions are characterizations of the problem's mathematical structure. We express a solution $x^*$ via a Neumann series, prove its convergence, and upper bound the truncation error on this series through a novel quantity of $M$, termed the maximum $p$-norm gap. This quantity generalizes the spectral gap of symmetric matrices and captures how the structure of $M$ governs the problem's computational difficulty. For systems with bounded maximum $p$-norm gap, we develop a collection of algorithmic results for locally approximating $t^{\top}x^*$ under various scenarios and error measures. We derive these results by adapting the techniques of random-walk sampling, local push, and their bidirectional combination, which have proved powerful for special cases of solving RDD/CDD systems, particularly estimating PageRank and effective resistance on graphs. Our general framework yields deeper insights, extended results, and improved complexity bounds for these problems. Notably, our perspective provides a unified understanding of Forward Push and Backward Push, two fundamental approaches for estimating random-walk probabilities on graphs. Our framework also inherits the hardness results for sublinear-time SDD solvers and local PageRank computation, establishing lower bounds on the maximum $p$-norm gap or the accuracy parameter. We hope that our work opens the door for further study into sublinear solvers, local graph algorithms, and directed spectral graph theory.