arXiv subjects

Pierre Youssef

Publications and source records attributed to Pierre Youssef.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2022

Sharp Poincaré and log-Sobolev inequalities for the switch chain on regular bipartite graphs

Consider the switch chain on the set of $d$-regular bipartite graphs on $n$ vertices with $3\leq d\leq n^{c}$, for a small universal constant $c>0$. We prove that the chain satisfies a Poincaré inequality with a constant of order $O(nd)$; moreover, when $d$ is fixed, we establish a log-Sobolev inequality for the chain with a constant of order $O_d(n\log n)$. We show that both results are optimal. The Poincaré inequality implies that in the regime $3\leq d\leq n^c$ the mixing time of the switch chain is at most $O\big((nd)^2 \log(nd)\big)$, improving on the previously known bound $O\big((nd)^{13} \log(nd)\big)$ due to Kannan, Tetali and Vempala and $O\big(n^7d^{18} \log(nd)\big)$ obtained by Dyer et al. The log-Sobolev inequality that we establish for constant $d$ implies a bound $O(n\log^2 n)$ on the mixing time of the chain which, up to the $\log n$ factor, captures a conjectured optimal bound. Our proof strategy relies on building, for any fixed function on the set of $d$-regular bipartite simple graphs, an appropriate extension to a function on the set of multigraphs given by the configuration model. We then establish a comparison procedure with the well studied random transposition model in order to obtain the corresponding functional inequalities. While our method falls into a rich class of comparison techniques for Markov chains on different state spaces, the crucial feature of the method - dealing with chains with a large distortion between their stationary measures - is a novel addition to the theory.

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arXiv2020

Matrix Poincaré inequalities and concentration

We show that any probability measure satisfying a Matrix Poincaré inequality with respect to some reversible Markov generator satisfies an exponential matrix concentration inequality depending on the associated matrix carré du champ operator. This extends to the matrix setting a classical phenomenon in the scalar case. Moreover, the proof gives rise to new matrix trace inequalities which could be of independent interest. We then apply this general fact by establishing matrix Poincaré inequalities to derive matrix concentration inequalities for Gaussian measures, product measures and for Strong Rayleigh measures. The latter represents the first instance of matrix concentration for general matrix functions of negatively dependent random variables.

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arXiv2019

Outliers in spectrum of sparse Wigner matrices

In this paper, we study the effect of sparsity on the appearance of outliers in the semi-circular law. Let $(W_n)_{n=1}^\infty$ be a sequence of random symmetric matrices such that each $W_n$ is $n\times n$ with i.i.d entries above and on the main diagonal equidistributed with the product $b_nξ$, where $ξ$ is a real centered uniformly bounded random variable of unit variance and $b_n$ is an independent Bernoulli random variable with a probability of success $p_n$. Assuming that $\lim\limits_{n\to\infty}n p_n=\infty$, we show that for the random sequence $(ρ_n)_{n=1}^\infty$ given by $$ρ_n:=θ_n+\frac{n p_n}{θ_n},\quad θ_n:=\sqrt{\max\big(\max\limits_{i\leq n}\|{\rm Row_i}(W_n)\|_2^2-np_n,n p_n\big)},$$ the ratio $\frac{\|W_n\|}{ρ_n}$ converges to one in probability. A non-centered counterpart of the theorem allows to obtain asymptotic expressions for eigenvalues of the Erdős--Renyi graphs, which were unknown in the regime $n p_n=Θ(\log n)$. In particular, denoting by $A_n$ the adjacency matrix of $\mathcal{G}(n,p_n)$ and by $λ_{|k|}(A_n)$ its $k$-th largest (by the absolute value) eigenvalue, under the assumptions $\lim\limits_{n\to\infty }n p_n=\infty$ and $\lim\limits_{n\to\infty}p_n=0$ we have: -(No non-trivial outliers) If $\liminf\frac{n p_n}{\log n}\geq\frac{1}{\log (4/e)}$ then for any fixed $k\geq2$, $\frac{|λ_{|k|}(A_n)|}{2\sqrt{n p_n}}$ converges to $1$ in probability. -(Outliers) If $\limsup\frac{n p_n}{\log n}<\frac{1}{\log (4/e)}$ then there is $\varepsilon>0$ such that for any $k\in\mathbb{N}$, we have $\lim\limits_{n\to\infty}\mathbb{P}\Big\{\frac{|λ_{|k|}(A_n)|}{2\sqrt{n p_n}}>1+\varepsilon\Big\}=1$. On a conceptual level, our result highlights similarities in appearance of outliers in spectrum of sparse matrices and the so-called BBP phase transition phenomenon in deformed Wigner matrices.

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arXiv2018

Structure of eigenvectors of random regular digraphs

Let $d$ and $n$ be integers satisfying $C\leq d\leq \exp(c\sqrt{\ln n})$ for some universal constants $c, C>0$, and let $z\in \mathbb{C}$. Denote by $M$ the adjacency matrix of a random $d$-regular directed graph on $n$ vertices. In this paper, we study the structure of the kernel of submatrices of $M-z\,{\rm Id}$, formed by removing a subset of rows. We show that with large probability the kernel consists of two non-intersecting types of vectors, which we call very steep and gradual with many levels. As a corollary, we show, in particular, that every eigenvector of $M$, except for constant multiples of $(1,1,\dots,1)$, possesses a weak delocalization property: its level sets have cardinality less than $Cn\ln^2 d/\ln n$. For a large constant $d$ this provides a principally new structural information on eigenvectors, implying that the number of their level sets grows to infinity with $n$. As a key technical ingredient of our proofs we introduce a decomposition of $\mathbb{C}^n$ into vectors of different degrees of `structuredness', which is an alternative to the decomposition based on the least common denominator in the regime when the underlying random matrix is very sparse.

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arXiv2018

The dimension-free structure of nonhomogeneous random matrices

Let $X$ be a symmetric random matrix with independent but non-identically distributed centered Gaussian entries. We show that $$ \mathbf{E}\|X\|_{S_p} \asymp \mathbf{E}\Bigg[ \Bigg(\sum_i\Bigg(\sum_j X_{ij}^2\Bigg)^{p/2}\Bigg)^{1/p} \Bigg] $$ for any $2\le p\le\infty$, where $S_p$ denotes the $p$-Schatten class and the constants are universal. The right-hand side admits an explicit expression in terms of the variances of the matrix entries. This settles, in the case $p=\infty$, a conjecture of the first author, and provides a complete characterization of the class of infinite matrices with independent Gaussian entries that define bounded operators on $\ell_2$. Along the way, we obtain optimal dimension-free bounds on the moments $(\mathbf{E}\|X\|_{S_p}^p)^{1/p}$ that are of independent interest. We develop further extensions to non-symmetric matrices and to nonasymptotic moment and norm estimates for matrices with non-Gaussian entries that arise, for example, in the study of random graphs and in applied mathematics.

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arXiv2018

The rank of random regular digraphs of constant degree

Let $d$ be a fixed large integer. For any $n$ larger than $d$, let $A_n$ be the adjacency matrix of the random directed $d$-regular graph on $n$ vertices, with the uniform distribution. We show that $A_n$ has rank at least $n-1$ with probability going to one as $n$ goes to infinity. The proof combines the method of simple switchings and a recent result of the authors on delocalization of eigenvectors of $A_n$.

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arXiv2018

The smallest singular value of a shifted $d$-regular random square matrix

We derive a lower bound on the smallest singular value of a random $d$-regular matrix, that is, the adjacency matrix of a random $d$-regular directed graph. More precisely, let $C_1<d< c_1 n/\log^2 n$ and let $\mathcal{M}_{n,d}$ be the set of all $0/1$-valued square $n\times n$ matrices such that each row and each column of a matrix $M\in \mathcal{M}_{n,d}$ has exactly $d$ ones. Let $M$ be uniformly distributed on $\mathcal{M}_{n,d}$. Then the smallest singular value $s_{n} (M)$ of $M$ is greater than $c_2 n^{-6}$ with probability at least $1-C_2\log^2 d/\sqrt{d}$, where $c_1$, $c_2$, $C_1$, and $C_2$ are absolute positive constants independent of any other parameters.

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arXiv2018

Circular law for sparse random regular digraphs

Fix a constant $C\geq 1$ and let $d=d(n)$ satisfy $d\leq \ln^{C} n$ for every large integer $n$. Denote by $A_n$ the adjacency matrix of a uniform random directed $d$-regular graph on $n$ vertices. We show that, as long as $d\to\infty$ with $n$, the empirical spectral distribution of appropriately rescaled matrix $A_n$ converges weakly in probability to the circular law. This result, together with an earlier work of Cook, completely settles the problem of weak convergence of the empirical distribution in directed $d$-regular setting with the degree tending to infinity. As a crucial element of our proof, we develop a technique of bounding intermediate singular values of $A_n$ based on studying random normals to rowspaces and on constructing a product structure to deal with the lack of independence between the matrix entries.

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arXiv2017

Approximating matrices and convex bodies through Kadison-Singer

We show that any $n\times m$ matrix $A$ can be approximated in operator norm by a submatrix with a number of columns of order the stable rank of $A$. This improves on existing results by removing an extra logarithmic factor in the size of the extracted matrix. Our proof uses the recent solution of the Kadison-Singer problem. We also develop a sort of tensorization technique to deal with constraint approximation problems. As an application, we provide a sparsification result with equal weights and an optimal approximate John's decomposition for non-symmetric convex bodies. This enables us to show that any convex body in $\mathbb{R}^n$ is arbitrary close to another one having $O(n)$ contact points and fills the gap left in the literature after the results of Rudelson and Srivastava by completely answering the problem. As a consequence, we also show that the method developed by Guédon, Gordon and Meyer to establish the isomorphic Dvoretzky theorem yields to the best known result once we inject our improvements.

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arXiv2016

Restricted invertibility revisited

Suppose that $m,n\in \mathbb{N}$ and that $A:\mathbb{R}^m\to \mathbb{R}^n$ is a linear operator. It is shown here that if $k,r\in \mathbb{N}$ satisfy $k<r\le \mathrm{\bf rank(A)}$ then there exists a subset $σ\subseteq \{1,\ldots,m\}$ with $|σ|=k$ such that the restriction of $A$ to $\mathbb{R}^σ\subseteq \mathbb{R}^m$ is invertible, and moreover the operator norm of the inverse $A^{-1}:A(\mathbb{R}^σ)\to \mathbb{R}^m$ is at most a constant multiple of the quantity $\sqrt{mr/((r-k)\sum_{i=r}^m \mathsf{s}_i(A)^2)}$, where $\mathsf{s}_1(A)\geqslant\ldots\geqslant \mathsf{s}_m(A)$ are the singular values of $A$. This improves over a series of works, starting from the seminal Bourgain--Tzafriri Restricted Invertibility Principle, through the works of Vershynin, Spielman--Srivastava and Marcus--Spielman--Srivastava. In particular, this directly implies an improved restricted invertibility principle in terms of Schatten--von Neumann norms.

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arXiv2016

The spectral gap of dense random regular graphs

For any $α\in (0,1)$ and any $n^α\leq d\leq n/2$, we show that $λ(G)\leq C_α\sqrt{d}$ with probability at least $1-\frac{1}{n}$, where $G$ is the uniform random $d$-regular graph on $n$ vertices, $λ(G)$ denotes its second largest eigenvalue (in absolute value) and $C_α$ is a constant depending only on $α$. Combined with earlier results in this direction covering the case of sparse random graphs, this completely settles the problem of estimating the magnitude of $λ(G)$, up to a multiplicative constant, for all values of $n$ and $d$, confirming a conjecture of Vu. The result is obtained as a consequence of an estimate for the second largest singular value of adjacency matrices of random {\it directed} graphs with predefined degree sequences. As the main technical tool, we prove a concentration inequality for arbitrary linear forms on the space of matrices, where the probability measure is induced by the adjacency matrix of a random directed graph with prescribed degree sequences. The proof is a non-trivial application of the Freedman inequality for martingales, combined with boots-trapping and tensorization arguments. Our method bears considerable differences compared to the approach used by Broder, Frieze, Suen and Upfal (1999) who established the upper bound for $λ(G)$ for $d=o(\sqrt{n})$, and to the argument of Cook, Goldstein and Johnson (2015) who derived a concentration inequality for linear forms and estimated $λ(G)$ in the range $d= O(n^{2/3})$ using size-biased couplings.

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arXiv2016

On the norm of a random jointly exchangeable matrix

In this note, we show that the norm of an $n\times n$ random jointly exchangeable matrix with zero diagonal can be estimated in terms of the norm of its $n/2\times n/2$ submatrix located in the top right corner. As a consequence, we prove a relation between the second largest singular values of a random matrix with constant row and column sums and its top right $n/2\times n/2$ submatrix. The result has an application to estimating the spectral gap of random undirected $d$-regular graphs in terms of the second singular value of {\it directed} random graphs with predefined degree sequences.

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arXiv2016

Adjacency matrices of random digraphs: singularity and anti-concentration

Let ${\mathcal D}_{n,d}$ be the set of all $d$-regular directed graphs on $n$ vertices. Let $G$ be a graph chosen uniformly at random from ${\mathcal D}_{n,d}$ and $M$ be its adjacency matrix. We show that $M$ is invertible with probability at least $1-C\ln^{3} d/\sqrt{d}$ for $C\leq d\leq cn/\ln^2 n$, where $c, C$ are positive absolute constants. To this end, we establish a few properties of $d$-regular directed graphs. One of them, a Littlewood-Offord type anti-concentration property, is of independent interest. Let $J$ be a subset of vertices of $G$ with $|J|\approx n/d$. Let $δ_i$ be the indicator of the event that the vertex $i$ is connected to $J$ and define $δ= (δ_1, δ_2, ..., δ_n)\in \{0, 1\}^n$. Then for every $v\in\{0,1\}^n$ the probability that $δ=v$ is exponentially small. This property holds even if a part of the graph is "frozen".

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arXiv2015

Extracting a basis with fixed block inside a matrix

Given $U$ an $n\times m$ matrix of rank $n$ and $V$ block of columns inside $U$, we consider the problem of extracting a block of columns of rank $n$ which minimize the Hilbert-Schmidt norm of the inverse while preserving the block $V$. This generalizes a previous result of Gluskin-Olevskii, and improves the estimates when given a "good" block $V$.

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arXiv2015

When does a discrete-time random walk in $\mathbb{R}^n$ absorb the origin into its convex hull?

We connect this question to a problem of estimating the probability that the image of certain random matrices does not intersect with a subset of the unit sphere $\mathbb{S}^{n-1}$. In this way, the case of a discretized Brownian motion is related to Gordon's escape theorem dealing with standard Gaussian matrices. The approach allows us to prove that with high probability, the $π/2$-covering time of certain random walks on $\mathbb{S}^{n-1}$ is of order $n$. For certain spherical simplices on $\mathbb{S}^{n-1}$, we extend the "escape" phenomenon to a broad class of random matrices; as an application, we show that $e^{Cn}$ steps are sufficient for the standard walk on $\mathbb{Z}^n$ to absorb the origin into its convex hull with a high probability.

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arXiv2015

Bernstein type inequality for a class of dependent random matrices

In this paper we obtain a Bernstein type inequality for the sum of self-adjoint centered and geometrically absolutely regular random matrices with bounded largest eigenvalue. This inequality can be viewed as an extension to the matrix setting of the Bernstein-type inequality obtained by Merlevède et al. (2009) in the context of real-valued bounded random variables that are geometrically absolutely regular. The proofs rely on decoupling the Laplace transform of a sum on a Cantor-like set of random matrices.

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arXiv2015

Minimax of an n-dimensional Brownian motion

For some absolute constants $c$, $n_0$ and any $n\geq n_0$, we show that with probability close to one the convex hull of the $n$-dimensional Brownian motion ${\rm conv}\{BM_n(t):\, t\in[1,2^{cn}]\}$ does not contain the origin. The result can be interpreted as an estimate of the minimax of the Gaussian process $\{ \langle \bar{u},BM_n(t)\rangle,\, \bar{u}\in S^{n-1},\, t\in [1,2^{cn}]\}$.

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arXiv2013

Estimating the covariance of random matrices

We extend to the matrix setting a recent result of Srivastava-Vershynin about estimating the covariance matrix of a random vector. The result can be in- terpreted as a quantified version of the law of large numbers for positive semi-definite matrices which verify some regularity assumption. Beside giving examples, we dis- cuss the notion of log-concave matrices and give estimates on the smallest and largest eigenvalues of a sum of such matrices.

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