Near instance optimality of the Lanczos method for Stieltjes and related matrix functions

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Author: Schweitzer, Marcel
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Schweitzer, Marcel
author_facet Schweitzer, Marcel
contents Polynomial Krylov subspace methods are among the most widely used methods for approximating $f(A)b$, the action of a matrix function on a vector, in particular when $A$ is large and sparse. When $A$ is Hermitian positive definite, the Lanczos method is the standard choice of Krylov method, and despite being very simplistic in nature, it often outperforms other, more sophisticated methods. In fact, one often observes that the error of the Lanczos method behaves almost exactly as the error of the best possible approximation from the Krylov space (which is in general not efficiently computable). However, theoretical guarantees for the deviation of the Lanczos error from the optimal error are mostly lacking so far (except for linear systems and a few other special cases). We prove a rigorous bound for this deviation when $f$ belongs to the important class of Stieltjes functions (which, e.g., includes inverse fractional powers as special cases) and a related class (which contains, e.g., the square root and the shifted logarithm), thus providing a \emph{near instance optimality} guarantee. While the constants in our bounds are likely not optimal, they greatly improve over the few results that are available in the literature and resemble the actual behavior much better.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_04427
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Near instance optimality of the Lanczos method for Stieltjes and related matrix functions
Schweitzer, Marcel
Numerical Analysis
65F60, 65F50, 65Q25
Polynomial Krylov subspace methods are among the most widely used methods for approximating $f(A)b$, the action of a matrix function on a vector, in particular when $A$ is large and sparse. When $A$ is Hermitian positive definite, the Lanczos method is the standard choice of Krylov method, and despite being very simplistic in nature, it often outperforms other, more sophisticated methods. In fact, one often observes that the error of the Lanczos method behaves almost exactly as the error of the best possible approximation from the Krylov space (which is in general not efficiently computable). However, theoretical guarantees for the deviation of the Lanczos error from the optimal error are mostly lacking so far (except for linear systems and a few other special cases). We prove a rigorous bound for this deviation when $f$ belongs to the important class of Stieltjes functions (which, e.g., includes inverse fractional powers as special cases) and a related class (which contains, e.g., the square root and the shifted logarithm), thus providing a \emph{near instance optimality} guarantee. While the constants in our bounds are likely not optimal, they greatly improve over the few results that are available in the literature and resemble the actual behavior much better.
title Near instance optimality of the Lanczos method for Stieltjes and related matrix functions
topic Numerical Analysis
65F60, 65F50, 65Q25
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.04427