Spiky Rank and Its Applications to Rigidity and Circuits

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Hambardzumyan, Lianna, Myasnikov, Konstantin, Riazanov, Artur, Shirley, Morgan, Shraibman, Adi
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
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author Hambardzumyan, Lianna
Myasnikov, Konstantin
Riazanov, Artur
Shirley, Morgan
Shraibman, Adi
author_facet Hambardzumyan, Lianna
Myasnikov, Konstantin
Riazanov, Artur
Shirley, Morgan
Shraibman, Adi
contents We introduce spiky rank, a new matrix parameter that enhances blocky rank by combining the combinatorial structure of the latter with linear-algebraic flexibility. A spiky matrix is block-structured with diagonal blocks that are arbitrary rank-one matrices, and the spiky rank of a matrix is the minimum number of such matrices required to express it as a sum. This measure extends blocky rank to real matrices and is more robust for problems with both combinatorial and algebraic character. Our conceptual contribution is as follows: we propose spiky rank as a well-behaved candidate matrix complexity measure and demonstrate its potential through applications. We show that large spiky rank implies high matrix rigidity, and that spiky rank lower bounds yield lower bounds for depth-2 ReLU circuits, the basic building blocks of neural networks. On the technical side, we establish tight bounds for random matrices and develop a framework for explicit lower bounds, applying it to Hamming distance matrices and spectral expanders. Finally, we relate spiky rank to other matrix parameters, including blocky rank, sparsity, and the $γ_2$-norm.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_23503
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Spiky Rank and Its Applications to Rigidity and Circuits
Hambardzumyan, Lianna
Myasnikov, Konstantin
Riazanov, Artur
Shirley, Morgan
Shraibman, Adi
Computational Complexity
Machine Learning
We introduce spiky rank, a new matrix parameter that enhances blocky rank by combining the combinatorial structure of the latter with linear-algebraic flexibility. A spiky matrix is block-structured with diagonal blocks that are arbitrary rank-one matrices, and the spiky rank of a matrix is the minimum number of such matrices required to express it as a sum. This measure extends blocky rank to real matrices and is more robust for problems with both combinatorial and algebraic character. Our conceptual contribution is as follows: we propose spiky rank as a well-behaved candidate matrix complexity measure and demonstrate its potential through applications. We show that large spiky rank implies high matrix rigidity, and that spiky rank lower bounds yield lower bounds for depth-2 ReLU circuits, the basic building blocks of neural networks. On the technical side, we establish tight bounds for random matrices and develop a framework for explicit lower bounds, applying it to Hamming distance matrices and spectral expanders. Finally, we relate spiky rank to other matrix parameters, including blocky rank, sparsity, and the $γ_2$-norm.
title Spiky Rank and Its Applications to Rigidity and Circuits
topic Computational Complexity
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.23503