Recently Marcus, Spielman and Srivastava gave a spectacular proof of a theorem which implies a positive solution to the Kadison-Singer problem via Weaver's $KS_r$ conjecture. We extend this theorem to the realm of hyperbolic polynomials and hyperbolicity cones, as well as to arbitrary ranks. We also sharpen the theorem by providing better bounds, which imply better bounds in Weaver's $KS_r$ conjecture for each $r>2$. For $r=2$ our bound agrees with Bownik et al.
We apply Srivastava's spectral sparsification technique to a vector balancing version of the Kadison-Singer problem. The result is a one-sided version of the conjectured solution.
We use the method of interlacing families of polynomials introduced to prove two theorems known to imply a positive solution to the Kadison--Singer problem. The first is Weaver's conjecture $KS_{2}$ \cite{weaver}, which is known to imply Kadison--Singer via a projection paving conjecture of Akemann and Anderson. The second is a formulation due to Casazza, et al., of Anderson's original paving conjecture(s), for which we are able to compute explicit paving bounds. The proof involves an analysis of the largest roots of a family of polynomials that we call the "mixed characteristic polynomials" o…
These lecture notes are meant to accompany two lectures given at the CDM 2016 conference, about the Kadison-Singer Problem. They are meant to complement the survey by the same authors (along with Spielman) which appeared at the 2014 ICM. In the first part of this survey we will introduce the Kadison-Singer problem from two perspectives ($C^*$ algebras and spectral graph theory) and present some examples showing where the difficulties in solving it lie. In the second part we will develop the framework of interlacing families of polynomials, and show how it is used to solve the problem. None of …
Marcus, Spielman, and Srivastava recently solved the Kadison-Singer problem by showing that if u_1, ..., u_m are column vectors in C^d such that \sum u_iu_i^* = I, then a set of indices S \subseteq {1, ..., m} can be chosen so that \sum_{i \in S} u_iu_i^* is approximately (1/2)I, with the approximation good in operator norm to order ε^{1/2} where ε= \max \|u_i\|^2. We extend their result to show that every linear combination of the matrices u_iu_i^* with coefficients in [0,1] can be approximated in operator norm to order ε^{1/8} by a matrix of the form \sum_{i \in S} u_iu_i^*.
We adapt the arguments of Marcus, Spielman and Srivastava in their proof of the Kadison-Singer problem to prove improved paving estimates. Working with Anderson's paving formulation of Kadison-Singer instead of Weaver's vector balancing version, we show that the machinery of interlacing polyomials due to Marcus, Spielman and Srivastava works in this setting as well. The relevant expected characteristic polynomials turn out to be related to the so called "mixed determinants" that have been carefully studied by Borcea and Branden. This technique allows us to show that any projection with diagona…
We survey the techniques used in our recent resolution of the Kadison-Singer problem and proof of existence of Ramanujan Graphs of every degree: mixed characteristic polynomials and the method of interlacing families of polynomials. To demonstrate the method of interlacing families of polynomials, we give a simple proof of Bourgain and Tzafriri's restricted invertibility principle in the isotropic case.
Marcus, Spielman, and Srivastava in their seminal work \cite{MSS13} resolved the Kadison-Singer conjecture by proving that for any set of finitely supported independently distributed random vectors $v_1,\dots, v_n$ which have "small" expected squared norm and are in isotropic position (in expectation), there is a positive probability that the sum $\sum v_i v_i^\intercal$ has small spectral norm. Their proof crucially employs real stability of polynomials which is the natural generalization of real-rootedness to multivariate polynomials. Strongly Rayleigh distributions are families of probabili…
Akemann and Weaver showed Lyapunov-type theorem for rank one positive semidefinite matrices which is an extension of Weaver's KS$_2$ conjecture that was proven by Marcus, Spielman, and Srivastava in their breakthrough solution of the Kadison-Singer problem. They conjectured that a similar result holds for higher rank matrices. We prove the conjecture of Akemann and Weaver by establishing Lyapunov-type theorem for trace class operators. In the process we prove a matrix discrepancy result for sums of hermitian matrices. This extends rank one result of Kyng, Luh, and Song who established an impro…
Anderson's paving conjecture, now known to hold due to the resolution of the Kadison-Singer problem asserts that every zero diagonal Hermitian matrix admits non-trivial pavings with dimension independent bounds. In this paper, we develop a technique extending the arguments of Marcus, Spielman and Srivastava in their solution of the Kadison-Singer problem to show the existence of non-trivial pavings for collections of matrices. We show that given zero diagonal Hermitian contractions $A^{(1)}, \cdots, A^{(k)} \in M_n(\mathbb{C})$ and $ε> 0$, one may find a paving $X_1 \amalg \cdots \amalg X_r = …
In this paper, pursuing the same line of ideas in the proof of an old longstanding open conjecture of \emph{Kadison-Singer} , we introduce a key lemma which we call it the interlacing lemma which indicates a necessary condition for having a real root for sums of polynomials with (at least) one real root. Then, as an immediate application of this simple but potentially useful lemma we characterize several class of graphs which have only clique roots. Finally, we conclude our paper with several interesting open problems and conjectures for interested readers.
Recently Marcus, Spielman and Srivastava gave a spectacular proof of a theorem which implies a positive solution to the Kadison-Singer problem. We extend (and slightly sharpen) this theorem to the realm of hyperbolic polynomials. A benefit of the extension is that the proof becomes coherent in its general form, and fits naturally in the theory of hyperbolic polynomials. We also study the sharpness of the bound in the theorem, and in the final section we describe how the hyperbolic Marcus-Spielman-Srivastava theorem may be interpreted in terms of strong Rayleigh measures. We use this to derive …
Recently Marcus, Spielman and Srivastava proved Weaver's ${\rm{KS}}_r$ conjecture, which gives a positive solution to the Kadison-Singer problem. Cohen and Brändén independently extended this result to obtain the arbitrary-rank version of Weaver's ${\rm{KS}}_r$ conjecture. In this paper, we present a new bound in Weaver's ${\rm{KS}}_r$ conjecture for the arbitrary-rank case. To do that, we introduce the definition of $(k,m)$-characteristic polynomials and employ it to improve the previous estimate on the largest root of the mixed characteristic polynomials. For the rank-one case, our bound agr…
Since the celebrated resolution of Kadison-Singer (via the Paving Conjecture) by Marcus, Spielman, and Srivastava, much study has been devoted to further understanding and generalizing the techniques of their proof. Specifically, their barrier method was crucial to achieving the required polynomial root bounds on the finite free convolution. But unfortunately this method required individual analysis for each usage, and the existence of a larger encapsulating framework is an important open question. In this paper, we make steps toward such a framework by generalizing their root bound to all dif…
We study the problem of approximating the largest root of a real-rooted polynomial of degree $n$ using its top $k$ coefficients and give nearly matching upper and lower bounds. We present algorithms with running time polynomial in $k$ that use the top $k$ coefficients to approximate the maximum root within a factor of $n^{1/k}$ and $1+O(\tfrac{\log n}{k})^2$ when $k\leq \log n$ and $k>\log n$ respectively. We also prove corresponding information-theoretic lower bounds of $n^{Ω(1/k)}$ and $1+Ω\left(\frac{\log \frac{2n}{k}}{k}\right)^2$, and show strong lower bounds for noisy version of the prob…