Nearly-Linear Time Algorithms for Preconditioning and Solving Symmetric, Diagonally Dominant Linear Systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces randomized algorithms for efficiently solving symmetric, diagonally dominant linear systems, improving preconditioning techniques and enabling faster computation of approximate solutions and eigenvectors.

Contribution

It presents novel randomized algorithms for preconditioning and solving symmetric diagonally dominant systems with improved time complexity and practical efficiency.

Findings

Expected time for solving systems is nearly linear in the number of nonzero entries.

Constructed preconditioners significantly reduce the generalized condition number.

Specialized algorithms achieve efficient solutions for planar graph structures.

Abstract

We present a randomized algorithm that, on input a symmetric, weakly diagonally dominant n-by-n matrix A with m nonzero entries and an n-vector b, produces a y such that $\norm{y - \pinv{A} b}_{A} \leq \epsilon \norm{\pinv{A} b}_{A}$ in expected time $O (m \log^{c}n \log (1/\epsilon)),$ for some constant c. By applying this algorithm inside the inverse power method, we compute approximate Fiedler vectors in a similar amount of time. The algorithm applies subgraph preconditioners in a recursive fashion. These preconditioners improve upon the subgraph preconditioners first introduced by Vaidya (1990). For any symmetric, weakly diagonally-dominant matrix A with non-positive off-diagonal entries and $k \geq 1$, we construct in time $O (m \log^{c} n)$ a preconditioner B of A with at most $2 (n - 1) + O ((m/k) \log^{39} n)$ nonzero off-diagonal entries such that the finite generalized condition number $\kappa_{f} (A,B)$ is at most k, for some other constant c. In the special case when the nonzero structure of the matrix is planar the corresponding linear system solver runs in expected time $ O (n \log^{2} n + n \log n \ \log \log n \ \log (1/\epsilon))$. We hope that our introduction of algorithms of low asymptotic complexity will lead to the development of algorithms that are also fast in practice.