Extremal bounds for Gaussian trace estimation

Abstract

This work derives extremal tail bounds for the Gaussian trace estimator applied to a real symmetric matrix. We define a partial ordering on the eigenvalues, so that when a matrix has greater spectrum under this ordering, its estimator will have worse tail bounds. This is done for two families of matrices: positive semidefinite matrices with bounded effective rank, and indefinite matrices with bounded 2-norm and fixed Frobenius norm. In each case, the tail region is defined rigorously and is constant for a given family.