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Spectral alignment of correlated Gaussian matrices

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 January 2022

Luca Ganassali*
Affiliation:
Inria, DI/ENS, PSL Research University
Marc Lelarge*
Affiliation:
Inria, DI/ENS, PSL Research University
Laurent Massoulié*
Affiliation:
MSR–Inria Joint Center and Inria, DI/ENS, PSL Research University
*
*Postal address: Inria, 2 rue Simone Iff, 75012 Paris, France.
*Postal address: Inria, 2 rue Simone Iff, 75012 Paris, France.
*Postal address: Inria, 2 rue Simone Iff, 75012 Paris, France.
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Abstract

In this paper we analyze a simple spectral method (EIG1) for the problem of matrix alignment, consisting in aligning their leading eigenvectors: given two matrices A and B, we compute two corresponding leading eigenvectors $v_1$ and $v'_{\!\!1}$. The algorithm returns the permutation $\hat{\pi}$ such that the rank of coordinate $\hat{\pi}(i)$ in $v_1$ and that of coordinate i in $v'_{\!\!1}$ (up to the sign of $v'_{\!\!1}$) are the same.

We consider a model of weighted graphs where the adjacency matrix A belongs to the Gaussian orthogonal ensemble of size $N \times N$, and B is a noisy version of A where all nodes have been relabeled according to some planted permutation $\pi$; that is, $B= \Pi^T (A+\sigma H) \Pi $, where $\Pi$ is the permutation matrix associated with $\pi$ and H is an independent copy of A. We show the following zero–one law: with high probability, under the condition $\sigma N^{7/6+\epsilon} \to 0$ for some $\epsilon>0$, EIG1 recovers all but a vanishing part of the underlying permutation $\pi$, whereas if $\sigma N^{7/6-\epsilon} \to \infty$, this method cannot recover more than o(N) correct matches.

This result gives an understanding of the simplest and fastest spectral method for matrix alignment (or complete weighted graph alignment), and involves proof methods and techniques which could be of independent interest.

Information

Type
Original Article
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Applied Probability Trust
Figure 0

Figure 1. Estimated overlap $\mathcal{L}(\hat{\Pi},\Pi)$ reached by EIG1 in the model (1.2), for varying N and $\sigma$. (With 95% confidence intervals.)

Figure 1

Figure 2. Estimated p(N, s) in the toy model $\mathcal{J}(N,s)$. (With 95% confidence intervals.)

Figure 2

Figure 3. Areas corresponding to $\mathcal{N}^{+} (x,y)$ and $\mathcal{N}^{-} (x,y)$.

Figure 3

Figure 4. Orthogonal projection of $\widetilde{v}_1$ on $\mathcal{P} \;:\!=\; \textrm{span}(v'_{\!\!1}, v_1)$.