Sublinear Time Quantum Sensitivity Sampling

ICLR 2026 Conference Submission12845 Authors

Keywords: quantum computing, coreset, sensitivity sampling

TL;DR: We develop the first quantum sublinear time algorithm for sensitivity sampling and constructing coreset, in turn we obtain a slew of results on clustering, regression and low-rank approximation.

Abstract:

We present a unified framework for quantum sensitivity sampling, extending the advantages of quantum computing to a broad class of classical approximation problems. Our unified framework provides a streamlined approach for constructing coresets and offers significant runtime improvements in applications such as clustering, regression, and low-rank approximation. Our contributions include:

* **$k$-median and $k$-means clustering:** For $n$ points in $d$-dimensional Euclidean space, we give an algorithm that constructs an $\epsilon$-coreset in time $\widetilde O(n^{0.5}dk^{2.5}~\mathrm{poly}(\epsilon^{-1}))$ for $k$-median and $k$-means clustering. Our approach achieves a better dependence on $d$ and constructs smaller coresets that only consist of points in the dataset, compared to recent results of [Xue, Chen, Li and Jiang, ICML'23].

* **$\ell_p$ regression:** For $\ell_p$ regression problems, we construct an $\epsilon$-coreset of size $\widetilde O_p(d^{\max\\{1, p/2\\}}\epsilon^{-2})$ in time $\widetilde O_p(n^{0.5}d^{\max\{0.5, p/4\}+1}(\epsilon^{-3}+d^{0.5}))$, improving upon the prior best quantum sampling approach of [Apers and Gribling, QIP'24] for all $p\in (0, 2)\cup (2, 22]$, including the widely studied least absolute deviation regression ($\ell_1$ regression).

* **Low-rank approximation with Frobenius norm error:** We introduce the first quantum sublinear-time algorithm for low-rank approximation that does not rely on data-dependent parameters, and runs in $\widetilde O(nd^{0.5}k^{0.5}\epsilon^{-1})$ time. Additionally, we present quantum sublinear algorithms for kernel low-rank approximation and tensor low-rank approximation, broadening the range of achievable sublinear time algorithms in randomized numerical linear algebra.

Primary Area: optimization

Submission Number: 12845