A quantum Johnson-Lindenstrauss lemma via unitary t-designs

Abstract: The famous Johnson-Lindenstrauss lemma states that for any set of n vectors, there is a linear transformation into a space of dimension O(log n) that approximately preserves all their lengths. In fact, a Haar random unitary transformation followed by projection onto the first O(log n) coordinates followed by a scaling works as a valid transformation with high probability. In this work, we show that the Haar random unitary can be replaced by a uniformly random unitary chosen from a finite set called an approximate unitary t-design for t = O(log n). Choosing a unitary from such a design requires only polylogarithmic random bits as opposed to exponential in dimension random bits required to choose a Haar random unitary with reasonable precision. Moreover, since such unitaries can be efficiently implemented in the superpositional setting, our result can be viewed as an efficient quantum Johnson-Lindenstrauss transform akin to efficient quantum Fourier transforms widely used in earlier work on quantum algorithms. We prove our result by leveraging a method of Low for showing concentration for approximate unitary t-designs. We discuss algorithmic advantages and limitations of our result and conclude with a toy application to private information retrieval.