A deterministic theory of low rank matrix completion

Abstract: The problem of completing a large low rank matrix using a subset of revealed entries has received much attention in the last ten years. The main result of this paper gives a necessary and sufficient condition, stated in the language of graph limit theory, for a sequence of matrix completion problems with arbitrary missing patterns to be asymptotically solvable. It is then shown that a small modification of the Cand`es-Recht nuclear norm minimization algorithm provides the required asymptotic solution whenever the sequence of problems is asymptotically solvable. The theory is fully deterministic, with no assumption of randomness. A number of open questions are listed.