Low-Rank Matrix Approximation Using the Lanczos Bidiagonalization Process with Applications

Low-rank approximation of large and/or sparse matrices is important in many applications, and the singular value decomposition (SVD) gives the best low-rank approximations with respect to unitarily-invariant norms. In this paper we show that good low-rank approximations can be directly obtained from the Lanczos bidiagonalization process applied to the given matrix without computing any SVD. We also demonstrate that a so-called one-sided reorthogonalization process can be used to maintain an adequate level of orthogonality among the Lanczos vectors and produce accurate low-rank approximations. This technique reduces the computational cost of the Lanczos bidiagonalization process. We illustrate the efficiency and applicability of our algorithm using numerical examples from several applications areas.