Detecting Fourier subspaces (Q305684)

For a finite Abelian group \(G\) let \(F\) be the subspace of \(\ell^2(G)\) spanned by a set of characters and \(Q\) the orthogonal projection of \(\ell^2(G)\) on \(F\). For a subspace \(E\) of \(\ell^2(G)\) spanned by functions \(\delta_g,\,g\in S\subseteq G\), let \(P\) be the orthogonal projection of of \(\ell^2(G)\) on \(E\). While for any character \(\chi\) \(\|P\chi\|_2^2=\frac {|S|}{|G|}\) and \(\|(I-P)\chi\|_2^2=\frac {|G|-|S|}{|G|}\) in general the subspaces \(E\) and \(F\) may intersect, so \(\|PQ\|\) may even be one. In the paper it is shown that for subspaces \(F\) as above and any \(k\leq |G|\) there is a subset \(S\) of \(G\) with \(|S|=k\) such that \(\|PQ\|_2^2\leq\frac {|S|}{|G|}+O\left(\sqrt{\frac{\mathrm{dim}(F)}{|G|}}\right)\) and \(\|(I-P)Q\|_2^2\leq\frac {|G|-|S|}{|G|}+O\left(\sqrt{\frac{\mathrm{dim}(F)}{|G|}}\right)\), so for small dimensional subspaces \(F\) there are always subspaces \(E\) of arbitrary dimension for which neither \(E\) nor \(E^\perp\) are essentially closer to \(F\) than to a single character. The proof is based on a Kadison-Singer type estimate.