The ordinary column Gram matrix is . Use the normalized empirical Gram matrix
so that standard Gaussian entries give . This is the normalization needed for concentration around .
The restricted isometry property of order with constant means that the normalized map approximately preserves the Euclidean norm of all vectors with at most nonzero coordinates:
Equivalently, every principal block with satisfies . The least such is its restricted isometry constant. In the unnormalized definition apply this property to itself.
For a standard normal variable , direct Gaussian integration gives for . Independence therefore yields the moment-generating function of a chi-squared distribution, centred here at its mean:
The inequality follows from . For , the Chernoff bound with gives
At the trivial probability bound suffices. This proves the requested bound, with a stronger prefactor one.
For the lower tail, gives for . Taking yields . Combining both tails gives the useful chi-squared concentration inequality
For set . A direct calculation shows
Thus the exponent is at least , proving
The same threshold bounds the two-sided tail.
Finally fix a deterministic and put . If , independence of the Gaussian rows gives independently. Therefore
The two-sided bound just proved supplies
For the quadratic form is deterministically zero; the strict inequality makes the formula valid in that case too. When , replacing the threshold by gives an absolute bound independent of . In particular every fixed such direction concentrates at rate for a fixed confidence level. The restricted isometry property requires a simultaneous statement over sparse directions; this fixed-direction calculation alone is not that stronger assertion.
The moment-generating function of a random variable is , at the real values of for which that expectation is finite. For a standard normal distribution variable , combining the exponentials in its probability density function yields
The last equality follows by scaling the Gaussian integral. The variables are independent random variables, so the expectation of their product factorizes. Therefore
This is the moment-generating function of a chi-squared distribution with degrees of freedom. For positive the defining integral diverges at and above .