Almost orthogonal submatrices of an orthogonal matrix

Lett≥1 and letn, M be natural numbers,n. Leta=(a _i,j ) be ann xM matrix whose rows are orthonormal. Suppose that the ℓ₂-norms of the columns ofA are uniformly bounded. Namely, for allj Using majorizing measure estimates we prove that for every ε>0 there exists, a setI ⊃ {1,…,M} of cardinality at most such that the matrix , whereA _I =(a _i,j ) _j∈I , acts as a (1+ε)-isomorphism from ℓ ₂ ⁿ into . Research supported in part by a grant of the US-Israel BSF. Part of this research was performed when the author held a postdoctoral position at MSRI. Research at MSRI was supported in part by NSF grant DMS-9022140.