Fast Nearest Neighbor Search for 𝓁_p Metrics

The Nearest Neighbor Search (NNS) problem asks to design a data structure that preprocesses an n-point dataset X lying in a metric space ℳ, so that given a query point q ∈ ℳ, one can quickly return a point of X minimizing the distance to q. The efficiency of such a data structure is evaluated primarily by the amount of space it uses and the time required to answer a query. We focus on the fast query-time regime, which is crucial for modern large-scale applications, where datasets are massive and queries must be processed online, and is often modeled by query time poly(d log n) when ℳ is a d-dimensional normed space. Our main result is such a randomized data structure for NNS in 𝓁_p^d spaces, p > 2, that achieves pO(1) + log log p approximation with fast query time and poly(dn) space. Our data structure improves, or is incomparable to, the state-of-the-art for the fast query-time regime from [Bartal and Gottlieb, TCS 2019] and [Krauthgamer, Petruschka and Sapir, FOCS 2025].