Consider a unit norm $\|V\|_2=1$ and a symmetric matrix $A$. I wish to prove that $\|A^tv\|_2 \leq \|Av\|_2^t$ for every $0<t<1$. My belief is that this is true is motivated by empirical findings, using the following script (MATLAB): t=0.1; for ind=1:100000 A=randn(5);A=A+A'; v=randn(5,1); v=v/norm(v); if norm(A^t*v)> norm(A*v)^t sprintf('Claim does not hold') break end end sprintf('Claim holds') Thanks a lot!