English

Testing systems of real quadratic equations for approximate solutions

Optimization and Control 2020-06-24 v2 Data Structures and Algorithms

Abstract

Consider systems of equations qi(x)=0q_i(x)=0, where qi:RnRq_i: {\Bbb R}^n \longrightarrow {\Bbb R}, i=1,,mi=1, \ldots, m, are quadratic forms. Our goal is to tell efficiently systems with many non-trivial solutions or near-solutions x0x \ne 0 from systems that are far from having a solution. For that, we pick a delta-shaped penalty function F:R[0,1]F: {\Bbb R} \longrightarrow [0, 1] with F(0)=1F(0)=1 and F(y)<1F(y) < 1 for y0y \ne 0 and compute the expectation of F(q1(x))F(qm(x))F(q_1(x)) \cdots F(q_m(x)) for a random xx sampled from the standard Gaussian measure in Rn{\Bbb R}^n. We choose F(y)=y2sin2yF(y)=y^{-2}\sin^2 y and show that the expectation can be approximated within relative error 0<ϵ<10< \epsilon < 1 in quasi-polynomial time (m+n)O(ln(m+n)lnϵ)(m+n)^{O(\ln (m+n)-\ln \epsilon)}, provided each form qiq_i depends on not more than rr real variables, has common variables with at most r1r-1 other forms and satisfies qi(x)γx2/r|q_i(x)| \leq \gamma \|x\|^2/r, where γ>0\gamma >0 is an absolute constant. This allows us to distinguish between "easily solvable" and "badly unsolvable" systems in some non-trivial situations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2006.09221,
  title  = {Testing systems of real quadratic equations for approximate solutions},
  author = {Alexander Barvinok},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2006.09221},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

Corrected several typos

R2 v1 2026-06-23T16:22:34.230Z