English

The SOS Rank of Biquadratic Forms

Number Theory 2025-12-01 v4

Abstract

In 1973, Calder\'{o}n proved that an m×2m \times 2 positive semidefinite (psd) biquadratic form can always be expressed as the sum of 3m(m+1)2{3m(m+1) \over 2} squares of quadratic forms. Very recently, by applying Hilbert's theorem on ternary quartics, we proved that a 2×22 \times 2 psd biquadratic form can always be expressed as the sum of three squares of bilinear forms. This improved Calder\'{o}n's result for m=2m=2, and left the sos (sum-of-squares) rank problem of m×2m \times 2 biquadratic forms for m3m \ge 3 to further exploration. In this paper, we show that an 3×23 \times 2 psd biquadratic form can always be expressed as four squares of bilinear forms. We make a conjecture that an m×2m \times 2 psd biquadratic form can always be expressed as m+1m+1 squares of bilinear forms.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2507.16399,
  title  = {The SOS Rank of Biquadratic Forms},
  author = {Liqun Qi and Chunfeng Cui and Yi Xu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.16399},
  year   = {2025}
}