Related papers: Approximability and proof complexity
Consider a finite system of non-strict polynomial inequalities with solution set $S\subseteq\mathbb R^n$. Its Lasserre relaxation of degree $d$ is a certain natural linear matrix inequality in the original variables and one additional…
For a constraint satisfaction problem (CSP), a robust satisfaction algorithm is one that outputs an assignment satisfying most of the constraints on instances that are near-satisfiable. It is known that the CSPs that admit efficient robust…
In this paper, we introduce a new class of nonsmooth convex functions called SOS-convex semialgebraic functions extending the recently proposed notion of SOS-convex polynomials. This class of nonsmooth convex functions covers many common…
We study optimization programs given by a bilinear form over non-commutative variables subject to linear inequalities. Problems of this form include the entangled value of two-prover games, entanglement-assisted coding for classical…
In order to address the imprecision often introduced by widening operators in static analysis, policy iteration based on min-computations amounts to considering the characterization of reachable value set of a program as an iterative…
One considers polynomial optimization problems with compact feasible set $\mathbf{\Omega}$ defined by SOS-concave polynomials $g_j$, and with a globally non-convex polynomial objective $f$. We show that if $f$ is strongly convex on…
Consider the problem of minimizing a polynomial $f$ over a compact semialgebraic set ${\mathbf{X} \subseteq \mathbb{R}^n}$. Lasserre introduces hierarchies of semidefinite programs to approximate this hard optimization problem, based on…
The minimum sum-of-squares clustering problem (MSSC) consists of partitioning $n$ observations into $k$ clusters in order to minimize the sum of squared distances from the points to the centroid of their cluster. In this paper, we propose…
We study the Second Price Matching problem, introduced by Azar, Birnbaum, Karlin, and Nguyen in 2009. In this problem, a bipartite graph (bidders and goods) is given, and the profit of a matching is the number of matches containing a second…
A polynomial that is nonnegative need not be a sum of squares of polynomials. This classical gap, identified by Hilbert in 1888, lies at the heart of why the global optimization of multivariate quartic polynomials is NP-hard. Yet we show…
In this paper, we introduce a new class of structured polynomials, called separable plus lower degree (SPLD) polynomials. The formal definition of an SPLD polynomial, which extends the concept of SPQ polynomials (Ahmadi et al. in Math Oper…
Many problems of systems control theory boil down to solving polynomial equations, polynomial inequalities or polyomial differential equations. Recent advances in convex optimization and real algebraic geometry can be combined to generate…
Given vectors $v_1,\dots,v_n\in\mathbb{R}^d$ and a matroid $M=([n],I)$, we study the problem of finding a basis $S$ of $M$ such that $\det(\sum_{i \in S}v_i v_i^\top)$ is maximized. This problem appears in a diverse set of areas such as…
The stability number of a graph $G$, denoted as $\alpha(G)$, is the maximum size of an independent (stable) set in $G$. Semidefinite programming (SDP) methods, which originated from Lov\'asz's theta number and expanded through…
The minimum sum-of-squares clustering (MSSC), or k-means type clustering, has been recently extended to exploit prior knowledge on the cardinality of each cluster. Such knowledge is used to increase performance as well as solution quality.…
Combining recent moment and sparse semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxation techniques, we propose an approach to find smooth approximations for solutions of problems involving nonlinear differential equations. Given a system of nonlinear…
Constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) are ubiquitous in theoretical computer science. We study the problem of StrongCSPs, i.e. instances where a large induced sub-instance has a satisfying assignment. More formally, given a CSP instance…
We deploy numerical semidefinite programming and conversion to exact rational inequalities to certify that for a positive semidefinite input polynomial or rational function, any representation as a fraction of sums-of-squares of polynomials…
We develop fast spectral algorithms for tensor decomposition that match the robustness guarantees of the best known polynomial-time algorithms for this problem based on the sum-of-squares (SOS) semidefinite programming hierarchy. Our…
In a recent note [8], the author provides a counterexample to the global convergence of what his work refers to as "the DSOS and SDSOS hierarchies" for polynomial optimization problems (POPs) and purports that this refutes claims in our…