Related papers: Generic Spectrahedral Shadows

We give explicit polynomial-sized (in $n$ and $k$) semidefinite representations of the hyperbolicity cones associated with the elementary symmetric polynomials of degree $k$ in $n$ variables. These convex cones form a family of…

In general relativity, isolated black holes are invisible due to an infinitely large redshift of photons propagating from the event horizon to the remote observer. However, the dark shadow (silhouette) of a black hole can be visible on the…

Causal concept for the general black hole shadow is investigated, instead of the photon sphere. We define several `wandering null geodesics' as complete null geodesics accompanied by repetitive conjugate points, which would correspond to…

Suppose that a finite-dimensional cube is orthogonally projected onto a central section of itself by a subspace of one dimension less. Up to dimension $9$, at least one vertex is projected onto the section, but for dimension $10$ or larger,…

We present the shape of the black hole shadow on the standard background screen as it is registered by the distant observer. The screen is an infinite plane, emitting the quanta uniformly distributed to a hemisphere. The source of emission…

The image of the cone of positive semidefinite matrices under a linear map is a convex cone. Pataki characterized the set of linear maps for which that image is not closed. The Zariski closure of this set is a hypersurface in the…

We explore the characteristics of shadows for a general class of spherically symmetric, static spacetimes, which may arise in general relativity or in modified theories of gravity. The chosen line element involves a sum (with constant but…

If $X$ is an $n\times n$ symmetric matrix, then the directional derivative of $X \mapsto \det(X)$ in the direction $I$ is the elementary symmetric polynomial of degree $n-1$ in the eigenvalues of $X$. This is a polynomial in the entries of…

A spectrahedron is a set defined by a linear matrix inequality. Given a spectrahedron we are interested in the question of the smallest possible size $r$ of the matrices in the description by linear matrix inequalities. We show that for the…

Convex or concave sequences of $n$ positive terms, viewed as vectors in $n$-space, constitute convex cones with $2n-2$ and $n$ extreme rays, respectively. Explicit description is given of vectors spanning these extreme rays, as well as of…

Consider random shadows of a cube and of a regular tetrahedron. Area and perimeter of the former are positively dependent (with correlation 0.915...), whereas area and perimeter of the latter appear to be negatively dependent. This is only…

Spectrahedra are affine-linear sections of the cone $\mathcal{P}_n$ of positive semidefinite symmetric $n\times n$-matrices. We consider random spectrahedra that are obtained by intersecting~$\mathcal{P}_n$ with the affine-linear space…

We focus on copositive and completely positive cones over symmetric cones of rank at least $5$, and in particular investigate whether these cones are spectrahedral shadows. We extend known results for nonnegative orthants of dimension at…

A "shadow" of a subset $S$ of Euclidean space is an orthogonal projection of $S$ into one of the coordinate hyperplanes. In this paper we show that it is not possible for all three shadows of a cycle (i.e., a simple closed curve) in…

This work is concerned with different aspects of spectrahedra and their projections, sets that are important in semidefinite optimization. We prove results on the limitations of so called Lasserre and theta body relaxation methods for…

A convex polyhedron $P$ is $k$-equiprojective if all of its orthogonal projections, i.e., shadows, except those parallel to the faces of $P$ are $k$-gon for some fixed value of $k$. Since 1968, it is an open problem to construct all…

Spherical Designs are finite sets of points on the sphere $\mathbb{S}^{d}$ with the property that the average of certain (low-degree) polynomials in these points coincides with the global average of the polynomial on $\mathbb{S}^{d}$. They…

Estimating the number of vertices of a two dimensional projection, called a shadow, of a polytope is a fundamental tool for understanding the performance of the shadow simplex method for linear programming among other applications. We prove…

We analyze self-dual polyhedral cones and prove several properties about their slack matrices. In particular, we show that self-duality is equivalent to the existence of a positive semidefinite (PSD) slack. Beyond that, we show that if the…

Light-ring bifurcations that can occur for prolate non-Kerr compact objects can leave an indelible signature on SMBH shadows as a fractal sequence of eyebrow-like formations. These fractal features are the result of two properties of these…