Related papers: Equivariant semidefinite lifts of regular polygons
A central question in optimization is to maximize (or minimize) a linear function over a given polytope P. To solve such a problem in practice one needs a concise description of the polytope P. In this paper we are interested in…
The positive semidefinite (psd) rank of a polytope is the size of the smallest psd cone that admits an affine slice that projects linearly onto the polytope. The psd rank of a d-polytope is at least d+1, and when equality holds we say that…
Efficient representations of convex sets are of crucial importance for many algorithms that work with them. It is well-known that sometimes, a complicated convex set can be expressed as the projection of a much simpler set in higher…
The positive semidefinite (psd) rank of a polytope is the smallest $k$ for which the cone of $k \times k$ real symmetric psd matrices admits an affine slice that projects onto the polytope. In this paper we show that the psd rank of a…
This paper presents various worst-case results on the positive semidefinite (psd) rank of a nonnegative matrix, primarily in the context of polytopes. We prove that the psd rank of a generic n-dimensional polytope with v vertices is at…
Sometimes, it is possible to represent a complicated polytope as a projection of a much simpler polytope. To quantify this phenomenon, the extension complexity of a polytope $P$ is defined to be the minimum number of facets of a (possibly…
Let $D$ be the set of $n\times n$ positive semidefinite matrices of trace equal to one, also known as the set of density matrices. We prove two results on the hardness of approximating $D$ with polytopes. First, we show that if $0 <…
We investigate the convex hulls of the eight dihedral symmetry classes of $n \times n$ alternating sign matrices, i.e., ASMs invariant under a subgroup of the symmetry group of the square. Extending the prefix-sum description of the ASM…
A polynomial representation of a convex d-polytope P is a finite set \{p_1(x),...,p_n(x)\} of polynomials over E^d such that P=\setcond{x \in \E^d}{p_1(x) \ge 0 {for every} 1 \le i \le n}. By s(d,P) we denote the least possible number of…
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…
We study the problem of approximating the cone of positive semidefinite (PSD) matrices with a cone that can be described by smaller-sized PSD constraints. Specifically, we ask the question: "how closely can we approximate the set of…
In a previous work we proved that each $n$-dimensional convex polyhedron ${\mathcal K}subset{\mathbb R}^n$ and its relative interior are regular images of ${\mathbb R}^n$. As the image of a non-constant polynomial map is an unbounded…
We introduce a method for proving lower bounds on the efficacy of semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxations for combinatorial problems. In particular, we show that the cut, TSP, and stable set polytopes on $n$-vertex graphs are not the…
We introduce a family of symmetric convex bodies called generalized ellipsoids of degree $d$ (GE-$d$s), with ellipsoids corresponding to the case of $d=0$. Generalized ellipsoids (GEs) retain many geometric, algebraic, and algorithmic…
A stacking operation adds a $d$-simplex on top of a facet of a simplicial $d$-polytope while maintaining the convexity of the polytope. A stacked $d$-polytope is a polytope that is obtained from a $d$-simplex and a series of stacking…
A beautiful result of Br\"ocker and Scheiderer on the stability index of basic closed semi-algebraic sets implies, as a very special case, that every $d$-dimensional polyhedron admits a representation as the set of solutions of at most…
Given a generic PL map or a generic smooth fold map $f:N^n\to M^m$, where $m\ge n$ and $2(m+k)\ge 3(n+1)$, we prove that $f$ lifts to a PL or smooth embedding $N\to M\times\mathbb R^k$ if and only if its double point locus $\{(x,y)\in…
An equidistant polytope is a special equidistant set in the space $\mathbb{R}^n$ all of whose boundary points have equal distances from two finite systems of points. Since one of the finite systems of the given points is required to be in…
The extension complexity of a polytope measures its amenability to succinct representations via lifts. There are several versions of extension complexity, including linear, real semidefinite, and complex semidefinite. We focus on the last…
Our main result is that every n-dimensional polytope can be described by at most (2n-1) polynomial inequalities and, moreover, these polynomials can explicitly be constructed. For an n-dimensional pointed polyhedral cone we prove the bound…