Related papers: Do Sums of Squares Dream of Free Resolutions?

Every convex homogeneous polynomial (or form) is nonnegative. Blekherman has shown that there exist convex forms that are not sums of squares via a nonconstructive argument. We provide an explicit example of a convex form of degree four in…

A convex form of degree larger than one is always nonnegative since it vanishes together with its gradient at the origin. In 2007, Parrilo asked if convex forms are always sums of squares. A few years later, Blekherman answered the question…

Representations of nonnegative polynomials as sums of squares are central to real algebraic geometry and the subject of active research. The sum-of-squares representations of a given polynomial are parametrized by the convex body of…

Hankel spectrahedra are the dual convex cones to the cone of sums of squares of real polynomials, and we study them from the point of view of convex algebraic geometry. We show that the Zariski closure of the union of all extreme rays of…

We study symmetric nonnegative forms and their relationship with symmetric sums of squares. For a fixed number of variables $n$ and degree $2d$, symmetric nonnegative forms and symmetric sums of squares form closed, convex cones in the…

We present a hierarchy of semidefinite programs (SDPs) for the problem of fitting a shape-constrained (multivariate) polynomial to noisy evaluations of an unknown shape-constrained function. These shape constraints include convexity or…

We prove that if X is any 2-regular projective scheme (in the sense of Castelnuovo-Mumford) then X is "small". This means that if L is a linear space and Y:= L\cap X is finite, then Y is "linearly independent" in the sense that the…

We initiate a systematic study of nonnegative polynomials $P$ such that $P^k$ is not a sum of squares for any odd $k\geq 1$, calling such $P$ \emph{stubborn}. We develop a new invariant of a real isolated zero of a nonnegative polynomial in…

We consider two seemingly unrelated questions: the relationship between nonnegative polynomials and sums of squares on real varieties, and sparse semidefinite programming. This connection is natural when a real variety $X$ is defined by a…

We consider the convex geometry of the cone of nonnegative quadratics over Stanley-Reisner varieties. Stanley-Reisner varieties (which are unions of coordinate planes) are amongst the simplest real projective varieties, so this is…

Let X be a real nondegenerate projective subvariety such that its set of real points is Zariski dense. We prove that every real quadratic form that is nonnegative on X is a sum of squares of linear forms if and only if X is a variety of…

We bound the Pythagoras number of a real projective subvariety: the smallest positive integer $r$ such that every sum of squares of linear forms in its homogeneous coordinate ring is a sum of at most $r$ squares. Enhancing existing methods,…

A celebrated result by Hilbert says that every real nonnegative ternary quartic is a sum of three squares. We show more generally that every nonnegative quadratic form on a real projective variety $X$ of minimal degree is a sum of…

In this article, we combine sums of squares (SOS) and sums of nonnegative circuit (SONC) forms, two independent nonnegativity certificates for real homogeneous polynomials. We consider the convex cone SOS+SONC of forms that decompose into a…

Let $X\subseteq \mathbb{P}^m$ be a totally real, non-degenerate, projective variety and let $\Gamma\subseteq X(\mathbb{R})$ be a generic set of points. Let $P$ be the cone of nonnegative quadratic forms on $X$ and let $\Sigma$ be the cone…

We study nonnegative and sums of squares symmetric (and even symmetric) functions of fixed degree. We can think of these as limit cones of symmetric nonnegative polynomials and symmetric sums of squares of fixed degree as the number of…

For fixed degree and increasing number of variables the dimension of the vector space of $n$-variate real symmetric homogeneous polynomials (forms) of degree $d$ stabilizes. We study the limits of the cones of symmetric nonnegative…

The $X$-rank of a point $p$ in projective space is the minimal number of points of an algebraic variety $X$ whose linear span contains $p$. This notion is naturally submultiplicative under tensor product. We study geometric conditions that…

In the smallest cases where there exist nonnegative polynomials that are not sums of squares we present a complete explanation of this distinction. The fundamental reason that the cone of sums of squares is strictly contained in the cone of…

We study polyhedral approximations to the cone of nonnegative polynomials. We show that any constant ratio polyhedral approximation to the cone of nonnegative degree $2d$ forms in $n$ variables has to have exponentially many facets in terms…