Related papers: SOS lower bounds with hard constraints: think glob…
Signomial programs (SPs) are optimization problems specified in terms of signomials, which are weighted sums of exponentials composed with linear functionals of a decision variable. SPs are non-convex optimization problems in general, and…
For a quadratic matrix polynomial dependent on parameters and a given tolerance $\epsilon > 0$, the minimization of the $\epsilon$-pseudospectral abscissa over the set of permissible parameter values is discussed, with applications in…
Depth-3 circuit lower bounds and $k$-SAT algorithms are intimately related; the state-of-the-art $\Sigma^k_3$-circuit lower bound and the $k$-SAT algorithm are based on the same combinatorial theorem. In this paper we define a problem which…
We continue the program of proving circuit lower bounds via circuit satisfiability algorithms. So far, this program has yielded several concrete results, proving that functions in $\text{Quasi-NP} = \text{NTIME}[n^{(\log n)^{O(1)}}]$ and…
We show that, if $\mathbf{W} \in \mathbb{R}^{N \times N}_{\mathsf{sym}}$ is drawn from the gaussian orthogonal ensemble, then with high probability the degree 4 sum-of-squares relaxation cannot certify an upper bound on the objective…
Consider the classical $(2+1)$-dimensional Solid-On-Solid model above a hard wall on an $L\times L$ box of $\bbZ^2$. The model describes a crystal surface by assigning a non-negative integer height $\eta_x$ to each site $x$ in the box and 0…
We present a faster interior-point method for optimizing sum-of-squares (SOS) polynomials, which are a central tool in polynomial optimization and capture convex programming in the Lasserre hierarchy. Let $p = \sum_i q^2_i$ be an…
We apply the generalized sphere-packing bound to two classes of subblock-constrained codes. A la Fazeli et al. (2015), we made use of automorphism to significantly reduce the number of variables in the associated linear programming problem.…
We study approximability of regular constraint satisfaction problems, i.e., CSPs where each variable in an instance has the same number of occurrences. In particular, we show that for any CSP $\Lambda$, existence of an $\alpha$…
The Sum of Squares (\sos{}) hierarchy gives an automatized technique to create a family of increasingly tight convex relaxations for binary programs. There are several problems for which a constant number of rounds of this hierarchy give…
In this paper, we study the problem of escaping from saddle points in smooth nonconvex optimization problems subject to a convex set $\mathcal{C}$. We propose a generic framework that yields convergence to a second-order stationary point of…
The minimum circuit size problem (MCSP) is a string compression problem with a parameter $s$ in which, given the truth table of a Boolean function over inputs of length $n$, one must answer whether it can be computed by a Boolean circuit of…
Spectral graph bisections are a popular heuristic aimed at approximating the solution of the NP-complete graph bisection problem. This technique, however, does not always provide a robust tool for graph partitioning. Using a special class…
This paper studies the complexity of finding an $\epsilon$-stationary point for stochastic bilevel optimization when the upper-level problem is nonconvex and the lower-level problem is strongly convex. Recent work proposed the first-order…
Random constraint satisfaction problems (CSP) have been studied extensively using statistical physics techniques. They provide a benchmark to study average case scenarios instead of the worst case one. The interplay between statistical…
This paper considers the problem of minimizing the ordered weighted average (or ordered median) function of finitely many rational functions over compact semi-algebraic sets. Ordered weighted averages of rational functions are not, in…
CSP sparsification, introduced by Kogan and Krauthgamer (ITCS 2015), considers the following question: how much can an instance of a constraint satisfaction problem be sparsified (by retaining a reweighted subset of the constraints) while…
The four point function of Conformal Field Theories (CFT's) with global symmetry gives rise to multiple crossing symmetry constraints. We explicitly study the correlator of four scalar operators transforming in the fundamental…
We present a method for finding lower bounds on the global infima of integral variational problems, wherein $\int_\Omega f(x,u(x),\nabla u(x)){\rm d}x$ is minimized over functions $u\colon\Omega\subset\mathbb{R}^n\to\mathbb{R}^m$ satisfying…
This work studies the generalization error of gradient methods. More specifically, we focus on how training steps $T$ and step-size $\eta$ might affect generalization in smooth stochastic convex optimization (SCO) problems. We first provide…