Related papers: SoS certification for symmetric quadratic function…
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…
We present several sparsification lower and upper bounds for classic problems in graph theory and logic. For the problems 4-Coloring, (Directed) Hamiltonian Cycle, and (Connected) Dominating Set, we prove that there is no polynomial-time…
Under what circumstances does the ``closeness" of two functions imply the ``closeness" of their respective sublevel sets? In this paper, we answer this question by showing that if a sequence of functions converges strictly from above/below…
In this paper, we present a computational approach to certify almost sure reachability for discrete-time polynomial stochastic systems by turning drift--variant criteria into sum-of-squares (SOS) programs solved with standard semidefinite…
Submodular functions can be exactly minimized in polynomial time, and the special case that graph cuts solve with max flow \cite{KZ:PAMI04} has had significant impact in computer vision \cite{BVZ:PAMI01,Kwatra:SIGGRAPH03,Rother:GrabCut04}.…
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…
The approximate degree of a Boolean function $f(x_{1},x_{2},\ldots,x_{n})$ is the minimum degree of a real polynomial that approximates $f$ pointwise within $1/3$. Upper bounds on approximate degree have a variety of applications in…
Nonnegativity certificates can be used to obtain tight dual bounds for polynomial optimization problems. Hierarchies of certificate-based relaxations ensure convergence to the global optimum, but higher levels of such hierarchies can become…
Logarithmic Sobolev inequalities are a fundamental class of inequalities that play an important role in information theory. They play a key role in establishing concentration inequalities and in obtaining quantitative estimates on the…
This thesis explores algorithmic applications and limitations of convex relaxation hierarchies for approximating some discrete and continuous optimization problems. - We show a dichotomy of approximability of constraint satisfaction…
We consider semidefinite programs (SDPs) of size n with equality constraints. In order to overcome scalability issues, Burer and Monteiro proposed a factorized approach based on optimizing over a matrix Y of size $n$ by $k$ such that $X =…
We approach the Max-3-Cut problem through the lens of maximizing complex-valued quadratic forms and demonstrate that low-rank structure in the objective matrix can be exploited, leading to alternative algorithms to classical semidefinite…
We undertake a systematic study of sketching a quadratic form: given an $n \times n$ matrix $A$, create a succinct sketch $\textbf{sk}(A)$ which can produce (without further access to $A$) a multiplicative $(1+\epsilon)$-approximation to…
Local Search problem, which finds a local minimum of a black-box function on a given graph, is of both practical and theoretical importance to combinatorial optimization, complexity theory and many other areas in theoretical computer…
Semidefinite and sum-of-squares (SOS) optimization are fundamental computational tools in many areas, including linear and nonlinear systems theory. However, the scale of problems that can be addressed reliably and efficiently is still…
We demonstrate applications of algebraic techniques that optimize and certify polynomial inequalities to problems of interest in the operations research and transportation engineering communities. Three problems are considered: (i) wireless…
In polynomial optimization problems, nonnegativity constraints are typically handled using the sum of squares condition. This can be efficiently enforced using semidefinite programming formulations, or as more recently proposed by Papp and…
The standard moment-sum-of-squares (SOS) hierarchy is a powerful method for solving global polynomial optimization problems. However, its convergence relies on Putinar's Positivstellensatz, which requires the feasible set to satisfy the…
We are focusing on bound constrained global optimization problems, whose objective functions are computationally expensive black-box functions and have multiple local minima. The recently popular Metric Stochastic Response Surface (MSRS)…
We have recently presented a method to solve an overdetermined linear system of equations with multiple right hand side vectors, where the unknown matrix is to be symmetric and positive definite. The coefficient and the right hand side…