The Alexandrov-Fenchel type inequalities, revisited

Various Alexandrov-Fenchel type inequalities have appeared and played important roles in convex geometry, matrix theory and complex algebraic geometry. It has been noticed for some time that they share some striking analogies and have intimate relationships. The purpose of this article is to shed new light on this by comparatively investigating them in several aspects. \emph{The principal result} in this article is a complete solution to the equality characterization problem of various Alexandrov-Fenchel type inequalities for intersection numbers of nef and big classes on compact K\"{a}hler manifolds, extending earlier results of Boucksom-Favre-Jonsson, Fu-Xiao and Xiao-Lehmann. Our proof combines a result of Dinh-Nguy\^{e}n on K\"{a}hler geometry and an idea in convex geometry tracing back to Shephard. In addition to this central result, we also give a geometric proof of the complex version of the Alexandrov-Fenchel type inequality for mixed discriminants and a determinantal type generalization of various Alexandrov-Fenchel type inequalities.Comment: 18 pages, slightly revised version stressing our principal result, comments welcom

LMI Representations of Convex Semialgebraic Sets and Determinantal Representations of Algebraic Hypersurfaces: Past, Present, and Future

10 years ago or so Bill Helton introduced me to some mathematical problems arising from semidefinite programming. This paper is a partial account of what was and what is happening with one of these problems, including many open questions and some new results