76 research outputs found
NP-hardness of Deciding Convexity of Quartic Polynomials and Related Problems
We show that unless P=NP, there exists no polynomial time (or even
pseudo-polynomial time) algorithm that can decide whether a multivariate
polynomial of degree four (or higher even degree) is globally convex. This
solves a problem that has been open since 1992 when N. Z. Shor asked for the
complexity of deciding convexity for quartic polynomials. We also prove that
deciding strict convexity, strong convexity, quasiconvexity, and
pseudoconvexity of polynomials of even degree four or higher is strongly
NP-hard. By contrast, we show that quasiconvexity and pseudoconvexity of odd
degree polynomials can be decided in polynomial time.Comment: 20 page
Algebraic Relaxations and Hardness Results in Polynomial Optimization and Lyapunov Analysis
This thesis settles a number of questions related to computational complexity
and algebraic, semidefinite programming based relaxations in optimization and
control.Comment: PhD Thesis, MIT, September, 201
A Complete Characterization of the Gap between Convexity and SOS-Convexity
Our first contribution in this paper is to prove that three natural sum of
squares (sos) based sufficient conditions for convexity of polynomials, via the
definition of convexity, its first order characterization, and its second order
characterization, are equivalent. These three equivalent algebraic conditions,
henceforth referred to as sos-convexity, can be checked by semidefinite
programming whereas deciding convexity is NP-hard. If we denote the set of
convex and sos-convex polynomials in variables of degree with
and respectively, then our main
contribution is to prove that if and
only if or or . We also present a complete
characterization for forms (homogeneous polynomials) except for the case
which is joint work with G. Blekherman and is to be published
elsewhere. Our result states that the set of convex forms in
variables of degree equals the set of sos-convex forms if
and only if or or . To prove these results, we present
in particular explicit examples of polynomials in
and
and forms in
and , and a
general procedure for constructing forms in from nonnegative but not sos forms in variables and degree .
Although for disparate reasons, the remarkable outcome is that convex
polynomials (resp. forms) are sos-convex exactly in cases where nonnegative
polynomials (resp. forms) are sums of squares, as characterized by Hilbert.Comment: 25 pages; minor editorial revisions made; formal certificates for
computer assisted proofs of the paper added to arXi
Polynomial Norms
In this paper, we study polynomial norms, i.e. norms that are the
root of a degree- homogeneous polynomial . We first show
that a necessary and sufficient condition for to be a norm is for
to be strictly convex, or equivalently, convex and positive definite. Though
not all norms come from roots of polynomials, we prove that any
norm can be approximated arbitrarily well by a polynomial norm. We then
investigate the computational problem of testing whether a form gives a
polynomial norm. We show that this problem is strongly NP-hard already when the
degree of the form is 4, but can always be answered by testing feasibility of a
semidefinite program (of possibly large size). We further study the problem of
optimizing over the set of polynomial norms using semidefinite programming. To
do this, we introduce the notion of r-sos-convexity and extend a result of
Reznick on sum of squares representation of positive definite forms to positive
definite biforms. We conclude with some applications of polynomial norms to
statistics and dynamical systems
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