The matching polytope does not admit fully-polynomial size relaxation schemes

The groundbreaking work of Rothvo{\ss} [arxiv:1311.2369] established that every linear program expressing the matching polytope has an exponential number of inequalities (formally, the matching polytope has exponential extension complexity). We generalize this result by deriving strong bounds on the polyhedral inapproximability of the matching polytope: for fixed $0 < \varepsilon < 1$, every polyhedral $(1 + \varepsilon / n)$-approximation requires an exponential number of inequalities, where $n$ is the number of vertices. This is sharp given the well-known $\rho$-approximation of size $O(\binom{n}{\rho/(\rho-1)})$ provided by the odd-sets of size up to $\rho/(\rho-1)$. Thus matching is the first problem in $P$, whose natural linear encoding does not admit a fully polynomial-size relaxation scheme (the polyhedral equivalent of an FPTAS), which provides a sharp separation from the polynomial-size relaxation scheme obtained e.g., via constant-sized odd-sets mentioned above. Our approach reuses ideas from Rothvo{\ss} [arxiv:1311.2369], however the main lower bounding technique is different. While the original proof is based on the hyperplane separation bound (also called the rectangle corruption bound), we employ the information-theoretic notion of common information as introduced in Braun and Pokutta [http://eccc.hpi-web.de/report/2013/056/], which allows to analyze perturbations of slack matrices. It turns out that the high extension complexity for the matching polytope stem from the same source of hardness as for the correlation polytope: a direct sum structure.Comment: 21 pages, 3 figure

On the properties of level spacings for decomposable systems

In this paper we show that the quantum theory of chaos, based on the statistical theory of energy spectra, presents inconsistencies difficult to overcome. In classical mechanics a system described by an hamiltonian $H = H_1 + H_2$ (decomposable) cannot be ergodic, because there are always two dependent integrals of motion besides the constant of energy. In quantum mechanics we prove the existence of decomposable systems \linebreak $H^q = H^q_1 + H^q_2$ whose spacing distribution agrees with the Wigner law and we show that in general the spacing distribution of $H^q$ is not the Poisson law, even if it has often the same qualitative behaviour. We have found that the spacings of $H^q$ are among the solutions of a well defined class of homogeneous linear systems. We have obtained an explicit formula for the bases of the kernels of these systems, and a chain of inequalities which the coefficients of a generic linear combination of the basis vectors must satisfy so that the elements of a particular solution will be all positive, i.e. can be considered a set of spacings.Comment: LateX, 13 page

Convex cones of generalized multiply monotone functions and the dual cones

Let $n$ and $k$ be nonnegative integers such that $1\le k\le n+1$. The convex cone $\mathcal{F}_+^{k:n}$ of all functions $f$ on an arbitrary interval $I\subseteq\mathbb{R}$ whose derivatives $f^{(j)}$ of orders $j=k-1,\dots,n$ are nondecreasing is characterized in terms of extreme rays of the cone $\mathcal{F}_+^{k:n}$. A simple description of the convex cone dual to $\mathcal{F}_+^{k:n}$ is given. These results are useful in, and were motivated by, applications in probability. In fact, the results are obtained in a more general setting with certain generalized derivatives of $f$ of the $j$th order in place of $f^{(j)}$. Somewhat similar results were previously obtained in the case when the left endpoint of the interval $I$ is finite, with certain additional integrability conditions; such conditions fail to hold in the mentioned applications.Comment: Version 2: More applications given; two typos fixe