We solve a 20-year old problem posed by Yannakakis and prove that there
exists no polynomial-size linear program (LP) whose associated polytope
projects to the traveling salesman polytope, even if the LP is not required to
be symmetric. Moreover, we prove that this holds also for the cut polytope and
the stable set polytope. These results were discovered through a new connection
that we make between one-way quantum communication protocols and semidefinite
programming reformulations of LPs.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figures. This version of the paper will appear in the
Journal of the ACM. The earlier conference version in STOC'12 had the title
"Linear vs. Semidefinite Extended Formulations: Exponential Separation and
Strong Lower Bounds