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 limited. In this paper, we introduce a new notion of
\emph{block factor-width-two matrices} and build a new hierarchy of inner and
outer approximations of the cone of positive semidefinite (PSD) matrices. This
notion is a block extension of the standard factor-width-two matrices, and
allows for an improved inner-approximation of the PSD cone. In the context of
SOS optimization, this leads to a block extension of the \emph{scaled
diagonally dominant sum-of-squares (SDSOS)} polynomials. By varying a matrix
partition, the notion of block factor-width-two matrices can balance a
trade-off between the computation scalability and solution quality for solving
semidefinite and SOS optimization. Numerical experiments on large-scale
instances confirm our theoretical findings.Comment: 26 pages, 5 figures. Added a new section on the approximation quality
analysis using block factor-width-two matrices. Code is available through
https://github.com/zhengy09/SDPf