arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Tim Netzer.
A spectrahedron is a set defined by a linear matrix inequality. A projection of a spectrahedron is often called a semidefinitely representable set. We show that the convex hull of a finite union of such projections is again a projection of a spectrahedron. This improves upon the result of Helton and Nie, who prove the same result in the case of bounded sets.
We consider the problem of determining the closure of a quadratic module M in a commutative R-algebra with respect to the finest locally convex topology. This is of interest in deciding when the moment problem is solvable and in analyzing algorithms for polynomial optimization involving semidefinite programming. The closure of a semiordering is also considered, and it is shown that the space of all semiorderings lying over M plays an important role in understanding the closure of M. The fibre theorem of Schmuedgen for preorderings is strengthened and extended to quadratic modules. The extended result is used to construct an example of a non-archimedean quadratic module describing a compact semialgebraic set that has the strong moment property. The same result is used to obtain a recursive description of the closure of M which is valid in many cases.
We consider a closed set S in R^n and a linear operator Φon the polynomial algebra R[X_1,...,X_n] that preserves nonnegative polynomials, in the following sense: if f\geq 0 on S, then Φ(f)\geq 0 on S as well. We show that each such operator is given by integration with respect to a measure taking nonnegative functions as its values. This can be seen as a generalization of Haviland's Theorem, which concerns linear functionals on polynomial algebras. For compact sets S we use the result to show that any nonnegativity preserving operator is a pointwise limit of very simple nonnegativity preservers with finite dimensional range.
A finitely generated quadratic module or preordering in the real polynomial ring is called stable, if it admits a certain degree bound on the sums of squares in the representation of polynomials. Stability, first defined explicitly by Powers and Scheiderer, is a very useful property. It often implies that the quadratic module is closed; furthermore it helps settling the Moment Problem, solves the Membership Problem for quadratic modules and allows applications of methods from optimization to represent nonnegative polynomials. We provide sufficient conditions for finitely generated quadratic modules in real polynomial rings of several variables to be stable. These conditions can be checked easily. For a certain class of semi-algebraic sets, we obtain that the nonexistence of bounded polynomials implies stability of every corresponding quadratic module. As stability often implies the non-solvability of the Moment Problem, this complements Schmuedgen's result which uses bounded polynomials to check the solvability of the Moment Problem by dimensional induction. We also use stability to generalize a result on the Invariant Moment Problem by Cimpric, Kuhlmann and Scheiderer.
Let S be a basic closed semi-algebraic set in R^n and P the corresponding preordering in R[X_1,...,X_n]. We examine for which polynomials f there exist identities f+\ep q \in P for all \ep>0. These are precisely the elements of the sequential closure of P with respect to the finest locally convex topology. We solve the open problem whether this equals the double dual cone of P, by providing a counterexample. We then prove a theorem that allows to obtain identities for polynomials as above, by looking at a family of fibre-preorderings, constructed from bounded polynomials. These fibre-preorderings are easier to deal with than the original preordering in general. For a large class of examples we are thus able to show that either every polynomial f that is nonnegative on S admits such representations, or at least the polynomials from the double dual cone of P do. The results also hold in the more general setup of arbitrary commutative algebras and quadratic modules instead of preorderings.
We consider real polynomials in finitely many variables. Let the variables consist of finitely many blocks that are allowed to overlap in a certain way. Let the solution set of a finite system of polynomial inequalities be given where each inequality involves only variables of one block. We investigate polynomials that are positive on such a set and sparse in the sense that each monomial involves only variables of one block. In particular, we derive a short and direct proof for Lasserre's theorem of the existence of sums of squares certificates respecting the block structure. The motivation for the results can be found in the literature and stems from numerical methods using semidefinite programming to simulate or control discrete-time behaviour of systems.
We show that every real polynomial $f$ nonnegative on $[-1,1]^{n}$ can be approximated in the $l_{1}$-norm of coefficients, by a sequence of polynomials $\{f_{\ep r}\}$ that are sums of squares. This complements the existence of s.o.s. approximations in the denseness result of Berg, Christensen and Ressel, as we provide a very simple and \textit{explicit} approximation sequence. Then we show that if the Moment Problem holds for a basic closed semi-algebraic set $K_S\subset\R^n$ with nonempty interior, then every polynomial nonnegative on $K_S$ can be approximated in a similar fashion by elements from the corresponding preordering. Finally, we show that the degree of the perturbation in the approximating sequence depends on $ε$ as well as the degree and the size of coefficients of the nonnegative polynomial $f$, but not on the specific values of its coefficients.