A positive definite polynomial Hessian that does not factor

Amir Ali Ahmadi, Pablo A. Parrilo

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

7 Scopus citations

Abstract

The notion of sos-convexity has recently been proposed as a tractable sufficient condition for convexity of polynomials based on a sum of squares decomposition of the Hessian matrix. A multivariate polynomial p(x) = p(x 1,...,xn) is said to be sos-convex if its Hessian H(x) can be factored as H(x) = MT (x)M(x) with a possibly nonsquare polynomial matrix M(x). The problem of deciding sos-convexity of a polynomial can be reduced to the feasibility of a semidefinite program, which can be checked efficiently. Motivated by this computational tractability, it has been speculated whether every convex polynomial must necessarily be sos-convex. In this paper, we answer this question in the negative by presenting an explicit example of a trivariate homogeneous polynomial of degree eight that is convex but not sos-convex.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 48th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control held jointly with 2009 28th Chinese Control Conference, CDC/CCC 2009
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages1195-1200
Number of pages6
ISBN (Print)9781424438716
DOIs
StatePublished - 2009
Externally publishedYes
Event48th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control held jointly with 2009 28th Chinese Control Conference, CDC/CCC 2009 - Shanghai, China
Duration: Dec 15 2009Dec 18 2009

Publication series

NameProceedings of the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control
ISSN (Print)0743-1546
ISSN (Electronic)2576-2370

Other

Other48th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control held jointly with 2009 28th Chinese Control Conference, CDC/CCC 2009
Country/TerritoryChina
CityShanghai
Period12/15/0912/18/09

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Control and Systems Engineering
  • Modeling and Simulation
  • Control and Optimization

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