An Improved Semidefinite Programming Relaxation for the Satisfiability Problem

The satisfiability (SAT) problem is a central problem in mathematical logic, computing theory, and artificial intelligence. An instance of SAT is specified by a set of boolean variables and a propositional formula in conjunctive normal form. Given such an instance, the SAT problem asks whether there is a truth assignment to the variables such that … Read more

Limiting behavior of the central path in semidefinite optimization

It was recently shown that, unlike in linear optimization, the central path in semidefinite optimization (SDO) does not converge to the analytic center of the optimal set in general. In this paper we analyze the limiting behavior of the central path to explain this unexpected phenomenon. This is done by deriving a new necessary and … Read more

Characterization of the limit point of the central path in semidefinite programming

In linear programming, the central path is known to converge to the analytic center of the set of optimal solutions. Recently, it has been shown that this is not necessarily true for linear semidefinite programming in the absence of strict complementarity. The present paper deals with the formulation of a convex problem whose solution defines … Read more

Geometry of homogeneous convex cones, duality mapping, and optimal self-concordant barriers

We study homogeneous convex cones. We first characterize the extreme rays of such cones in the context of their primal construction (due to Vinberg) and also in the context of their dual construction (due to Rothaus). Then, using these results, we prove that every homogeneous cone is facially exposed. We provide an alternative proof of … Read more

A General Framework for Convex Relaxation of Polynomial Optimization Problems over Cones

The class of POPs (Polynomial Optimization Problems) over cones covers a wide range of optimization problems such as $0$-$1$ integer linear and quadratic programs, nonconvex quadratic programs and bilinear matrix inequalities. This paper presents a new framework for convex relaxation of POPs over cones in terms of linear optimization problems over cones. It provides a … Read more

Linear Huber M-Estimator under Ellipsoidal Data Uncertainty

The purpose of this note is to present a robust counterpart of the Huber estimation problem in the sense of Ben-Tal and Nemirovski when the data elements are subject to ellipsoidal uncertainty. The robust counterparts are polynomially solvable second-order cone programs with the strong duality property. We illustrate the effectiveness of the robust counterpart approach … Read more

SOSTOOLS: Sum of Squares Optimization Toolbox for MATLAB — User’s Guide

SOSTOOLS is a free MATLAB toolbox for formulating and solving sum of squares (SOS) optimization programs. It uses a simple notation and a flexible and intuitive high-level user interface to specify the SOS programs. Currently these are solved using SeDuMi, a well-known semidefinite programming solver, while SOSTOOLS handles internally all the necessary reformulations and data … Read more

Condition and complexity measures for infeasibility certificates of systems of linear inequalities and their sensitivity analysis

We begin with a study of the infeasibility measures for linear programming problems. For this purpose, we consider feasibility problems in Karmarkar’s standard form. Our main focus is on the complexity measures which can be used to bound the amount of computational effort required to solve systems of linear inequalities and related problems in certain … Read more

Relating Homogeneous Cones and Positive Definite Cones via hBcalgebras

$T$-algebras are non-associative algebras defined by Vinberg in the early 1960’s for the purpose of studying homogeneous cones. Vinberg defined a cone $K(\mathcal A)$ for each $T$-algebra $\mathcal A$ and proved that every homogeneous cone is isomorphic to one such $K(\mathcal A)$. We relate each $T$-algebra $\mathcal A$ with a space of linear operators in … Read more

Semidefinite Programming in the Space of Partial Positive Semidefinite Matrices

We build upon the work of Fukuda et al.\ \cite{FuKoMuNa01} and Nakata et al.\ \cite{NaFuFuKoMu01}, in which the theory of partial positive semidefinite matrices has been applied to the semidefinite programming (SDP) problem as a technique for exploiting sparsity in the data. In contrast to their work, which improves an existing algorithm that is based … Read more