Equivalent Sufficient Conditions for Global Optimality of Quadratically Constrained Quadratic Program

We study the equivalence of several well-known sufficient optimality conditions for a general quadratically constrained quadratic program (QCQP). The conditions are classified in two categories. The first one is for determining an optimal solution and the second one is for finding an optimal value. The first category of conditions includes the existence of a saddle … Read more

Semidefinite approximations for bicliques and biindependent pairs

We investigate some graph parameters dealing with biindependent pairs $(A,B)$ in a bipartite graph $G=(V_1\cup V_2,E)$, i.e., pairs $(A,B)$ where $A\subseteq V_1$, $B\subseteq V_2$ and $A\cup B$ is independent. These parameters also allow to study bicliques in general graphs. When maximizing the cardinality $|A\cup B|$ one finds the stability number $\alpha(G)$, well-known to be polynomial-time … Read more

On solving the MAX-SAT using sum of squares

We consider semidefinite programming (SDP) approaches for solving the maximum satisfiabilityproblem (MAX-SAT) and the weighted partial MAX-SAT. It is widely known that SDP is well-suitedto approximate the (MAX-)2-SAT. Our work shows the potential of SDP also for other satisfiabilityproblems, by being competitive with some of the best solvers in the yearly MAX-SAT competition.Our solver combines … Read more

Polynomial argmin for recovery and approximation of multivariate discontinuous functions

We propose to approximate a (possibly discontinuous) multivariate function f(x) on a compact set by the partial minimizer arg min_y p(x,y) of an appropriate polynomial p whose construction can be cast in a univariate sum of squares (SOS) framework, resulting in a highly structured convex semidefinite program. In a number of non-trivial cases (e.g. when … Read more

Handling Symmetries in Mixed-Integer Semidefinite Programs

Symmetry handling is a key technique for reducing the running time of branch-and-bound methods for solving mixed-integer linear programs. In this paper, we generalize the notion of (permutation) symmetries to mixed-integer semidefinite programs (MISDPs). We first discuss how symmetries of MISDPs can be automatically detected by finding automorphisms of a suitably colored auxiliary graph. Then … Read more

A Note on Semidefinite Representable Reformulations for Two Variants of the Trust-Region Subproblem

Motivated by encouraging numerical results in the literature, in this note we consider two specific variants of the trust-region subproblem and provide exact semidefinite representable reformulations. The first is over the intersection of two balls; the second is over the intersection of a ball and a special second-order conic representable set. Different from the technique … Read more

Linear optimization over homogeneous matrix cones

A convex cone is homogeneous if its automorphism group acts transitively on the interior of the cone, i.e., for every pair of points in the interior of the cone, there exists a cone automorphism that maps one point to the other. Cones that are homogeneous and self-dual are called symmetric. The symmetric cones include the … Read more

The Largest Unsolved QAP Instance Tai256c Can Be Converted into A 256-dimensional Simple BQOP with A Single Cardinality Constraint

Tai256c is the largest unsolved quadratic assignment problem (QAP) instance in QAPLIB; a 1.48\% gap remains between the best known feasible objective value and lower bound of the unknown optimal value. This paper shows that the instance can be converted into a 256 dimensional binary quadratic optimization problem (BQOP) with a single cardinality constraint which … Read more

Sparse PCA With Multiple Components

Sparse Principal Component Analysis (sPCA) is a cardinal technique for obtaining combinations of features, or principal components (PCs), that explain the variance of high-dimensional datasets in an interpretable manner. This involves solving a sparsity and orthogonality-constrained convex maximization problem, which is extremely computationally challenging. Most existing works address sparse PCA via methods—such as iteratively computing … Read more