The matricial relaxation of a linear matrix inequality

Given linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) L_1 and L_2, it is natural to ask: (Q1) when does one dominate the other, that is, does L_1(X) PsD imply L_2(X) PsD? (Q2) when do they have the same solution set? Such questions can be NP-hard. This paper describes a natural relaxation of an LMI, based on substituting matrices … Read more

Sufficient and Necessary Conditions for Semidefinite Representability of Convex Hulls and Sets

The article proves sufficient conditions and necessary conditions for SDP representability of convex sets and convex hulls by proposing a new approach to construct SDP representations. The contributions of this paper are: (i) For bounded SDP representable sets $W_1,\cdots,W_m$, we give an explicit construction of an SDP representation for $conv(\cup_{k=1}^mW_k)$. This provides a technique for … Read more

Semidefinite Representation of Convex Sets

Let $S =\{x\in \re^n:\, g_1(x)\geq 0, \cdots, g_m(x)\geq 0\}$ be a semialgebraic set defined by multivariate polynomials $g_i(x)$. Assume $S$ is convex, compact and has nonempty interior. Let $S_i =\{x\in \re^n:\, g_i(x)\geq 0\}$, and $\bdS$ (resp. $\bdS_i$) be the boundary of $S$ (resp. $S_i$). This paper, as does the subject of semidefinite programming (SDP), concerns … Read more