Distributionally robust optimization (DRO) is widely used, because it offers a way to overcome the conservativeness of robust optimization without requiring the specificity of stochastic optimization. On the computational side, many practical DRO instances can be equivalently (or approximately) formulated as semidefinite programming (SDP) problems via conic duality of the moment problem. However, despite being … Read more
The bounded degree sum-of-squares (BSOS) hierarchy of Lasserre, Toh, and Yang [EURO J. Comput. Optim., 2015] constructs lower bounds for a general polynomial optimization problem with compact feasible set, by solving a sequence of semi-definite programming (SDP) problems. Lasserre, Toh, and Yang prove that these lower bounds converge to the optimal value of the original … Read more
In this paper we analyze general two-term disjunctions on a regular cone $\K$ and derive a general form for a family of convex inequalities which are valid for the resulting nonconvex sets. Under mild technical assumptions, these inequalities collectively describe the closed convex hulls of these disjunctions, and if additional conditions are satisfied, a single … Read more
We consider the maximum k-cut problem that consists in partitioning the vertex set of a graph into k subsets such that the sum of the weights of edges joining vertices in different subsets is maximized. We focus on identifying effective classes of inequalities to tighten the semidefinite programming relaxation. We carry out an experimental study … Read more
The k-partition problem is an NP-hard combinatorial optimisation problem with many applications. Chopra and Rao introduced two integer programming formulations of this problem, one having both node and edge variables, and the other having only edge variables. We show that, if we take the polytopes associated with the `edge-only’ formulation, and project them into a … Read more
We consider the problem of minimizing a given $n$-variate polynomial $f$ over the hypercube $[-1,1]^n$. An idea introduced by Lasserre, is to find a probability distribution on $[-1,1]^n$ with polynomial density function $h$ (of given degree $r$) that minimizes the expectation $\int_{[-1,1]^n} f(x)h(x)d\mu(x)$, where $d\mu(x)$ is a fixed, finite Borel measure supported on $[-1,1]^n$. It … Read more
We present a coordinate ascent method for a class of semidefinite programming problems that arise in non-convex quadratic integer optimization. These semidefinite programs are characterized by a small total number of active constraints and by low-rank constraint matrices. We exploit this special structure by solving the dual problem, using a barrier method in combination with … Read more
The purpose of this paper is to solve the 0-1 k-item quadratic knapsack problem (kQKP), a problem of maximizing a quadratic function subject to two linear constraints.We propose an exact method based on semide nite optimization. The semide nite relaxation used in our approach includes simple rank one constraints, which can be handled efficiently by interior point … Read more
We consider the problem of minimizing a linear function over an affine section of the cone of positive semidefinite matrices, with the additional constraint that the feasible matrix has prescribed rank. When the rank constraint is active, this is a non-convex optimization problem, otherwise it is a semidefinite program. Both find numerous applications especially in … Read more
We consider graph three-partitions with the objective of minimizing the number of edges between the first two partition sets while keeping the size of the third block small. We review most of the existing relaxations for this min-cut problem and focus on a new class of semidefinite relaxations, based on matrices of order $2n$ which … Read more