A copositive programming approach to graph partitioning

We consider 3-partitioning the vertices of a graph into sets $S_1, S_2$ and $S_3$ of specified cardinalities, such that the total weight of all edges joining $S_1$ and $S_2$ is minimized. This problem is closely related to several NP-hard problems like determining the bandwidth or finding a vertex separator in a graph. We show that … Read more

Sparse Covariance Selection via Robust Maximum Likelihood Estimation

We address a problem of covariance selection, where we seek a trade-off between a high likelihood against the number of non-zero elements in the inverse covariance matrix. We solve a maximum likelihood problem with a penalty term given by the sum of absolute values of the elements of the inverse covariance matrix, and allow for … Read more

Efficient and cheap bounds for (standard) quadratic optimization

A standard quadratic optimization problem (StQP) consists in minimizing a quadratic form over a simplex. A number of problems can be transformed into a StQP, including the general quadratic problem over a polytope and the maximum clique problem in a graph. In this paper we present several polynomial-time bounds for StQP ranging from very simple … Read more

Analyticity of weighted central path and error bound for semidefinite programming

The purpose of this paper is two-fold. Firstly, we show that every Cholesky-based weighted central path for semidefinite programming is analytic under strict complementarity. This result is applied to homogeneous cone programming to show that the central paths defined by the known class of optimal self-concordant barriers are analytic in the presence of strictly complementary … Read more

Semidefinite Bounds for the Stability Number of a Graph via Sums of Squares of Polynomials

Lov\’ asz and Schrijver [1991] have constructed semidefinite relaxations for the stable set polytope of a graph $G=(V,E)$ by a sequence of lift-and-project operations; their procedure finds the stable set polytope in at most $\alpha(G)$ steps, where $\alpha(G)$ is the stability number of $G$. Two other hierarchies of semidefinite bounds for the stability number have … Read more

Semidefinite-Based Branch-and-Bound for Nonconvex Quadratic Programming

This paper presents a branch-and-bound algorithm for nonconvex quadratic programming, which is based on solving semidefinite relaxations at each node of the enumeration tree. The method is motivated by a recent branch-and-cut approach for the box-constrained case that employs linear relaxations of the first-order KKT conditions. We discuss certain limitations of linear relaxations when handling … Read more

Termination and Verification for Ill-Posed Semidefinite Programming Problems

We investigate ill-posed semidefinite programming problems for which Slater’s constraint qualifications fail, and propose a new reliable termination criterium dealing with such problems. This criterium is scale-independent and provides verified forward error bounds for the true optimal value, where all rounding errors due to floating point arithmetic are taken into account. It is based on … Read more

An Explicit Semidefinite Characterization of Satisfiability for Tseitin Instances

This paper is concerned with the application of semidefinite programming to the satisfiability problem, and in particular with using semidefinite liftings to efficiently obtain proofs of unsatisfiability. We focus on the Tseitin satisfiability instances which are known to be hard for many proof systems. We present an explicit semidefinite programming problem with dimension linear in … Read more

Approximating K-means-type clustering via semidefinite programming

One of the fundamental clustering problems is to assign $n$ points into $k$ clusters based on the minimal sum-of-squares(MSSC), which is known to be NP-hard. In this paper, by using matrix arguments, we first model MSSC as a so-called 0-1 semidefinite programming (SDP). We show that our 0-1 SDP model provides an unified framework for … Read more

A NEW BARRIER FOR A CLASS OF SEMIDEFINITE PROBLEMS

We introduce a new barrier function to solve a class of Semidefinite Optimization Problems (SOP) with bounded variables. That class is motivated by some (SOP) as the minimization of the sum of the first few eigenvalues of symmetric matrices and graph partitioning problems. We study the primal-dual central path defined by the new barrier and … Read more