Sum-of-squares chordal decomposition of polynomial matrix inequalities

We prove decomposition theorems for sparse positive (semi)definite polynomial matrices that can be viewed as sparsity-exploiting versions of the Hilbert–Artin, Reznick, Putinar, and Putinar–Vasilescu Positivstellensätze. First, we establish that a polynomial matrix P(x) with chordal sparsity is positive semidefinite for all $$x\in \mathbb {R}^n$$ x ∈ R n if and only if there exists a sum-of-squares (SOS) polynomial $$\sigma (x)$$ σ ( x ) such that $$\sigma P$$ σ P is a sum of sparse SOS matrices. Second, we show that setting $$\sigma (x)=(x_1^2 + \cdots + x_n^2)^\nu $$ σ ( x ) = ( x 1 2 + ⋯ + x n 2 ) ν for some integer $$\nu $$ ν suffices if P is homogeneous and positive definite globally. Third, we prove that if P is positive definite on a compact semialgebraic set $$\mathcal {K}=\{x:g_1(x)\ge 0,\ldots ,g_m(x)\ge 0\}$$ K = { x : g 1 ( x ) ≥ 0 , … , g m ( x ) ≥ 0 } satisfying the Archimedean condition, then $$P(x) = S_0(x) + g_1(x)S_1(x) + \cdots + g_m(x)S_m(x)$$ P ( x ) = S 0 ( x ) + g 1 ( x ) S 1 ( x ) + ⋯ + g m ( x ) S m ( x ) for matrices $$S_i(x)$$ S i ( x ) that are sums of sparse SOS matrices. Finally, if $$\mathcal {K}$$ K is not compact or does not satisfy the Archimedean condition, we obtain a similar decomposition for $$(x_1^2 + \cdots + x_n^2)^\nu P(x)$$ ( x 1 2 + ⋯ + x n 2 ) ν P ( x ) with some integer $$\nu \ge 0$$ ν ≥ 0 when P and $$g_1,\ldots ,g_m$$ g 1 , … , g m are homogeneous of even degree. Using these results, we find sparse SOS representation theorems for polynomials that are quadratic and correlatively sparse in a subset of variables, and we construct new convergent hierarchies of sparsity-exploiting SOS reformulations for convex optimization problems with large and sparse polynomial matrix inequalities. Numerical examples demonstrate that these hierarchies can have a significantly lower computational complexity than traditional ones.