On Difference-of-SOS and Difference-of-Convex-SOS Decompositions for Polynomials

SIAM Journal on Optimization, Volume 34, Issue 2, Page 1852-1878, June 2024.
Abstract. In this article, we are interested in developing polynomial decomposition techniques based on sums-of-squares (SOS), namely the difference-of-sums-of-squares (D-SOS) and the difference-of-convex-sums-of-squares (DC-SOS). In particular, the DC-SOS decomposition is very useful for difference-of-convex (DC) programming formulation of polynomial optimization problems. First, we introduce the cone of convex-sums-of-squares (CSOS) polynomials and discuss its relationship to the sums-of-squares (SOS) polynomials, the non-negative polynomials, and the SOS-convex polynomials. Then we propose the set of D-SOS and DC-SOS polynomials and prove that any polynomial can be formulated as D-SOS and DC-SOS. The problem of finding D-SOS and DC-SOS decompositions can be formulated as a semi-definite program and solved for any desired precision in polynomial time using interior point methods. Some algebraic properties of CSOS, D-SOS, and DC-SOS are established. Second, we focus on establishing several practical algorithms for exact D-SOS and DC-SOS polynomial decompositions without solving any SDP. The numerical performance of the proposed D-SOS and DC-SOS decomposition algorithms and their parallel versions, tested on a dataset of 1750 randomly generated polynomials, is reported.