This talk focuses on optimization over state polynomials, i.e., polynomials in noncommuting variables and formal states of their products.An archimedean Positivstellensatz in the spirit of Putinar and Helton-McCullough is presented leading to a hierarchy of semidefinite relaxations converging monotonically to the optimum of a state polynomial subject to state constraints. This hierarchy can be seen as a state analog of the Lasserre hierarchy for optimization of polynomials, and the Navascués-Pironio-Acín scheme for optimization of noncommutative polynomials.The motivation behind this theory arises from the study of correlations in quantum networks. Determining the maximal quantum violation of a polynomial Bell inequality for an arbitrary network is reformulated as a state polynomial optimization problem. Several examples of quadratic Bell inequalities in the bipartite scenario are analyzed.To reduce the size of the semidefinite programs, sparsity, sign symmetry and conditional expectation of the observables' group structure are exploited.This is based on the joint work with Igor Klep, Jurij Volčič, and Jie Wang.
This talk focuses on optimization over state polynomials, i.e., polynomials in noncommuting variables and formal states of their products.An archimedean Positivstellensatz in the spirit of Putinar and Helton-McCullough is presented leading to a hierarchy of semidefinite relaxations converging monotonically to the optimum of a state polynomial subject to state constraints. This hierarchy can be seen as a state analog of the Lasserre hierarchy for optimization of polynomials, and the Navascués-Pironio-Acín scheme for optimization of noncommutative polynomials.The motivation behind this theory arises from the study of correlations in quantum networks. Determining the maximal quantum violation of a polynomial Bell inequality for an arbitrary network is reformulated as a state polynomial optimization problem. Several examples of quadratic Bell inequalities in the bipartite scenario are analyzed.To reduce the size of the semidefinite programs, sparsity, sign symmetry and conditional expectation of the observables' group structure are exploited.This is based on the joint work with Igor Klep, Jurij Volčič, and Jie Wang.
Abstract. Bell inequalities are pillars of quantum physics in that their violations imply that certain properties of quantum physics (e.g., entanglement) cannot be represented by any classical picture of physics. In this article Bell inequalities and their violations are considered through the lens of noncommutative polynomial optimization. Optimality of these violations is certified for a large majority of a set of standard Bell inequalities, denoted A2–A89 in the literature. The main techniques used in the paper include the NPA hierarchy, i.e., the noncommutative version of the Lasserre semidefinite programming (SDP) hierarchies based on the Helton–McCullough Positivstellensatz, the Gelfand–Naimark–Segal (GNS) construction with a novel use of the Artin–Wedderburn theory for rounding and projecting, and nonlinear programming (NLP). A new “Newton chip”-like technique for reducing sizes of SDPs arising in the constructed polynomial optimization problems is presented. This technique is based on conditional expectations. Finally, noncommutative Gröbner bases are exploited to certify when an optimizer (a solution yielding optimum violation) cannot be extracted from a dual SDP solution.
We study quantum algorithms for approximating Lasserre's hierarchy values for polynomial optimization. Let f,g1,…,gm be real polynomials in n variables and f⋆ the infimum of f over the semialgebraic set S(g)={x:gi(x)≥0}. Let λk be the value of the order-k Lasserre relaxation. Assume either (i) f⋆=λk and the optimum is attained in the ℓ1-ball of radius 1/2, or (ii) S(g) lies in the simplex {x≥0:∑jxj≤1/2}, and the constraints define this simplex. After an appropriate coefficient rescaling, we give a quantum algorithm based on matrix multiplicative weights that approximates λk to accuracy ε>0 with runtime, for fixed k, O(nkε−4+nk/2ε−5),O(sg[nkε−4+(nk+∑i=1mnk−di)1/2ε−5]), where sg bounds the sparsity of the coefficient-matching matrices associated with the constraints. Classical matrix multiplicative-weights methods scale as O(n3kpoly(1/ε)) even in the unconstrained case. As an example, we obtain an O(nε−4+nε−5) quantum algorithm for portfolio optimization, improving over the classical O(nω+1log(1/ε)) bound with ω≈2.373.
Our approach builds on and sharpens the analysis of Apeldoorn and Gilyén for the SDPs arising in polynomial optimization. We also show how to implement the required block encodings without QRAM. Under the stated assumptions, our method achieves a super-quadratic speedup in the problem dimension for computing Lasserre relaxations.
The Navascués-Pironio-Acín (NPA) hierarchy provides a convergent sequence of semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxations for noncommutative polynomial optimisation, ubiquitous in quantum physics. However, its practical applicability is limited by the combinatorial growth in operator moments required at each level. Since not all moments contribute equally to bound tightness, selecting moments within a fixed computational budget is a relevant problem.
We reframe moment selection as combinatorial subset selection and show it is governed by strong higher-order synergistic interactions among moments, quantified through a marginal synergy diagnostic adapted from complex systems theory. We develop and compare three optimisation methods: Parallel Tempering (PT), an RBM-based reinforcement learning policy, and Bayesian Optimisation (BO). On the I3322 Bell inequality benchmark, all three substantially outperform greedy approaches at costs around two orders of magnitude below brute force, with the RBM achieving the closest approach to optimal throughout the hard transition regime.
We apply the framework to the 174 Bell inequalities in the (4,4,2,2) scenario, finding heterogeneous convergence behaviour across inequalities, and to the one-dimensional Heisenberg spin chain, demonstrating that physically motivated monomial bases are internally compressible and are not globally optimal in general. A budget-aware search over a broader pool improves certified bounds on long-range correlations by nearly two orders of magnitude. These results establish a scalable framework for moment selection in noncommutative polynomial optimisation, with broad applications across quantum physics and quantum information.
Semidefinite programming hierarchies for commutative and non-commutative polynomial optimization represent a powerful computational tool with many applications in quantum information. In such applications, a given variable is typically not either commuting or non-commuting with all other variables, but instead commutes with some variables and does not commute with others, i.e., the variables satisfy some partial commutation relations. While such partial commutation relations can always be incorporated in a fully non-commutative setting through suitable linear constraints in the semidefinite programming relaxations, exploiting their algebraic properties from the onset can result in more compact relaxations. This leads us to introduce partially-commutative polynomial optimization, a framework that encompasses commutative and non-commutative polynomial optimization, allowing for arbitrary commutation relations among the variables. We point out that the underlying algebraic structure is that of a partially-commutative monoid. We present and review several key aspects of such monoids and show how they can be used to build SDP relaxations for partially-commutative polynomial optimization problems in which the partial commutations are natively implemented in the monomial structure, without the need of additional linear constraints.
Abstract We consider the problem of optimizing the state average of a polynomial of non-commuting variables, over all states and operators satisfying a number of polynomial constraints, and over all Hilbert spaces where such states and operators are defined. Such non-commutative polynomial optimization (NPO) problems are routinely solved through hierarchies of semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxations. By formulating the general NPO problem in Lagrangian terms, we heuristically derive first-order optimality conditions via small variations in the problem variables. Although the derivation is not rigorous, it gives rise to two types of optimality conditions—state and operator—which are rigorously analyzed in the paper. Both types of conditions can be enforced through additional positive semidefinite constraints in the SDP hierarchies. State optimality conditions are shown to be satisfied by all NPO problems. For NPO problems with optimal solutions (such as, e.g., Archimedean ones) they allow enforcing a new type of constraints: namely, restricting the optimization over states to the set of common ground states of an arbitrary number of operators. Operator optimality conditions are the non-commutative analogs of the Karush–Kuhn–Tucker (KKT) conditions, which are known to hold in many classical optimization problems. In this regard, we prove that a weak form of operator optimality holds for all NPO problems; stronger versions require the problem constraints to satisfy some qualification criterion, just like in the classical case (e.g.: Mangasarian–Fromovitz constraint qualification). We test the power of the new optimality conditions by computing local properties of ground states of many-body spin systems and the maximum quantum violation of Bell inequalities.
Non-commutative polynomial optimization (NPO) problems seek to minimize the state average of a polynomial of some operator variables, subject to polynomial constraints, over all states and operators, as well as the Hilbert spaces where those might be defined. Many of these problems are known to admit a complete hierarchy of semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxations. In this work, we consider a variant of NPO problems where a subset of the operator variables satisfies a system of ordinary differential equations. We prove that, under mild conditions of operator boundedness, for every such problem one can construct a standard NPO problem with the same solution. This allows us to define a complete hierarchy of SDPs to tackle the original differential problem. We apply this method to bound averages of local observables in quantum spin systems subject to a Hamiltonian evolution (i.e., a quench). We find that, even in the thermodynamic limit of infinitely many sites, low levels of the hierarchy provide very good approximations for reasonably long evolution times.