Convex cone 2026-10-05
A convex cone is a subset of a real vector space closed under nonnegative linear combinations: whenever and . The positive semidefinite cone and the copositive cone are examples, ordered by inclusion through the positive-semidefinite-plus-nonnegative cone.
Horn copositive matrix 2026-10-05
The five-dimensional Horn copositive matrix has diagonal entries , entries on the edges of the five-cycle, and entries on the remaining pairs:For , a cyclic relabelling puts a smallest coordinate at . The identitythen proves that is a copositive matrix.
However, is outside the positive-semidefinite-plus-nonnegative cone. Set . Its quadratic form is zero. If with a positive semidefinite matrix and a symmetric nonnegative matrix, both and must vanish. Positivity of the first three coordinates of forces every entry of the leading block of to vanish. Applying the argument to all cyclic shifts of forces every entry of to vanish, since each pair of indices lies in a cyclic interval of length three. This would make a positive semidefinite matrix, but zero quadratic form of a positive semidefinite matrix would then give , whereas .
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2019 iii Paper 339 3 d Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
Suppose , where is a positive semidefinite matrix and is a symmetric nonnegative matrix. Since , both and are nonnegative. Their sum is zero, so both vanish. In particular,Every coefficient in this sum is strictly positive and every is nonnegative, forcing for .
Now apply the same argument to all five cyclic shifts of . The Horn copositive matrix is cyclically invariant, so every shifted vector also has zero quadratic form. It follows that the entries of vanish on every cyclic block of three consecutive indices. Every pair of indices on a five-cycle lies in such a block, hence .
This would imply . But the zero quadratic form of a positive semidefinite matrix would then force , contradicting . Therefore lies outside the positive-semidefinite-plus-nonnegative cone. By the previous equivalence, its quartic form is a nonnegative polynomial that is not a sum of squares polynomial.