Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 339 1 f Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
The real vector space of symmetric matrices has dimension . By the conic Carathéodory theorem, every member of is a conic combination of at most generators. Absorb each nonnegative coefficient into its vector through .
If converges to , write, padding with zero vectors if necessary,The matrix trace satisfiesThe left side is bounded because converges. Thus the finite tuple is bounded. The Bolzano-Weierstrass theorem gives a subsequence on which every vector converges, say . Continuity of the outer product now gives . HenceThis proves closedness of the completely positive cone. The uniform bound on the number of factors and the matrix trace bound are both essential: an arbitrary conic hull of a closed generating set need not be closed.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 339 1 g Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Let . This set is nonempty and compact for , and the quadratic form is continuous. Its minimum is therefore attained.
For every nonzero in the nonnegative orthant, normalizing givesThe zero vector imposes no further condition. It follows that is a copositive matrix exactly when . Thus the feasible scalar set is , andBoth optima are attained. This copositive reformulation of an orthant Rayleigh minimum follows directly from homogeneity; it does not require invoking a duality theorem for the original nonconvex constraint.
The restriction to matters. For the matrix in part (a), this minimum is whereas the unrestricted smallest eigenvalue is .
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 339 1 h Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
For in the dual cone , copositivity of gives . An upper-bounding Lagrangian for the maximization is thereforeIts supremum over unrestricted is finite precisely when . Minimizing that upper bound gives the conic programThis is completely positive optimization, not simply semidefinite programming: is the completely positive cone.
There is also a direct equality certificate. Every feasible , , has . Its objective is a weighted average of the nonnegative-sphere Rayleigh quotients, hence is at least . For a minimizing unit vector from part (g), is feasible and has objective . Thus attains the dual and both values agree, without relying on unverified regularity assumptions.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 339 2 a Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Split the sign vector as . Multiplication of the two off-diagonal blocks givesbecause the two terms are the same real scalar. The map is a bijection between the feasible sign choices. ThereforeThis is the symmetric lifting of bipartite binary quadratic optimization to binary quadratic optimization. The factor is necessary: otherwise the two blocks would double the objective. No positive semidefiniteness of is assumed; generally its off-diagonal structure makes its quadratic form indefinite.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 339 2 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Every feasible sign vector gives the rank-one matrix . It is a positive semidefinite matrix, since , and . The matrix trace identity givesThus all original feasible objectives appear among the relaxed ones, provingThe semidefinite relaxation of binary quadratic optimization drops the rank-one requirement and keeps the elliptope constraints.
An optimal relaxed matrix exists. The feasible set is nonempty, since it contains , and closed. Its two-by-two principal minors give , so it is bounded and therefore compact. The linear objective attains its maximum. Also and hence , including the zero-objective case.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 339 2 c Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Write a test vector as and put , . Its quadratic form against the block-constant matrix isSince , both and are nonnegative, andEquivalently it isTherefore the bipartite block-constant positive semidefinite matrix satisfies .
For positive block sizes, the condition is also necessary: choose and to obtain and . Equality is allowed, and vectors whose sums vanish in both blocks lie in the kernel. Positive semidefiniteness, rather than positive definiteness, is the conclusion.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 339 2 e Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Put , so . The power series coefficients of the hyperbolic sine preprocessing areThus for every , and the series converge on the full interval. Applying coefficient-dominated entrywise positivity gives .
Every diagonal entry belongs to one of the diagonal blocks and equals . Because and , this is . ThereforeThe matrix lies in the elliptope and admits a Gram matrix representation by unit vectors. This preprocessing is the Krivine rounding scheme; the equality of absolute coefficients is what preserves positive semidefiniteness even though the cross-block sine coefficients alternate in sign.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 339 2 f Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
The Gram matrix representation and give . For a standard Gaussian random vector , each is a standard normal scalar, so the zero event has probability zero. Choose either sign convention at zero; the resulting vector is almost surely a feasible sign vector. Consequently almost surely.
The Gaussian sign-correlation identity givesThe last equality uses symmetry of the real matrices. HenceThe inverse sine is applied entrywise, not through spectral matrix functional calculus.
For completeness, the correlation coefficient identity has a geometric proof. If the angle between two unit vectors is , the isotropic Gaussian random vector direction in their two-dimensional span gives opposite signs on angular sectors with probability . Thus the sign product has expectation . Parallel and antiparallel pairs give the endpoint values and directly. This is Gaussian hyperplane rounding, and needs no independence between the rounded coordinates.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 339 3 c ii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
For on the unit circle, use the conjugated monomial vectorThen the prescribed diagonal sums givePositive semidefiniteness provesThis is the Gram matrix representation of a trigonometric polynomial. The Hermitian condition also implies , so its values on the unit circle are real. The conjugated monomial vector is required by the source's convention; the unconjugated vector would represent instead.
In particular . If this matrix trace is zero, all nonnegative eigenvalues vanish and , so . A general feasible Gram matrix need not have matrix rank one; the Fejér–Riesz theorem ensures a rank-one representative exists whenever the nonnegative trigonometric polynomial is nonzero.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 339 3 c i Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Collect the factor's coefficients in the column vector and setThis is a Hermitian matrix and a positive semidefinite matrix, because for every complex vector ,On the unit circle, expanding the modulus square givesUniqueness of the finite Laurent polynomial coefficients, proved as in part (b)(i), therefore givesThis is the rank-one spectral-factor Gram matrix. The matrix has matrix rank one when and zero when . The orientation is the PDF's convention: using instead would generally interchange and .
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 340 3 a Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
The strict null space property of order isHere agrees with on and is zero elsewhere. Suppose a nonzero null vector had at most nonzero entries. Split its support of a vector into disjoint sets of size at most . Applying the null space property to both sets would give and , a contradiction. Empty parts cause the same contradiction. Thus no such nonzero null vector exists.
For an -sparse , the feasible vector has , where the zero-subscript quantity counts nonzero entries and is not a norm. Any feasible competitor with also has at most nonzero entries. The difference has at most nonzero entries, so . Competitors with larger support have strictly larger objective. Therefore every s-sparse vector is the unique sparsest feasible vector. This is sparse injectivity; for the only sparse vector is zero and the conclusion is immediate.