EURO 2025 Leeds
Abstract Submission

762. A low-degree sum-of-squares bound for the stable set problem: A copositive approach

Invited abstract in session MA-49: Sums-of-squares optimization, stream Conic and polynomial optimization.

Monday, 8:30-10:00
Room: Parkinson B10

Authors (first author is the speaker)

1. Luis Felipe Vargas
SUPSI

Abstract

The stability number of a graph \(G\), denoted by $\alpha(G)$, represents the maximum size of a stable (or independent) set in \(G\). Building on the theta number introduced by Lovász, several semidefinite programming (SDP) approaches have been proposed to approximate $\alpha(G)$, typically involving lift-and-project methods or sums of squares relaxations.

In this talk, we introduce a novel hierarchy of approximations based on structured sums of squares representations. We prove that this hierarchy converges to $\alpha(G)$ and provide quantitative bounds on its convergence rate. Remarkably, we show that for several graph instances known to be hard for existing SDP-based methods, our hierarchy converges to $\alpha(G)$ in just one step. We conclude with a discussion on the computability of and complexity implications of our approach.

This is based on my joint work with Juan Vera and Peter Dickinson.

Keywords

Status: accepted


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