Complexity of the positive semidefinite matrix completion problem with a rank constraint

Abstract

We consider the decision problem asking whether a partial rational symmetric matrix with an all-ones diagonal can be completed to a full positive semidefinite matrix of rank at most $k$. We show that this problem is $\NP$-hard for any fixed integer $k\ge 2$. Equivalently, for $k\ge 2$, it is $\NP$-hard to test membership in the rank constrained elliptope $\EE_k(G)$, i.e., the set of all partial matrices with off-diagonal entries specified at the edges of $G$, that can be completed to a positive semidefinite matrix of rank at most $k$. Additionally, we show that deciding membership in the convex hull of $\EE_k(G)$ is also $\NP$-hard for any fixed integer $k\ge 2$.

18 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Variants on the minimum rank problem: A survey II
• Grothendieck inequalities for semidefinite programs with rank constraint
• The Gram dimension of a graph