Generalized Perfect Matrices

Abstract

We generalize Voronoi's theory of perfect quadratic forms to generalized copositive matrices over a full-dimensional closed convex cone K, by introducing a K-copositive minimum and perfect K-copositive matrices. We consider a key feature of a given cone, which we call Interior Ryshkov (IR) property. Under this property the classical theory and its applications generalize nicely and we prove that rationally generated cones possess this IR property. For contrast, we give a detailed example of a simple cone without the IR property, showing various differences to the classical case. Moreover, this example yields connections to questions of number theory, in particular to Diophantine approximation and the Pell Equation. Finally, as an application, we give inner and outer polyhedral approximations for the generalized completely positive cone and a method to find rational certificates for (non-)membership in this cone.

19 pages, 3 figures; revised version according to referee comments