UC San Diego

Many optimization problems and engineering problems connected with linear systems lead to matrix inequalities. Matrix inequalities are constraints in which a polynomial or a matrix of polynomials with matrix variables is required to take a positive semidefinite value. Many of these problems have the property that they are "dimension free" and, in this case, the form of the polynomials remains the same for matrices of all size. In other words, we have noncommutative polynomials. One very much desires these polynomials to be "convex" in the unknown matrix variables, since if they are, then numerical calculations are reliable and local optima are global optima. In this dissertation, we classify all changes of variables (not containing transposes) from noncommutative non-convex polynomials to noncommutative convex polynomials. This introduces notions of noncommutative complex Hessians and plurisubharmonicity, classical notions from several complex variables. In addition, we present a theory of noncommutative integration and we prove a "local implies global" result in that we show noncommutative plurisubharmonicity on a noncommutative open set implies noncommutative plurisubharmonicity everywhere