On the triality theory for a quartic polynomial optimization problem

Abstract

This paper presents a detailed proof of the triality theorem for a class of fourth-order polynomial optimization problems. The method is based on linear algebra but it solves an open problem on the double-min duality. Results show that the triality theory holds strongly in the tri-duality form for our problem if the primal problem and its canonical dual have the same dimension; otherwise, both the canonical min-max duality and the double-max duality still hold strongly, but the double-min duality holds weakly in a symmetrical form. Some numerical examples are presented to illustrate that this theory can be used to identify not only the global minimum, but also the local minimum and local maximum.