A reflexive tactic for polynomial positivity using numerical solvers and floating-point computations

Abstract

Polynomial positivity over the real field is known to be decidable but even the best algorithms remain costly. An incomplete but often efficient alternative consists in looking for positivity witnesses as sum of squares decompositions. Such decompositions can in practice be obtained through convex optimization. Unfortunately, these methods only yield approximate solutions. Hence the need for formal verification of such witnesses. State of the art methods rely on heuristic roundings to exact solutions in the rational field. These solutions are then easy to verify in a proof assistant. However, this verification often turns out to be very costly, as rational coefficients may blow up during computations.