On the convexity of a class of quadratic mappings and its application to the problem of finding the smallest ball enclosing a given intersection of balls

  • Authors:
  • Amir Beck

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, Technion--Israel Institute of Technology, Technion city, Israel 32000

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Global Optimization
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

We consider the outer approximation problem of finding a minimum radius ball enclosing a given intersection of at most n 驴 1 balls in $${\mathbb{R}^n}$$ . We show that if the aforementioned intersection has a nonempty interior, then the problem reduces to minimizing a convex quadratic function over the unit simplex. This result is established by using convexity and representation theorems for a class of quadratic mappings. As a byproduct of our analysis, we show that a class of nonconvex quadratic problems admits a tight semidefinite relaxation.