Positive operator-valued noncommutative polynomials are squares
Abhay Jindal, Igor Klep, Scott McCullough
TL;DR
The paper addresses the problem of certifying positivity for operator-valued noncommutative polynomials by proving that every positive operator-valued NC polynomial $p$ admits a single-square factorization $p=r^{*}r$, with a parallel result for operator-valued noncommutative trigonometric polynomials. The authors develop a sos framework tailored to operator coefficients, establish the closedness of the sums-of-squares cone via a two-stage topological argument (ultraweak to WOT), and employ a Hahn–Banach separation plus a GNS construction based on a canonical Fock-space tuple to produce a representing operator tuple $Y$ realizing the separating functional as a vector-state. A unitary variant is developed by constructing a canonical tuple of unitaries and adapting the GNS construction, yielding a unitary sos theorem. The approach creates a finite-rank Hankel realization on the range of a Gram representation, contributing new techniques in free analysis and operator theory, with potential extensions to von Neumann algebras and open questions for $C^{*}$-algebras.
Abstract
We establish operator-valued versions of the earlier foundational factorization results for noncommutative polynomials due to Helton (Ann.~Math., 2002) and one of the authors (Linear Alg.~Appl., 2001). Specifically, we show that every positive operator-valued noncommutative polynomial $p$ admits a single-square factorization $p=r^{*}r$. An analogous statement holds for operator-valued noncommutative trigonometric polynomials. Our approach follows the now standard sum-of-squares (sos) paradigm but requires new results and constructions tailored to operator coefficients. Assuming a positive $p$ is not sos, Hahn--Banach separation yields a linear functional that is positive on the sos cone and negative on $p$; a Gelfand--Naimark--Segal (GNS) construction then produces a representing tuple $Y$ leading to contradiction since $p$ was assumed positive on $Y$. The main technical input is a canonical tuple \(A\) of self-adjoint operators and, in the unitary case, a canonical tuple \(U\) of unitaries, both constructed from the left-regular representation on Fock space. We prove that, up to a universal constant, the norms \(\|p(A)\|\) and \(\|p(U)\|\) bound the operator norm of any positive semidefinite Gram matrix \(G\) representing the sos polynomial \(p\). This uniform control is the key input in showing that the cone of (sums of) squares is closed in the product ultraweak topology on the coefficients. A separate approximation argument then produces a separating functional that is continuous for the weak operator topology (WOT). This two-step passage between the ultraweak and WOT topologies constitutes our separation argument and yields the required WOT closedness of the sos cone. With this in hand, the GNS construction associates to such a separating linear functional a finite-rank positive semidefinite noncommutative Hankel matrix and, on its range, produces the desired tuple \(Y\).