No Arabic abstract
We present an algorithm for decomposing a symmetric tensor, of dimension n and order d as a sum of rank-1 symmetric tensors, extending the algorithm of Sylvester devised in 1886 for binary forms. We recall the correspondence between the decomposition of a homogeneous polynomial in n variables of total degree d as a sum of powers of linear forms (Warings problem), incidence properties on secant varieties of the Veronese Variety and the representation of linear forms as a linear combination of evaluations at distinct points. Then we reformulate Sylvesters approach from the dual point of view. Exploiting this duality, we propose necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of such a decomposition of a given rank, using the properties of Hankel (and quasi-Hankel) matrices, derived from multivariate polynomials and normal form computations. This leads to the resolution of polynomial equations of small degree in non-generic cases. We propose a new algorithm for symmetric tensor decomposition, based on this characterization and on linear algebra computations with these Hankel matrices. The impact of this contribution is two-fold. First it permits an efficient computation of the decomposition of any tensor of sub-generic rank, as opposed to widely used iterative algorithms with unproved global convergence (e.g. Alternate Least Squares or gradient descents). Second, it gives tools for understanding uniqueness conditions, and for detecting the rank.
We consider the problem of decomposing a real-valued symmetric tensor as the sum of outer products of real-valued, pairwise orthogonal vectors. Such decompositions do not generally exist, but we show that some symmetric tensor decomposition problems can be converted to orthogonal problems following the whitening procedure proposed by Anandkumar et al. (2012). If an orthogonal decomposition of an $m$-way $n$-dimensional symmetric tensor exists, we propose a novel method to compute it that reduces to an $n times n$ symmetric matrix eigenproblem. We provide numerical results demonstrating the effectiveness of the method.
In this note, we consider the optimization problem associated with computing the rank decomposition of a symmetric tensor. We show that, in a well-defined sense, minima in this highly nonconvex optimization problem break the symmetry of the target tensor -- but not too much. This phenomenon of symmetry breaking applies to various choices of tensor norms, and makes it possible to study the optimization landscape using a set of recently-developed symmetry-based analytical tools. The fact that the objective function under consideration is a multivariate polynomial allows us to apply symbolic methods from computational algebra to obtain more refined information on the symmetry breaking phenomenon.
In this paper we examine a symmetric tensor decomposition problem, the Gramian decomposition, posed as a rank minimization problem. We study the relaxation of the problem and consider cases when the relaxed solution is a solution to the original problem. In some instances of tensor rank and order, we prove generically that the solution to the relaxation will be optimal in the original. In other cases, we present interesting examples and approaches that demonstrate the intricacy of this problem.
We consider the problem of decomposing higher-order moment tensors, i.e., the sum of symmetric outer products of data vectors. Such a decomposition can be used to estimate the means in a Gaussian mixture model and for other applications in machine learning. The $d$th-order empirical moment tensor of a set of $p$ observations of $n$ variables is a symmetric $d$-way tensor. Our goal is to find a low-rank tensor approximation comprising $r ll p$ symmetric outer products. The challenge is that forming the empirical moment tensors costs $O(pn^d)$ operations and $O(n^d)$ storage, which may be prohibitively expensive; additionally, the algorithm to compute the low-rank approximation costs $O(n^d)$ per iteration. Our contribution is avoiding formation of the moment tensor, computing the low-rank tensor approximation of the moment tensor implicitly using $O(pnr)$ operations per iteration and no extra memory. This advance opens the door to more applications of higher-order moments since they can now be efficiently computed. We present numerical evidence of the computational savings and show an example of estimating the means for higher-order moments.
We introduce the Subspace Power Method (SPM) for calculating the CP decomposition of low-rank even-order real symmetric tensors. This algorithm applies the tensor power method of Kolda-Mayo to a certain modified tensor, constructed from a matrix flattening of the original tensor, and then uses deflation steps. Numerical simulations indicate SPM is roughly one order of magnitude faster than state-of-the-art algorithms, while performing robustly for low-rank tensors subjected to additive noise. We obtain rigorous guarantees for SPM regarding convergence and global optima, for tensors of rank up to roughly the square root of the number of tensor entries, by drawing on results from classical algebraic geometry and dynamical systems. In a second contribution, we extend SPM to compute De Lathauwers symmetric block term tensor decompositions. As an application of the latter decomposition, we provide a method-of-moments for generalized principal component analysis.