Theory and applications of the Sum-Of-Squares technique

The Sum-of-Squares (SOS) approximation method is a technique used in optimization problems to derive lower bounds to the optimal value of an objective function. By representing the objective function as a sum of squares in a feature space, the SOS method transforms non-convex global optimization problems into solvable semidefinite programs. This note presents an overview of the SOS method. We start with its application in finite-dimensional feature spaces and, subsequently, we extend it to infinite-dimensional feature spaces using kernels (k-SOS). Additionally, we highlight the utilization of SOS for estimating some relevant quantities in information theory, including the log-partition function.