Rank-one Boolean tensor factorization and the multilinear polytope

We consider the NP-hard problem of approximating a tensor with binary entries by a rank-one tensor, referred to as rank-one Boolean tensor factorization problem. We formulate this problem, in an extended space of variables, as the problem of minimizing a linear function over a highly structured multilinear set. Leveraging on our prior results regarding the facial structure of multilinear polytopes, we propose novel linear programming relaxations for rank-one Boolean tensor factorization. To analyze the performance of the proposed linear programs, we consider a semi-random corruption model for the input tensor. We first consider the original NP-hard problem and establish necessary and sufficient conditions for the recovery of the ground truth with high probability. Next, we obtain sufficient conditions under which the proposed linear programming relaxations recover the ground truth with high probability. Our theoretical results as well as numerical simulations indicate that certain facets of the multilinear polytope significantly improve the recovery properties of linear programming relaxations for rank-one Boolean tensor factorization.