Computing a Positive Semidefinite Arrowhead Matrix Closest to Noisy Data
摘要
Arrowhead matrices, consisting of a diagonal block augmented by a single dense row and column, arise naturally in a wide range of applications in numerical linear algebra, physics, statistics, optimization, and network analysis. In many of these settings, positive semidefiniteness is a fundamental requirement, for example in covariance estimation, stability analysis, and energy-based models. Motivated by these applications, we study the problem of computing the nearest positive semidefinite arrowhead matrix to a given data matrix in the Frobenius norm. The data matrix may be noisy or indefinite and is not necessarily symmetric, which presents additional challenges compared to classical nearest positive semidefinite approximation problems. We formulate the problem as a convex optimization problem with both structural and semidefiniteness constraints and investigate several solution approaches. These include an alternating projection method, semidefinite programming formulations, and mixed semidefinite–second-order cone programming formulations that explicitly exploit the arrowhead structure. By leveraging this structure, we derive reduced formulations with significantly lower computational complexity. Numerical experiments on randomly generated matrices of orders up to