When a system of real quadratic equations has a solution

Abstract: We provide a sufficient condition for solvability of a system of real quadratic equations $p_i(x)=y_i$, $i=1, \ldots, m$, where $p_i: {\mathbb R}^n \longrightarrow {\mathbb R}$ are quadratic forms. By solving a positive semidefinite program, one can reduce it to another system of the type $q_i(x)=\alpha_i$, $i=1, \ldots, m$, where $q_i: {\mathbb R}^n \longrightarrow {\mathbb R}$ are quadratic forms and $\alpha_i=\mathrm{tr\ } q_i$. We prove that the latter system has solution $x \in {\mathbb R}^n$ if for some (equivalently, for any) orthonormal basis $A_1,\ldots, A_m$ in the space spanned by the matrices of the forms $q_i$, the operator norm of $A_1^2 + \ldots + A_m^2$ does not exceed $\eta/m$ for some absolute constant $\eta > 0$. The condition can be checked in polynomial time and is satisfied, for example, for random $q_i$ provided $m \leq \gamma \sqrt{n}$ for an absolute constant $\gamma >0$. We prove a similar sufficient condition for a system of homogeneous quadratic equations to have a non-trivial solution. While the condition we obtain is of an algebraic nature, the proof relies on analytic tools including Fourier analysis and measure concentration.