Semidefinite approximations of conical hulls of measured sets

Abstract: Let $C$ be a proper convex cone generated by a compact set which supports a measure $\mu$. A construction due to A.Barvinok, E.Veomett and J.B. Lasserre produces, using $\mu$, a sequence $(P_k)_{k\in \mathbb{N}}$ of nested spectrahedral cones which contains the cone $C^*$ dual to $C$. We prove convergence results for such sequences of spectrahedra and provide tools for bounding the distance between $P_k$ and $C^*$. These tools are especially useful on cones with enough symmetries and allow us to determine bounds for several cones of interest. We compute such upper bounds for semidefinite approximations of cones over traveling salesman polytopes and for cones of nonnegative ternary sextics and quaternary quartics.