A second-order cone representable class of nonconvex quadratic programs

Abstract: We consider the problem of minimizing a sparse nonconvex quadratic function over the unit hypercube. By developing an extension of the Reformulation Linearization Technique (RLT) to continuous quadratic sets, we propose a novel second-order cone (SOC) representable relaxation for this problem. By exploiting the sparsity of the quadratic function, we establish a sufficient condition under which the convex hull of the feasible region of the linearized problem is SOC-representable. While the proposed formulation may be of exponential size in general, we identify additional structural conditions that guarantee the existence of a polynomial-size SOC-representable formulation, which can be constructed in polynomial time. Under these conditions, the optimal value of the nonconvex quadratic program coincides with that of a polynomial-size second-order cone program. Our results serve as a starting point for bridging the gap between the Boolean quadric polytope of sparse problems and its continuous counterpart.