Graded face lifts and free extreme points of free spectrahedra

Abstract: A free spectrahedron is the matricial solution set of a free linear matrix inequality $$L_A(X) = I-A_1 \otimes X_1 - \dots - A_g \otimes X_g \succeq 0$$. In this dimension-free setting, free extreme points play the role of classical extreme points. In particular, every bounded real free spectrahedron is the matrix convex hull of its free extreme points. In this qualitative sense, free extreme points of free spectrahedra are abundant. However, quantifications of this abundance have remained elusive. In particular, outside simplices, it is not known whether there exist bounded real free spectrahedra that have finitely many free extreme points. A necessary condition for having finitely many free extreme points is that the classical spectrahedron defined by $L_A(x) \succeq 0$ is a polytope. We strengthen this necessary condition through two constructions. First, we provide a geometric construction of an infinite family of free extreme points at the second level of the maximal matrix convex set over a polygon with at least four sides. Second, we develop a graded face lifting technique for general bounded real free spectrahedra, which allows us to construct free extreme points of the full spectrahedron from free extreme points of the graded face lift. As corollaries, we obtain obstructions to minimal matrix convex sets over polytopes being free spectrahedra and show that much of the scalar extreme-point geometry of maximal matrix convex sets over polytopes can be captured by higher-level free extreme points.