The positive definite completion problem relative to a subspace (Q1973913)

The authors consider the problem of completing a partial real symmetric matrix so that its quadratic form is positive (semi-) definite on a subspace, presented as the null space of a given matrix. Under the appropriate definition of ``partial positive definite'' the classical result regarding chordal patterns is extended to this setting. However, unlike the classical setting, there are differences between the positive semi-definite and positive definite completion problems. Section 2 discusses the structure of the null space of B, and Section 3 is related to the one-variable case. The main result is the ``chordal'' theorem in Section 4.