On the effective Putinar's Positivstellensatz and moment approximation (Q6044976)

Putinar's Positivstellensatz states that the set of polynomials that are positive on a basic closed semialgebraic set \(\mathcal{S}(g_1,\ldots,g_r) = \{ x \in \mathbb{R}^n \mid g_i(x) \ge 0 \text{ for } i = 1,\ldots,r \}\) equals the quadratic module \(\mathcal{Q}(g_1,\ldots,g_r)\) generated by \(g_1, \ldots, g_r\), provided this module is Archimedean. This article deals with \emph{quantitative} versions of Putinar's Positivstellensatz. For compact \(\mathcal{S}(g_1,\ldots,g_r)\) any polynomial \(f \in \mathcal{S}(g_1,\ldots,g_r)\) is the uniform limit of a sequence of polynomials in \(\mathcal{Q}(g_1,\ldots,g_r)\). However, the degree in this sequence diverges to infinity. Thus, approximation results for \(f\) by polynomials in \(\mathcal{Q}(g_1,\ldots,g_r)\) with control on the degree are of interest. The central result is a criterion for polynomials in \(\mathcal{S}(g_1,\ldots,g_r)\) to be contained in the truncated quadratic module \(\mathcal{Q}_\ell(g_1,\ldots,g_r)\) -- a suitable subset of polynomials of degree at most \(\ell\) in \(\mathcal{Q}(g_1,\ldots,g_r)\). It depends on some intrinsic parameters of \(S(g_1,\ldots,g_r)\) and naturally also on \(f\) but only weakly. In ``regular'' settings it is particularly effective. This result is applied to dual problems: A convergence analysis of Lasserre hierarchies and an approximation result of probability measures on \(S\) by truncated positive linear functionals of total mass one.