IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, Vol.42, No.11, 1564-1566, 1997
On an Open Problem Related to the Strict Local Minima of Multilinear Objective Functions
This paper gives a combinatorial proof of a "yes" answer to an open question presented in [1], stated as follows : "given a multilinear polynomial E(x) : [0, 1](n) --> R, is it true that E-b(x) = E(x) - b(t)z has a strict local minimum over the discrete set {0,1}(n) for almost all b of sufficiently small norm?" The given combinatorial proof is completed directly by providing a sufficient condition for a conjecture on the strict local minima of multilinear polynomials also postulated in [1] to hold. In addition, a simple counterexample is presented to demonstrate that the conjecture may be not true if the provided sufficient condition is not satisfied.