The truncated complex $K$-moment problem

Abstract:

Let $\gamma \equiv \gamma ^{\left ( 2n\right ) }$ denote a sequence of complex numbers $\gamma _{00}, \gamma _{01}, \gamma _{10}, \dots , \gamma _{0,2n}, \dots , \gamma _{2n,0}$ ($\gamma _{00}>0, \gamma _{ij}=\bar {\gamma }_{ji}$), and let $K$ denote a closed subset of the complex plane $\mathbb {C}$. The Truncated Complex $K$-Moment Problem for $\gamma$ entails determining whether there exists a positive Borel measure $\mu$ on $\mathbb {C}$ such that $\gamma _{ij}=\int \bar {z}^{i}z^{j} d\mu$ ($0\leq i+j\leq 2n$) and $\operatorname {supp}\mu \subseteq K$. For $K\equiv K_{\mathcal {P}}$ a semi-algebraic set determined by a collection of complex polynomials $\mathcal {P} =\left \{ p_{i}\left ( z,\bar {z}\right ) \right \} _{i=1}^{m}$, we characterize the existence of a finitely atomic representing measure with the fewest possible atoms in terms of positivity and extension properties of the moment matrix $M\left ( n\right ) \left ( \gamma \right )$ and the localizing matrices $M_{p_{i}}$. We prove that there exists a $\operatorname {rank}M\left ( n\right )$-atomic representing measure for $\gamma ^{\left ( 2n\right ) }$ supported in $K_{\mathcal {P}}$ if and only if $M\left ( n\right ) \geq 0$ and there is some rank-preserving extension $M\left ( n+1\right )$ for which $M_{p_{i}}\left ( n+k_{i}\right ) \geq 0$, where $\deg p_{i}=2k_{i}$ or $2k_{i}-1$ $(1\leq i\leq m)$.