Nuclear norm of higher-order tensors

Abstract:

We establish several mathematical and computational properties of the nuclear norm for higher-order tensors. We show that like tensor rank, tensor nuclear norm is dependent on the choice of base field; the value of the nuclear norm of a real $3$-tensor depends on whether we regard it as a real $3$-tensor or a complex $3$-tensor with real entries. We show that every tensor has a nuclear norm attaining decomposition and every symmetric tensor has a symmetric nuclear norm attaining decomposition. There is a corresponding notion of nuclear rank that, unlike tensor rank, is lower semicontinuous. We establish an analogue of Banach’s theorem for tensor spectral norm and Comon’s conjecture for tensor rank; for a symmetric tensor, its symmetric nuclear norm always equals its nuclear norm. We show that computing tensor nuclear norm is NP-hard in several ways. Deciding weak membership in the nuclear norm unit ball of $3$-tensors is NP-hard, as is finding an $\varepsilon$-approximation of nuclear norm for $3$-tensors. In addition, the problem of computing spectral or nuclear norm of a $4$-tensor is NP-hard, even if we restrict the $4$-tensor to be bi-Hermitian, bisymmetric, positive semidefinite, nonnegative valued, or all of the above. We discuss some simple polynomial-time approximation bounds. As an aside, we show that computing the nuclear $(p,q)$-norm of a matrix is NP-hard in general but polynomial-time if $p=1$, $q = 1$, or $p=q=2$, with closed-form expressions for the nuclear $(1,q)$- and $(p,1)$-norms.