On the orbit closure containment problem and slice rank of tensors

Abstract

We consider the orbit closure containment problem, which, for a given vector and a group orbit, asks if the vector is contained in the closure of the group orbit. Recently, many algorithmic problems related to orbit closures have proved to be quite useful in giving polynomial time algorithms for special cases of the polynomial identity testing problem and several non-convex optimization problems. Answering a question posed by Wigderson, we show that the algorithmic problem corresponding to the orbit closure containment problem is NP-hard. We show this by establishing a computational equivalence between the solvability of homogeneous quadratic equations and a homogeneous version of the matrix completion problem, while showing that the latter is an instance of the orbit closure containment problem. Secondly, we consider the notion of slice rank of tensors, which was recently introduced by Tao, and has subsequently been used for breakthroughs in several combinatorial problems like capsets, sunflower free sets, tri-colored sum-free sets, and progression-free sets. We show that the corresponding algorithmic problem, which can also be phrased as a problem about union of orbit closures, is also NP-hard, hence answering an open question by Bürgisser, Garg, Oliveira, Walter, and Wigderson. We show this by using a connection between the slice rank and the size of a minimum vertex cover of a hypergraph revealed by Tao and Sawin.