CONVERGENT SEMIDEFINITE PROGRAMMING RELAXATIONS FOR GLOBAL BILEVEL POLYNOMIAL OPTIMIZATION PROBLEMS

In this paper, we consider a bilevel polynomial optimization problem where the objective and the constraint functions of both the upper-and the lower-level problems are polynomials. We present methods for finding its global minimizers and global minimum using a sequence of semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxations and provide convergence results for the methods. Our scheme for problems with a convex lower-level problem involves solving a transformed equivalent single-level problem by a sequence of SDP relaxations, whereas our approach for general problems involving a nonconvex polynomial lower-level problem solves a sequence of approximation problems via another sequence of SDP relaxations.