Abstract
In this article, we develop a detailed analysis of semidefinite feasibility problems (SDFPs) to understand how weak infeasibility arises in semidefinite programming. This is done by decomposing a SDFP into smaller problems, in a way that preserves most feasibility properties of the original problem. The decomposition utilizes a set of vectors (computed in the primal space) which arises when we apply the facial reduction algorithm to the dual feasible region. In particular, we show that for a weakly infeasible problem over n× n matrices, at most n-1 directions are required to approach the positive semidefinite cone. We also present a discussion on feasibility certificates for SDFPs and related complexity results.
