20.500.12556/RUL-180864 Positive operator-valued noncommutative polynomials are squares We establish operator-valued versions of the earlier foundational factorization results for noncommutative polynomials due to Helton (Ann. Math., 2002) and one of the authors (Linear Alg. Appl., 2001). Specifically, we show that every positive operator-valued noncommutative polynomial $p$ admits a single-square factorization $p=r^* r$. An analogous statement holds for operator-valued noncommutative trigonometric polynomials (i.e., operator-valued elements of a free group algebra). Our approach follows the now standard sum-of-squares (sos) paradigm but requires new results and constructions tailored to operator coefficients. Assuming a positive $p$ is not sos, Hahn-Banach separation yields a linear functional that is positive on the sos cone and negative on $p$; a Gelfand-Naimark-Segal (GNS) construction then produces a representing tuple $Y$ leading to contradiction since $p$ was assumed positive on $Y$. The main technical input is a canonical tuple $A$ of self-adjoint operators and, in the unitary case, a canonical tuple $U$ of unitaries, both constructed from the left-regular representation on Fock space. We prove that, up to a universal constant, the norms $\|p(A)\|$ and $\|p(U)\|$ bound the operator norm of any positive semidefinite Gram matrix $G$ representing the sos polynomial $p$. This uniform control is the key input in showing that the cone of (sums of) squares is closed in the product ultraweak topology on the coefficients. A separate approximation argument then produces a separating functional that is continuous for the weak operator topology (WOT). This two-step passage between the ultraweak and WOT topologies constitutes our separation argument and yields the required WOT closedness of the sos cone. With this in hand, the GNS construction associates to such a separating linear functional a finite-rank positive semidefinite noncommutative Hankel matrix and, on its range, produces the desired tuple $Y$. factorization noncommutative polynomial sum of squares trigonometric polynomial Positivstellensatz true false true Angleški jezik Angleški jezik Članek v reviji 2026-03-18 11:58:39 2026-03-18 11:58:46 2026-03-21 03:59:05 0000-00-00 00:00:00 2026 0 0 26 str. iss. 1, article no. 7 Vol. 98 Mar. 2026 0000-00-00 Zaloznikova Objavljeno NiDoloceno 0000-00-00 0000-00-00 2026-03-01 517.9 0378-620X 10.1007/s00020-026-02828-y 272097539 s00020-026-02828-y.pdf s00020-026-02828-y.pdf 1 CCD12FF58A6BDEBF2D2A316806B3DA1C 1f13c1d88c682b43a1c8a4bc142d4b0e29b8fdd56b4842f08093629b1eaf980d 629c49bf-22ba-11f1-b0ab-0050569b8976 https://repozitorij.uni-lj.si/Dokument.php?lang=slv&id=230786 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00020-026-02828-y 1 5f0c914b-22b9-11f1-b0ab-0050569b8976 https://repozitorij.uni-lj.si/Dokument.php?lang=slv&id=230785 Fakulteta za matematiko in fiziko 0 0 0