On the strength of recursive McCormick relaxations for binary polynomial optimization

Abstract: Recursive McCormick relaxations have been among the most popular convexification techniques for binary polynomial optimization problems. It is well-understood that both the quality and the size of these relaxations depend on the recursive sequence, and finding an optimal recursive sequence amounts to solving a difficult combinatorial optimization problem. In this paper, we prove that any recursive McCormick relaxation is implied by the extended flower relaxation, a linear programming relaxation that is a natural generalization of the flower relaxation introduced by Del Pia and Khajavirad 2018, which for binary polynomial optimization problems with fixed degree can be solved in strongly polynomial time.