Symmetric SAGE and SONC forms, exactness and quantitative gaps

Abstract: The classes of sums of arithmetic-geometric exponentials (SAGE) and of sums of nonnegative circuit polynomials (SONC) provide nonnegativity certificates which are based on the inequality of the arithmetic and geometric means. We study the cones of symmetric SAGE and SONC forms and their relations to the underlying symmetric nonnegative cone. As main results, we provide several symmetric cases where the SAGE or SONC property coincides with nonnegativity and we present quantitative results on the differences in various situations. The results rely on characterizations of the zeroes and the minimizers for symmetric SAGE and SONC forms, which we develop. Finally, we also study symmetric monomial mean inequalities and apply SONC certificates to establish a generalized version of Muirhead's inequality.