A new proof of the strong duality theorem for semidefinite programming ✩

Semidefinite programs are convex optimization problems arising in a wide variety of applications and are the extension of linear programming. Most methods for linear programming have been generalized to semidefinite programs. Just as in linear programming, duality theorem plays a basic and an important role in theory as well as in algorithmics. Based on the discretization method and convergence property, this paper proposes a new proof of the strong duality theorem for semidefinite programming, which is different from other common proofs and is more simple.  2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.