Positivity is undecidable in tensor products of free algebras

Abstract

It is well known that an element of the algebra of noncommutative *-polynomials is positive in all *-representations if and only if it is a sum of squares. This provides an effective way to determine if a given *-polynomial is positive, by searching through sums of squares decompositions. We show that no such procedure exists for the tensor product of two noncommutative *-polynomial algebras: determining whether a *-polynomial of such an algebra is positive is coRE-hard. We also show that it is coRE-hard to determine whether a noncommutative *-polynomial is trace-positive. Our results hold if noncommutative *-polynomial algebras are replaced by other sufficiently free algebras such as group algebras of free groups or free products of cyclic groups.