We provide a criterion for a coherent sheaf to be an Ulrich sheaf in terms of a certain bilinear form on its global sections. When working over the real numbers, we call it a positive Ulrich sheaf if this bilinear form is symmetric or Hermitian and positive-definite. In that case, our result provides a common theoretical framework for several results in real algebraic geometry concerning the existence of algebraic certificates for certain geometric properties. For instance, it implies Hilbert’s theorem on nonnegative ternary quartics, via the geometry of del Pezzo surfaces, and the solution of the Lax conjecture on plane hyperbolic curves due to Helton and Vinnikov.

Nuij's theorem states that if a polynomial $p\in \mathbb{R}[z]$ is hyperbolic (i.e., has only real roots), then $p+s{{p}^{'}}$ is also hyperbolic for any $s\in \mathbb{R}$. We study other perturbations of hyperbolic polynomials of the form ${{p}_{a}}(z,s)\,\,:=\,\,\,p\,(z)+\,\sum\nolimits_{k=1}^{d}{{{a}_{k}}{{s}^{k}}{{p}^{(k)}}(z)}$. We give a full characterization of those $a=({{a}_{1}},...,{{a}_{d}})\,\in \,{{\mathbb{R}}^{d}}$ for which ${{p}_{a}}(z,s)$ is a pencil of hyperbolic polynomials. We also give a full characterization of those $a=({{a}_{1}},...,{{a}_{d}})\,\in \,{{\mathbb{R}}^{d}}$ for which the associated families $ $ admit universal determinantal representations. In fact, we show that all these sequences come fromspecial symmetric Toeplitz matrices.

A homogeneous real polynomial $p$ is hyperbolic with respect to a given vector $d$ if the univariate polynomial $t\,\mapsto \,p(x\,-\,td)$ has all real roots for all vectors $x$. Motivated by partial differential equations, Gårding proved in 1951 that the largest such root is a convex function of $x$, and showed various ways of constructing new hyperbolic polynomials. We present a powerful new such construction, and use it to generalize Gårding’s result to arbitrary symmetric functions of the roots. Many classical and recent inequalities follow easily. We develop various convex-analytic tools for such symmetric functions, of interest in interior-point methods for optimization problems over related cones.