Suppose $F(x)$ is a convex objective function on $n\times n$ matrices, and I need to numerically optimize $F$ with the condition that $x$ has spectral radius less than $1$. This might be too hard, so an approximation would be needed. Has this problem been studied before?
Motivation: Boltzmann machines are hard to evaluate when spectral radius of the weight matrix is large, especially if it's above $1$ so best fit to data subject to this constraint would give a useful model.
Example: Let $X=\{1,-1\}^d$ and $\hat{X}$ some list of $\{1,-1\}$ $d$-tuples. Find $$\max_A \sum_{x\in \hat{X}} \mathbf{x}'A\mathbf{x} - |\hat{X}|\log \sum_{x\in X} \exp(\mathbf{x}'A\mathbf{x})$$ Where $A$ is symmetric real-valued $d\times d$ matrix with spectral radius < 1. This needs to be done in time polynomial in $d$ and linear in $|\hat{X}|$. When spectral radius is <1, belief propagation gives a reasonably accurate way to approximate gradient of this objective in $O(|\hat{X}|d^2)$ time