Interesting question. You might want to have a look at the following books... - Marshall: Positive polynomials and sums of squares - Prestel: Positive polynomials - Bochnak, Coste, Roy: Real algebraic geometry - Basu, Pollack, Roy: Algorithms in real algebraic geometry - Knebusch, Scheiderer: Einführung in die reelle Algebra - Andradas, Bröcker, Ruiz: Constructible sets in real geometry ...and the following articles... - http://homepages.cwi.nl/~monique/files/moment-ima-update-new.pdf - http://www.math.uni-konstanz.de/~schweigh/publications/sosdualsdp.pdf Also the so-called "S-procedure" could be of interest for you.