Relaxation Strength for Multilinear Optimization: McCormick Strikes Back

We consider linear relaxations for multilinear optimization problems. In a recent paper, Khajavirad proved that the extended flower relaxation is at least as strong as the relaxation of any recursive McCormick linearization (Operations Research Letters 51 (2023) 146–152). In this paper we extend the result to more general linearizations, and present a simpler proof. Moreover, we complement Khajavirad’s result by showing that the intersection of the relaxations of such linearizations and the extended flower relaxation are equally strong.