“Backward differential flow” may not converge to a global minimizer of polynomials

Abstract

We provide a simple counter-example to prove and illustrate that the backward differential flow approach, proposed by Zhu, Zhao and Liu for finding a global minimizer of coercive even-degree polynomials, can converge to a local minimizer rather than a global minimizer. We provide additional counter-examples to stress that convergence to a local minimum via the backward differential flow method is not a rare occurence.