A polynomial p (with real coe#cients) in noncommutative variables is matrix convex provided t)p(Y ) for all 0 1 and for all tuples X = (X1 , . . . , Xg ) and Y = (Y1 , . . . , Yg ) of symmetric matrices on a common finite dimensional vector space of a su#ciently large dimension (depending upon p). The main result of this paper is that every matrix convex polynomial has degree two or less. More
... [Show full abstract] generally, the polynomial p has degree at most two if convexity holds only for all matrices X and Y in an "open set". An analogous result for nonsymmetric variables is also obtained.