The worst-case evaluation complexity for smooth (possibly nonconvex) unconstrained optimization is considered. It is shown that, if one is willing to use derivatives of the objective function up to order $p$ (for $p\geq 1$) and to assume Lipschitz continuity of the $p$-th derivative, then an $\epsilon$-approximate first-order critical point can be computed in at most $O(\epsilon^{-(p+1)/p})$ evaluations of the problem's objective function and its derivatives. This generalizes and subsumes results known for $p=1$ and $p=2$.
Citation
Report naXys-05-2015, University of Namur, Namur, Belgium