Comparison of Lasserre’s measure–based bounds for polynomial optimization to bounds obtained by simulated annealing

We consider the problem of minimizing a continuous function f over a compact set K. We compare the hierarchy of upper bounds proposed by Lasserre in [SIAM J. Optim. 21(3) (2011), pp. 864-885] to bounds that may be obtained from simulated annealing. We show that, when f is a polynomial and K a convex body, … Read more

A semi-analytical approach for the positive semidefinite Procrustes problem

The positive semidefinite Procrustes (PSDP) problem is the following: given rectangular matrices $X$ and $B$, find the symmetric positive semidefinite matrix $A$ that minimizes the Frobenius norm of $AX-B$. No general procedure is known that gives an exact solution. In this paper, we present a semi-analytical approach to solve the PSDP problem. First, we characterize … Read more

An extension of Yuan’s Lemma and its applications in optimization

We prove an extension of Yuan’s Lemma to more than two matrices, as long as the set of matrices has rank at most 2. This is used to generalize the main result of [A. Baccari and A. Trad. On the classical necessary second-order optimality conditions in the presence of equality and inequality constraints. SIAM J. … Read more

A successive linear programming algorithm with non-linear time series for the reservoir management problem

This paper proposes a multi-stage stochastic programming formulation based on affine decision rules for the reservoir management problem. Our approach seeks to find a release schedule that balances flood control and power generation objectives while considering realistic operating conditions as well as variable water head. To deal with the non-convexity introduced by the variable water … Read more