Samuel Burer When optimizing a nonlinear objective, one can employ a neural network as a surrogate for the nonlinear function. However, the resulting optimization model can be time-consuming to solve globally with exact methods. As a result, local search that exploits the neural-network structure has been employed to find good solutions within a reasonable time limit. For … Read more
We study continuous quadratic submodular minimization with bounds and provide a polynomially sized semidefinite relaxation, which is provably tight for dimension n <= 3. Via an explicit counterexample for n = 4, we show that the relaxation is not tight in general, although it remains empirically tight on randomly generated instances. We apply the relaxation … Read more
We consider embedding a predictive machine-learning model within a prescriptive optimization problem. In this setting, called constraint learning, we study the concept of a validity domain, i.e., a constraint added to the feasible set, which keeps the optimization close to the training data, thus helping to ensure that the computed optimal solution exhibits less prediction … Read more
Globally optimizing a nonconvex quadratic over the intersection of $m$ balls in $\mathbb{R}^n$ is known to be polynomial-time solvable for fixed $m$. Moreover, when $m=1$, the standard semidefinite relaxation is exact. When $m=2$, it has been shown recently that an exact relaxation can be constructed using a disjunctive semidefinite formulation based essentially on two copies … Read more
We study semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxations for the NP-hard problem of globally optimizing a quadratic function over the Stiefel manifold. We introduce a strengthened relaxation based on two recent ideas in the literature: (i) a tailored SDP for objectives with a block-diagonal Hessian; (ii) and the use of the Kronecker matrix product to construct SDP relaxations. Using synthetic instances on … Read more
We study an extended trust region subproblem minimizing a nonconvex function over the hollow ball $r \le \|x\| \le R$ intersected with a full-dimensional second order cone (SOC) constraint of the form $\|x – c\| \le b^T x – a$. In particular, we present a class of valid cuts that improve existing semidefinite programming (SDP) … Read more
It is well known that the convex hull of {(x,y,xy)}, where (x,y) is constrained to lie in a box, is given by the Reformulation-Linearization Technique (RLT) constraints. Belotti et al. (2010) and Miller et al. (2011) showed that if there are additional upper and/or lower bounds on the product z=xy, then the convex hull can … Read more
We consider quadratic optimization in variables (x,y), 0
We study a class of quadratically constrained quadratic programs (QCQPs), called {\em diagonal QCQPs\/}, which contain no off-diagonal terms $x_j x_k$ for $j \ne k$, and we provide a sufficient condition on the problem data guaranteeing that the basic Shor semidefinite relaxation is exact. Our condition complements and refines those already present in the literature … Read more
This paper studies the expected optimal value of a mixed 0-1 programming problem with uncertain objective coefficients following a joint distribution. We assume that the true distribution is not known exactly, but a set of independent samples can be observed. Using the Wasserstein metric, we construct an ambiguity set centered at the empirical distribution from … Read more