Tilt stability, uniform quadratic growth, and strong metric regularity of the subdifferential.

We prove that uniform second order growth, tilt stability, and strong metric regularity of the subdifferential — three notions that have appeared in entirely different settings — are all essentially equivalent for any lower-semicontinuous, extended-real-valued function. CitationCornell University, School of Operations Research and Information Engineering, 206 Rhodes Hall Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853. May 2012.ArticleDownload … Read more

Error Forgetting of Bregman Iteration

This short article analyzes an interesting property of the Bregman iterative procedure, which is equivalent to the augmented Lagrangian method after a change of variable, for minimizing a convex piece-wise linear function J(x) subject to linear constraints Ax=b. The procedure obtains its solution by solving a sequence of unconstrained subproblems of minimizing J(x)+1/2||Ax-b^k||^2, where b^k … Read more

Packing Ellipsoids with Overlap

The problem of packing ellipsoids of different sizes and shapes into an ellipsoidal container so as to minimize a measure of overlap between ellipsoids is considered. A bilevel optimization formulation is given, together with an algorithm for the general case and a simpler algorithm for the special case in which all ellipsoids are in fact … Read more

Learning how to play Nash, potential games and alternating minimization method for structured nonconvex problems on Riemannian manifolds

In this paper we consider minimization problems with constraints. We show that if the set of constaints is a Riemannian manifold of non positive curvature and the objective function is lower semicontinuous and satisfi es the Kurdyka-Lojasiewicz property, then the alternating proximal algorithm in Euclidean space is naturally extended to solve that class of problems. We … Read more

On Differentiability Properties of Player Convex Generalized Nash Equilibrium Problems

This article studies differentiability properties for a reformulation of a player convex generalized Nash equilibrium problem as a constrained and possibly nonsmooth minimization problem. By using several results from parametric optimization we show that, apart from exceptional cases, all locally minimal points of the reformulation are differentiability points of the objective function. This justifies a … Read more

Nonsmooth cone-constrained optimization with applications to semi-infinite programming

The paper is devoted to the study of general nonsmooth problems of cone-constrained optimization (or conic programming) important for various aspects of optimization theory and applications. Based on advanced constructions and techniques of variational analysis and generalized differentiation, we derive new necessary optimality conditions (in both “exact” and “fuzzy” forms) for nonsmooth conic programs, establish … Read more

Reweighted $\ell_1hBcMinimization for Sparse Solutions to Underdetermined Linear Systems

Numerical experiments have indicated that the reweighted $\ell_1$-minimization performs exceptionally well in locating sparse solutions of underdetermined linear systems of equations. Thus it is important to carry out a further investigation of this class of methods. In this paper, we point out that reweighted $\ell_1$-methods are intrinsically associated with the minimization of the so-called merit … Read more

Efficient Cardinality/Mean-Variance Portfolios

A number of variants of the classical Markowitz mean-variance optimization model for portfolio selection have been investigated to render it more realistic. Recently, it has been studied the imposition of a cardinality constraint, setting an upper bound on the number of active positions taken in the portfolio, in an attempt to improve its performance and … Read more

Smoothing SQP Algorithm for Non-Lipschitz Optimization with Complexity Analysis

In this paper, we propose a smoothing sequential quadratic programming (SSQP) algorithm for solving a class of nonsmooth nonconvex, perhaps even non-Lipschitz minimization problems, which has wide applications in statistics and sparse reconstruction. At each step, the SSQP algorithm solves a strongly convex quadratic minimization problem with a diagonal Hessian matrix, which has a simple … Read more

Holder Metric Subregularity with Applications to Proximal Point Method

This paper is mainly devoted to the study and applications of H\”older metric subregularity (or metric $q$-subregularity of order $q\in(0,1]$) for general set-valued mappings between infinite-dimensional spaces. Employing advanced techniques of variational analysis and generalized differentiation, we derive neighborhood and pointbased sufficient conditions as well as necessary conditions for $q$-metric subregularity with evaluating the exact … Read more