An instance of the quadratic minimum spanning tree problem (QMSTP) is called linearizable if it can be rewritten as an instance of the linear minimum spanning tree problem in such a way that the objective function value is preserved at all feasible solutions. Previous work has shown that a sufficient condition for linearizability is that … Read more
This paper introduces the class of weakly quasar-convex functions, a notion that simultaneously generalizes weak convexity (and hence convexity) and quasar-convexity. We establish the theoretical foundation for this new class by developing its basic calculus, deriving characterizations, and systematically investigating its closure and structural properties. Building on these tools, we analyze the proximal point algorithm … Read more
We study first-order optimality for constrained composite optimization problems whose objective is the sum of a locally Lipschitz function and a proper lower semicontinuous function. We focus on the case in which the limiting subdifferential of the latter function is empty at a point of interest, so that the usual KKT conditions are unavailable. We … Read more
Stochastic Gradient Descent (\(\textsf{SGD}\)) is one of the most classical optimization algorithms with favorable theoretical guarantees, yet its practical implementation differs subtly from its well-known form and is often referred to as Shuffling Stochastic Gradient Descent (\(\textsf{Shuffling SGD}\)). A particularly popular strategy in \(\textsf{Shuffling SGD}\) is Random Reshuffling (\(\textsf{RR}\)), which has achieved great empirical success. … Read more
We consider the problem of minimizing a sparse quadratic function over the unit hypercube. In binary quadratic programming, treewidth of the interaction graph is a central parameter for tractability: bounded treewidth yields polynomial-time solvability. Motivated by this fact, we investigate whether treewidth plays a similar role when the binary domain is replaced by the unit … Read more
This work studies how a generalized error bound (GEB) property in the ambient Euclidean space transfers to the active manifold under \(\mathcal{C}^1\) partial smoothness. The GEB generalizes the standard error bound, which upper bounds the distance to a subset of critical points using first-order stationarity residuals, by allowing the distance to be composed with a … Read more
We consider the Lorentz positive cone of \(n \times m\) matrices that map the Lorentz cone in \(R^m\) into the Lorentz cone in \(R^n\). The Lorentz positive cone and its dual, the cone of Lorentz separable matrices, are shown to provide polynomial-time algorithms for the problem of minimizing a bilinear objective over variables contained in … Read more
In this paper, we propose and analyze an augmented Lagrangian framework for solving stochastic nonconvex optimization problems with expectation-based equality constraints over a closed and convex constraint set. The framework generates a sequence of nonconvex primal subproblems, which are solved inexactly using stochastic second-order methods. We establish iteration complexity results for obtaining approximate second-order stationary … Read more
This work examines three different concepts of objective redundancy in multiobjective optimization. Multiobjective optimization is known to suffer from the curse of dimensionality and we aim at reducing the number of objective functions which need to be considered. In this context, a set of objectives is called redundant if the sets of weakly efficient, efficient, … Read more
We propose a novel branch‑and‑bound algorithm that constructs rigorous outer approximations of the optimal point mapping for parametric optimization problems with guaranteed feasibility and optimality tolerances. The method uses the improvement‑function reformulation to define discarding and inclusion tests on sub-boxes, constructing a rigorous outer approximation. Under the same regularity conditions that ensure exactness of this … Read more