We propose an algorithm which appears to be the first bridge between the fields of conditional gradient methods and abs-smooth optimization. Our problem setting is motivated by various applications that lead to nonsmoothness, such as $\ell_1$ regularization, phase retrieval problems, or ReLU activation in machine learning. To handle the nonsmoothness in our problem, we propose … Read more
In this paper we deal with non-monotone line-search methods to minimize a smooth cost function on a Riemannian manifold. In particular, we study the number of iterations necessary for this class of algorithms to obtain e-approximated stationary points. Specifically, we prove that under a regularity Lipschitz-type condition on the pullbacks of the cost function to … Read more
A sequential quadratic optimization algorithm for minimizing an objective function defined by an expectation subject to nonlinear inequality and equality constraints is proposed, analyzed, and tested. The context of interest is when it is tractable to evaluate constraint function and derivative values in each iteration, but it is intractable to evaluate the objective function or … Read more
This thesis studies derivative-free optimization (DFO), particularly model-based methods and software. These methods are motivated by optimization problems for which it is impossible or prohibitively expensive to access the first-order information of the objective function and possibly the constraint functions. In particular, this thesis presents PDFO, a package we develop to provide both MATLAB and Python … Read more
In this paper, a robust sequential quadratic programming method of Burke and Han (Math Programming, 1989) for constrained optimization is generalized to problem with stochastic objective function, deterministic equality and inequality constraints. A stochastic line search scheme in Paquette and Scheinberg (SIOPT, 2020) is employed to globalize the steps. We show that in the case … Read more
In this paper, we propose a novel stepsize for the classical gradient descent scheme to solve unconstrained nonlinear optimization problems. We are concerned with the convex and smooth objective without the globally Lipschitz gradient condition. Our new method just needs the locally Lipschitz gradient but still gets the rate $O(\frac{1}{k})$ of $f(x^k)-f_*$ at most. By … Read more
We consider optimization problems with objective and constraint being the difference of convex and weakly convex functions. This framework covers a vast family of nonsmooth and nonconvex optimization problems, particularly those involving certain classes of composite and nonconvex value functions. We investigate several stationary conditions and extend the proximal bundle algorithm of [van Ackooij et … Read more
\(\) In this paper we consider finding a second-order stationary point (SOSP) of nonconvex equality constrained optimization when a nearly feasible point is known. In particular, we first propose a new Newton-CG method for finding an approximate SOSP of unconstrained optimization and show that it enjoys a substantially better complexity than the Newton-CG method [56]. … Read more
Nonnegativity certificates can be used to obtain tight dual bounds for polynomial optimization problems. Hierarchies of certificate-based relaxations ensure convergence to the global optimum, but higher levels of such hierarchies can become very computationally expensive, and the well-known sums of squares hierarchies scale poorly with the degree of the polynomials. This has motivated research into … Read more
\(\) In this paper we study a class of constrained minimax problems. In particular, we propose a first-order augmented Lagrangian method for solving them, whose subproblems turn out to be a much simpler structured minimax problem and are suitably solved by a first-order method recently developed in [26] by the authors. Under some suitable assumptions, … Read more