Block BFGS Methods

We introduce a quasi-Newton method with block updates called Block BFGS. We show that this method, performed with inexact Armijo-Wolfe line searches, converges globally and superlinearly under the same convexity assumptions as BFGS. We also show that Block BFGS is globally convergent to a stationary point when applied to non-convex functions with bounded Hessian, and … Read more

A New First-order Algorithmic Framework for Optimization Problems with Orthogonality Constraints

In this paper, we consider a class of optimization problems with orthogonality constraints, the feasible region of which is called the Stiefel manifold. Our new framework combines a function value reduction step with a correction step. Different from the existing approaches, the function value reduction step of our algorithmic framework searches along the standard Euclidean … Read more

Exact and Inexact Subsampled Newton Methods for Optimization

The paper studies the solution of stochastic optimization problems in which approximations to the gradient and Hessian are obtained through subsampling. We first consider Newton-like methods that employ these approximations and discuss how to coordinate the accuracy in the gradient and Hessian to yield a superlinear rate of convergence in expectation. The second part of … Read more

A recursive semi-smooth Newton method for linear complementarity problems

A primal feasible active set method is presented for finding the unique solution of a Linear Complementarity Problem (LCP) with a P-matrix, which extends the globally convergent active set method for strictly convex quadratic problems with simple bounds proposed by [P. Hungerlaender and F. Rendl. A feasible active set method for strictly convex problems with … Read more

An Infeasible Active Set Method with Combinatorial Line Search for Convex Quadratic Problems with Bound Constraints

The minimization of a convex quadratic function under bound constraints is a fundamental building block for more complicated optimization problems. The active-set method introduced by [M. Bergounioux, K. Ito, and K. Kunisch. Primal-Dual Strategy for Constrained Optimal Control Problems. SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization, 37:1176–1194, 1999.] and [M. Bergounioux, M. Haddou, M. Hintermüller, and … Read more

A SMART Stochastic Algorithm for Nonconvex Optimization with Applications to Robust Machine Learning

Machine learning theory typically assumes that training data is unbiased and not adversarially generated. When real training data deviates from these assumptions, trained models make erroneous predictions, sometimes with disastrous effects. Robust losses, such as the huber norm are designed to mitigate the effects of such contaminated data, but they are limited to the regression … Read more

Accelerated gradient sliding for structured convex optimization

Our main goal in this paper is to show that one can skip gradient computations for gradient descent type methods applied to certain structured convex programming (CP) problems. To this end, we first present an accelerated gradient sliding (AGS) method for minimizing the summation of two smooth convex functions with different Lipschitz constants. We show … Read more

Regularized nonlinear acceleration

We describe a convergence acceleration technique for generic optimization problems. Our scheme computes estimates of the optimum from a nonlinear average of the iterates produced by any optimization method. The weights in this average are computed via a simple linear system, whose solution can be updated online. This acceleration scheme runs in parallel to the … Read more

Low-complexity method for hybrid MPC with local guarantees

Model predictive control problems for constrained hybrid systems are usually cast as mixed-integer optimization problems (MIP). However, commercial MIP solvers are designed to run on desktop computing platforms and are not suited for embedded applications which are typically restricted by limited computational power and memory. To alleviate these restrictions, we develop a novel low-complexity, iterative … Read more

Convergence rates of moment-sum-of-squares hierarchies for optimal control problems

We study the convergence rate of moment-sum-of-squares hierarchies of semidefinite programs for optimal control problems with polynomial data. It is known that these hierarchies generate polynomial under-approximations to the value function of the optimal control problem and that these under-approximations converge in the $L^1$ norm to the value function as their degree $d$ tends to … Read more