Gas Transport Network Optimization: PDE-Constrained Models

The optimal control of gas transport networks was and still is a very important topic for modern economies and societies. Accordingly, a lot of research has been carried out on this topic during the last years and decades. Besides mixed-integer aspects in gas transport network optimization, one of the main challenges is that a physically … Read more

Barzilai-Borwein-like rules in proximal gradient schemes for ℓ1−regularized problems

We propose a novel steplength selection rule in proximal gradient methods for minimizing the sum of a differentiable function plus an ℓ1-norm penalty term. The proposed rule modifies one of the classical Barzilai-Borwein steplength, extending analogous results obtained in the context of gradient projection methods for constrained optimization. We analyze the spectral properties of the … Read more

The Jordan algebraic structure of the rotated quadratic cone

In this paper, we look into the rotated quadratic cone and analyze its algebraic structure. We construct an algebra associated with this cone and show that this algebra is a Euclidean Jordan algebra (EJA) with a certain inner product. We also demonstrate some spectral and algebraic characteristics of this EJA. The rotated quadratic cone is … Read more

Minimizing the difference of convex and weakly convex functions via bundle method

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

A Newton-CG based barrier-augmented Lagrangian method for general nonconvex conic optimization

\(\) In this paper we consider finding an approximate second-order stationary point (SOSP) of general nonconvex conic optimization that minimizes a twice differentiable function subject to nonlinear equality constraints and also a convex conic constraint. In particular, we propose a Newton-conjugate gradient (Newton-CG) based barrier-augmented Lagrangian method for finding an approximate SOSP of this problem. … Read more

Analyzing Inexact Hypergradients for Bilevel Learning

Estimating hyperparameters has been a long-standing problem in machine learning. We consider the case where the task at hand is modeled as the solution to an optimization problem. Here the exact gradient with respect to the hyperparameters cannot be feasibly computed and approximate strategies are required. We introduce a unified framework for computing hypergradients that … Read more

Splitted Levenberg-Marquardt Method for Large-Scale Sparse Problems

We consider large-scale nonlinear least squares problems with sparse residuals, each of them depending on a small number of variables. A decoupling procedure which results in a splitting of the original problems into a sequence of independent problems of smaller sizes is proposed and analysed. The smaller size problems are modified in a way that … Read more

Improved Front Steepest Descent for Multi-objective Optimization

In this paper, we deal with the Front Steepest Descent algorithm for multi-objective optimization. We point out that the algorithm from the literature is often incapable, by design, of spanning large portions of the Pareto front. We thus introduce some modifications within the algorithm aimed to overcome this significant limitation. We prove that the asymptotic … Read more

A Newton-CG based augmented Lagrangian method for finding a second-order stationary point of nonconvex equality constrained optimization with complexity guarantees

\(\) 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

Strengthening SONC Relaxations with Constraints Derived from Variable Bounds

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