Band preconditioners for the matrix-free truncated Newton method

This report is devoted to preconditioning techniques for the matrix-free truncated Newton method. After a review of basic known pproaches, we propose ew results concerning tridiagonal and pentadiagonal preconditioners based on the standard BFGS updates and on numerical differentiation. Furthermore, we present results of extensive numerical experiments serving for the careful comparison of suitable preconditioning … Read more

Reliable solution of convex quadratic programs with parametric active set methods

Parametric Active Set Methods (PASM) are a relatively new class of methods to solve convex Quadratic Programming (QP) problems. They are based on tracing the solution along a linear homotopy between a QP with known solution and the QP to be solved. We explicitly identify numerical challenges in PASM and develop strategies to meet these … Read more

A quasi-Newton projection method for nonnegatively constrained image deblurring

In this paper we present a quasi-Newton projection method for image deblurring. The mathematical problem is a constrained minimization problem, where the objective function is a regularization function and the constraint is the positivity of the solution. The regularization function is a sum of the Kullback-Leibler divergence, used to minimize the error in the presence … Read more

DERIVATIVE-FREE METHODS FOR BOUND CONSTRAINED MIXED-INTEGER OPTIMIZATION

We consider the problem of minimizing a continuously differentiable function of several variables subject to simple bound constraints where some of the variables are restricted to take integer values. We assume that the first order derivatives of the objective function can be neither calculated nor approximated explicitly. This class of mixed integer nonlinear optimization problems … Read more

On Duality Theory for Non-Convex Semidefinite Programming

In this paper, with the help of convex-like function, we discuss the duality theory for nonconvex semidefinite programming. Our contributions are: duality theory for the general nonconvex semidefinite programming when Slater’s condition holds; perfect duality for a special case of the nonconvex semidefinite programming for which Slater’s condition fails. We point out that the results … Read more

A Feasible method for Optimization with Orthogonality Constraints

Minimization with orthogonality constraints (e.g., $X^\top X = I$) and/or spherical constraints (e.g., $\|x\|_2 = 1$) has wide applications in polynomial optimization, combinatorial optimization, eigenvalue problems, sparse PCA, p-harmonic flows, 1-bit compressive sensing, matrix rank minimization, etc. These problems are difficult because the constraints are not only non-convex but numerically expensive to preserve during iterations. … Read more

Evaluation complexity of adaptive cubic regularization methods for convex unconstrained optimization

The adaptive cubic regularization algorithms described in Cartis, Gould & Toint (2009, 2010) for unconstrained (nonconvex) optimization are shown to have improved worst-case efficiency in terms of the function- and gradient-evaluation count when applied to convex and strongly convex objectives. In particular, our complexity upper bounds match in order (as a function of the accuracy … Read more

The Inexact Spectral Bundle Method for Convex Quadratic Semidefinite Programming

We present an inexact spectral bundle method for solving convex quadratic semidefinite optimization problems. This method is a first-order method, hence requires much less computational cost each iteration than second-order approaches such as interior-point methods. In each iteration of our method, we solve an eigenvalue minimization problem inexactly, and solve a small convex quadratic semidefinite … Read more

Estimating Derivatives of Noisy Simulations

We employ recent work on computational noise to obtain near-optimal finite difference estimates of the derivatives of a noisy function. Our analysis employs a stochastic model of the noise without assuming a specific form of distribution. We use this model to derive theoretical bounds for the errors in the difference estimates and obtain an easily … Read more

NONSMOOTH OPTIMIZATION OVER THE (WEAKLY OR PROPERLY) PARETO SET OF A LINEAR-QUADRATIC MULTI-OBJECTIVE CONTROL PROBLEM : EXPLICIT OPTIMALITY CONDITIONS

We present explicit optimality conditions for a nonsmooth functional defined over the (properly or weakly) Pareto set associated to a multiobjective linear-quadratic control problem. This problem is very difficult even in a finite dimensional setting, i.e. when, instead of a control problem, we deal with a mathematical programming problem. Amongst different applications, our problem may … Read more