Efficient and cheap bounds for (standard) quadratic optimization

A standard quadratic optimization problem (StQP) consists in minimizing a quadratic form over a simplex. A number of problems can be transformed into a StQP, including the general quadratic problem over a polytope and the maximum clique problem in a graph. In this paper we present several polynomial-time bounds for StQP ranging from very simple … Read more

Density-based Globally Convergent Trust-Region Methods for Self-Consistent Field Electronic Structure Calculations

A theory of globally convergent trust-region methods for self-consistent field electronic structure calculations that use the density matrices as variables is developed. The optimization is performed by means of sequential global minimizations of a quadratic model of the true energy. The global minimization of this quadratic model, subject to the idempotency of the density matrix … Read more

Knitro: An Integrated Package for Nonlinear Optimization

This paper describes Knitro 5.0, a C-package for nonlinear optimization that combines complementary approaches to nonlinear optimization to achieve robust performance over a wide range of application requirements. The package is designed for solving large-scale, smooth nonlinear programming problems, and it is also effective for the following special cases: unconstrained optimization, nonlinear systems of equations, … Read more

A primal-dual interior point method for nonlinear optimization over second order cones

In this paper, we are concerned with nonlinear minimization problems with second order cone constraints. A primal-dual interior point method is proposed for solving the problems. We also propose a new primal-dual merit function by combining the barrier penalty function and the potential function within the framework of the line search strategy, and show the … Read more

A General Robust-Optimization Formulation for Nonlinear Programming

Most research in robust optimization has so far been focused on inequality-only, convex conic programming with simple linear models for uncertain parameters. Many practical optimization problems, however, are nonlinear and non-convex. Even in linear programming, coefficients may still be nonlinear functions of uncertain parameters. In this paper, we propose robust formulations that extend the robust-optimization … Read more

Semidefinite-Based Branch-and-Bound for Nonconvex Quadratic Programming

This paper presents a branch-and-bound algorithm for nonconvex quadratic programming, which is based on solving semidefinite relaxations at each node of the enumeration tree. The method is motivated by a recent branch-and-cut approach for the box-constrained case that employs linear relaxations of the first-order KKT conditions. We discuss certain limitations of linear relaxations when handling … Read more

A note on KKT points of homogeneous programs

Homogeneous programming is an important class of optimization problems. The purpose of this note is to give a truly equivalent characterization of KKT-points of homogeneous programming problems, which corrects a result given in [9]. Article Download View A note on KKT points of homogeneous programs

Constructing Generalized Mean Functions Using Convex Functions with Regularity Conditions

The generalized mean function has been widely used in convex analysis and mathematical programming. This paper studies a further generalization of such a function. A necessary and sufficient condition is obtained for the convexity of a generalized function. Additional sufficient conditions that can be easily checked are derived for the purpose of identifying some classes … Read more

The Strong Second-Order Sufficient Condition and Constraint Nondegeneracy in Nonlinear Semidefinite Programming and Their Implications

For a locally optimal solution to the nonlinear semidefinite programming problem, under Robinson’s constraint qualification, the following conditions are proved to be equivalent: the strong second order sufficient condition and constraint nondegeneracy; the nonsingularity of Clarke’s Jacobian of the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker system; the strong regularity of the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker point; and others. Citation Technical Report, Department of … Read more

A Dual Optimization Approach to Inverse Quadratic Eigenvalue Problems with Partial Eigenstructure

The inverse quadratic eigenvalue problem (IQEP) arises in the field of structural dynamics. It aims to find three symmetric matrices, known as the mass, the damping and the stiffness matrices, respectively such that they are closest to the given analytical matrices and satisfy the measured data. The difficulty of this problem lies in the fact … Read more