On the convergence of augmented Lagrangian strategies for nonlinear programming

Augmented Lagrangian algorithms are very popular and successful methods for solving constrained optimization problems. Recently, the global convergence analysis of these methods have been dramatically improved by using the notion of the sequential optimality conditions. Such conditions are optimality conditions independently of the fulfilment of any constraint qualifications and provide theoretical tools to justify stopping … Read more

A numerical study of transformed mixed-integer optimal control problems

Time transformation is a ubiquitous tool in theoretical sciences, especially in physics. It can also be used to transform switched optimal con trol problems into control problems with a fixed switching order and purely continuous decisions. This approach is known either as enhanced time transformation, time-scaling, or switching time optimization (STO) for mixed-integer optimal control. … Read more

A proximal bundle variant with optimal iteration-complexity for a large range of prox stepsizes

This paper presents a proximal bundle variant, namely, the relaxed proximal bundle (RPB) method, for solving convex nonsmooth composite optimization problems. Like other proximal bundle variants, RPB solves a sequence of prox bundle subproblems whose objective functions are regularized composite cutting-plane models. Moreover, RPB uses a novel condition to decide whether to perform a serious … Read more

Projected-Search Methods for Bound-Constrained Optimization

Projected-search methods for bound-constrained minimization are based on performing a line search along a continuous piecewise-linear path obtained by projecting a search direction onto the feasible region. A potential benefit of a projected-search method is that many changes to the active set can be made at the cost of computing a single search direction. As … Read more

Implicit steepest descent algorithm for optimization with orthogonality constraints

Optimization with orthogonality constraints problems appear widely in applications from science and engineering. We address these types of problems from an numerical approach. Our new framework combines the steepest gradient descent using implicit information with and operator projection in order to construct a feasible sequence of points. In addition, we adopt an adaptive Barzilai–Borwein steplength … Read more

Variance Reduction of Stochastic Gradients Without Full Gradient Evaluation

A standard concept for reducing the variance of stochastic gradient approximations is based on full gradient evaluations every now and then. In this paper an approach is considered that — while approximating a local minimizer of a sum of functions — also generates approximations of the gradient and the function values without relying on full … Read more

Complexity iteration analysis for stongly convex multi-objective optimization using a Newton path-following procedure

In this note we consider the iteration complexity of solving strongly convex multi objective optimization. We discuss the precise meaning of this problem, and indicate it is loosely defined, but the most natural notion is to find a set of Pareto optimal points across a grid of scalarized problems. We derive that in most cases, … Read more

Expected complexity analysis of stochastic direct-search

This work presents the convergence rate analysis of stochastic variants of the broad class of direct-search methods of directional type. It introduces an algorithm designed to optimize differentiable objective functions $f$ whose values can only be computed through a stochastically noisy blackbox. The proposed stochastic directional direct-search (SDDS) algorithm accepts new iterates by imposing a … Read more

Constraint Qualifications for Karush-Kuhn-Tucker Conditions in Constrained Multiobjective Optimization

The notion of a normal cone of a given set is paramount in optimization and variational analysis. In this work, we give a definition of a multiobjective normal cone which is suitable for studying optimality conditions and constraint qualifications for multiobjective optimization problems. A detailed study of the properties of the multiobjective normal cone is … Read more

On optimality conditions for nonlinear conic programming

Sequential optimality conditions have played a major role in proving stronger global convergence results of numerical algorithms for nonlinear programming. Several extensions have been described in conic contexts, where many open questions have arisen. In this paper, we present new sequential optimality conditions in the context of a general nonlinear conic framework, which explains and … Read more