A Fast Algorithm for Sparse Reconstruction based on Shrinkage, Subspace Optimization and Continuation

We propose a fast algorithm for solving the l1-regularized least squares problem for recovering sparse solutions to an undetermined system of linear equations Ax = b. The algorithm is divided into two stages that are performed repeatedly. In the first stage a first-order iterative method called “shrinkage” yields an estimate of the subset of components … Read more

A quasisecant method for minimizing nonsmooth functions

In this paper a new algorithm to locally minimize nonsmooth, nonconvex functions is developed. We introduce the notion of secants and quasisecants for nonsmooth functions. The quasisecants are applied to find descent directions of locally Lipschitz functions. We design a minimization algorithm which uses quasisecants to find descent directions. We prove that this algorithm converges … Read more

A convex polynomial that is not sos-convex

A multivariate polynomial $p(x)=p(x_1,…,x_n)$ is sos-convex if its Hessian $H(x)$ can be factored as $H(x)= M^T(x) M(x)$ with a possibly nonsquare polynomial matrix $M(x)$. It is easy to see that sos-convexity is a sufficient condition for convexity of $p(x)$. Moreover, the problem of deciding sos-convexity of a polynomial can be cast as the feasibility of … Read more

A practical method for solving large-scale TRS

We present a nearly-exact method for the large scale trust region subproblem (TRS) based on the properties of the minimal-memory BFGS method. Our study in concentrated in the case where the initial BFGS matrix can be any scaled identity matrix. The proposed method is a variant of the Mor\'{e}-Sorensen method that exploits the eigenstructure of … Read more

Dido’s Problem and Pareto Optimality

Under study is the new class of geometrical extremal problems in which it is required to achieve the best result in the presence of conflicting goals; e.g., given the surface area of a convex body~$\mathfrak x$, we try to maximize the volume of~$\mathfrak x$ and minimize the width of~$\mathfrak x$ simultaneously. These problems are addressed … Read more

Asymptotic expansions for interior penalty solutions of control constrained linear-quadratic problems

We consider a quadratic optimal control problem governed by a nonautonomous affine differential equation subject to nonnegativity control constraints. For a general class of interior penalty functions, we show how to compute the principal term of the pointwise expansion of the state and the adjoint state. Our main argument relies on the following fact: If … Read more

On-Line Economic Optimization of Energy Systems Using Weather Forecast Information

We establish an on-line optimization framework to exploit weather forecast information in the operation of energy systems. We argue that anticipating the weather conditions can lead to more proactive and cost-effective operations. The framework is based on the solution of a stochastic dynamic real-time optimization (D-RTO) problem incorporating forecasts generated from a state-of-the-art weather prediction … Read more

Numerical block diagonalization of matrix hBcalgebras with application to semidefinite programming

Semidefinite programming (SDP) is one of the most active areas in mathematical programming, due to varied applications and the availability of interior point algorithms. In this paper we propose a new pre-processing technique for SDP instances that exhibit algebraic symmetry. We present computational results to show that the solution times of certain SDP instances may … Read more

Interior-point method for nonlinear programming with complementarity constraints

In this report, we propose an algorithm for solving nonlinear programming problems with com-plementarity constraints, which is based on the interior-point approach. Main theoretical results concern direction determination and step-length selection. We use an exact penalty function to remove complementarity constraints. Thus a new indefinite linear system is defined with a tridiagonal low-right submatrix. Inexact … Read more

Error bounds: necessary and sufficient conditions

The paper presents a general classiffication scheme of necessary and sufficient criteria for the error bound property incorporating the existing conditions. Several derivative-like objects both from the primal as well as from the dual space are used to characterize the error bound property of extended-real-valued functions on a Banach space. CitationPublished in Set-Valued and Variational … Read more