We consider trust-region methods for solving optimization problems where the objective is the sum of a smooth, nonconvex function and a nonsmooth, convex regularizer. We extend the global convergence theory of such methods to include worst-case complexity bounds in the case of unbounded model Hessian growth, and introduce a new, simple nonsmooth trust-region subproblem solver … Read more
We analyze the Douglas-Rachford splitting method for weakly convex optimization problems, by the token of the Douglas-Rachford envelope, a merit function akin to the Moreau envelope. First, we use epi-convergence techniques to show that this artifact approximates the original objective function via epigraphs. Secondly, we present how global convergence and local linear convergence rates for … Read more
We propose the shadow Davis-Yin three-operator splitting method to solve nonconvex optimisation problems. Its convergence analysis is based on a merit function resembling the Moreau envelope. We explore variational analysis properties behind the merit function and the iteration operators associated with the shadow method. By capitalising on these results, we establish convergence of a damped … Read more
We present a framework for analyzing convergence and local rates of convergence of a class of descent algorithms, assuming the objective function is weakly convex. The framework is general, in the sense that it combines the possibility of explicit iterations (based on the gradient or a subgradient at the current iterate), implicit iterations (using a … Read more
The task of recovering a low-rank matrix from its noisy linear measurements plays a central role in computational science. Smooth formulations of the problem often exhibit an undesirable phenomenon: the condition number, classically defined, scales poorly with the dimension of the ambient space. In contrast, we here show that in a variety of concrete circumstances, … Read more
The blind deconvolution problem seeks to recover a pair of vectors from a set of rank one bilinear measurements. We consider a natural nonsmooth formulation of the problem and show that under standard statistical assumptions, its moduli of weak convexity, sharpness, and Lipschitz continuity are all dimension independent. This phenomenon persists even when up to … Read more
In this article we study the connection between proximal point methods for nonconvex optimization and the backward Euler method from numerical Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs). We establish conditions for which these methods are equivalent. In the case of weakly convex functions, for small enough parameters, the implicit steps can be solved using a strongly convex … Read more