The most important open problem in Monotone Operator Theory concerns the maximal monotonicity of the sum of two maximal monotone operators provided that Rockafellar's constraint qualification holds.
In this paper, we prove the maximal monotonicity of $A+B$ provided that $A$ and $B$ are maximal monotone operators such that $\dom A\cap\inte\dom B\neq\varnothing$, $A+N_{\overline{\dom B}}$ is of type (FPV), and $\dom A\cap\overline{\dom B}\subseteq\dom B$. The proof utilizes the Fitzpatrick function in an essential way.
Here, question raised by Borwein and Yao has been settled by establishing that the sum of two maximal monotone operators A and B is maximal monotone with the condition that A is of type (FPV) and satisfies Rockafellar's constraints qualification. Also we have proved that A+B is of type (FPV) without assuming convexity on the domain of A.
The most important open problem in Monotone Operator Theory concerns the maximal monotonicity of the sum of two maximally monotone operators provided that the classical Rockafellar's constraint qualification holds. In this paper, we establish the maximal monotonicity of $A+B$ provided that $A$ and $B$ are maximally monotone operators such that $\sta(\dom A)\cap\inte\dom B\neq\varnothing$, and $A$ is of type (FPV). We show that when also $\dom A$ is convex, the sum operator: $A+B$ is also of type (FPV). Our result generalizes and unifies several recent sum theorems.
The most famous open problem in Monotone Operator Theory concerns the maximal monotonicity of the sum of two maximally monotone operators provided that Rockafellar's constraint qualification holds. In this paper, we prove the maximal monotonicity of $A+B$ provided that $A, B$ are maximally monotone and $A$ is a linear relation, as soon as Rockafellar's constraint qualification holds: $\dom A\cap\inte\dom B\neq\varnothing$. Moreover, $A+B$ is of type (FPV).
The most important open problem in Monotone Operator Theory concerns the maximal monotonicity of the sum of two maximally monotone operators provided that Rockafellar's constraint qualification holds. In this paper, we prove the maximal monotonicity of $A+\partial f$ provided that $A$ is a maximally monotone linear relation, and $f$ is a proper lower semicontinuous convex function satisfying $\dom A\cap\inte\dom \partial f\neq\varnothing$. Moreover, $A+\partial f$ is of type (FPV). The maximal monotonicity of $A+\partial f$ when $\intdom A\cap\dom \partial f\neq\varnothing$ follows from a resu…
In a real Banach space, we first prove that the sum of a monotone operator of type (FPV) and maximal monotone operator Rockafellar's constraint qualification is maximal. This prove leads to the solution of most interesting long-time outstanding problem in monotone operator theory is the sum problem.
In this paper, we discuss quasidense multifunctions from a Banach space into its dual, and use the two sum theorems proved in a previous paper to give various characterizations of quasidensity. We investigate the Fitzpatrick extension of such a multifunction. We prove that, for closed monotone multifunctions, quasidensity implies type (FPV) and strong maximality, and that quasidensity is equivalent to type (FP). This version differs from Version 3 in that a few minor errors have been corrected.
In the first part of the note we prove that a sufficient condition (due to Simons) for the convexity of the closure of the domain/range of a monotone operator is also necessary when the operator has bounded domain and is maximal. Simons' condition is closely related to the notion of regular maximal monotone operator. In the second part of the note we give several characterizations for the regularity of a maximal monotone operator, show that a maximal monotone operator of type (FPV) is regular and improve a previous sum theorem type result.
The most important open problem in Monotone Operator Theory concerns the maximal monotonicity of the sum of two maximally monotone operators provided that the classical Rockafellar's constraint qualification holds, which is called the "sum problem". In this paper, we establish the maximal monotonicity of $A+B$ provided that $A$ and $B$ are maximally monotone operators such that $\dom A\cap\inte\dom B\neq\varnothing$, and $A+N_{\overline{\dom A}}$ is of type (FPV). This generalizes various current results and also gives an affirmative answer to a problem posed by Borwein and Yao. Moreover, we p…
We present a counterexample showing that the graphical limit of maximally monotone operators might not be maximally monotone. We also characterize the directional differentiability of the resolvent of an operator $B$ in terms of existence and maximal monotonicity of the proto-derivative of $B$.
In this paper, we give two explicit examples of unbounded linear maximal monotone operators. The first unbounded linear maximal monotone operator $S$ on $\ell^{2}$ is skew. We show its domain is a proper subset of the domain of its adjoint $S^*$, and $-S^*$ is not maximal monotone. This gives a negative answer to a recent question posed by Svaiter. The second unbounded linear maximal monotone operator is the inverse Volterra operator $T$ on $L^{2}[0,1]$. We compare the domain of $T$ with the domain of its adjoint $T^*$ and show that the skew part of $T$ admits two distinct linear maximal monot…
The most important open problem in Monotone Operator Theory concerns the maximal monotonicity of the sum of two maximal monotone operators provided that Rockafellar's constraint qualification holds. In this note, we provide a new maximal monotonicity result for the sum of a maximal monotone relation and the subdifferential operator of a proper, lower semicontinuous, sublinear function. The proof relies on Rockafellar's formula for the Fenchel conjugate of the sum as well as some results on the Fitzpatrick function.
The aim of this article is to present two different primal-dual methods for solving structured monotone inclusions involving parallel sums of compositions of maximally monotone operators with linear bounded operators. By employing some elaborated splitting techniques, all of the operators occurring in the problem formulation are processed individually via forward or backward steps. The treatment of parallel sums of linearly composed maximally monotone operators is motivated by applications in imaging which involve first- and second-order total variation functionals, to which a special attentio…
The question whether or not the sum of two maximal monotone operators is maximal monotone under Rockafellar's constraint qualification - that is, whether or not "the sum theorem" is true - is the most famous open problem in Monotone Operator Theory. In his 2008 monograph "From Hahn-Banach to Monotonicity", Stephen Simons asked whether or not the sum theorem holds for the special case of a maximal monotone linear operator and a normal cone operator of a closed convex set provided that the interior of the set makes a nonempty intersection with the domain of the linear operator. In this note, we …
The notion of a firmly nonexpansive mapping is central in fixed point theory because of attractive convergence properties for iterates and the correspondence with maximal monotone operators due to Minty. In this paper, we systematically analyze the relationship between properties of firmly nonexpansive mappings and associated maximal monotone operators. Dual and self-dual properties are also identified. The results are illustrated through several examples.
We present a new sufficient condition under which a maximal monotone operator $T:X\tos X^*$ admits a unique maximal monotone extension to the bidual $\widetilde T:X^{**} \rightrightarrows X^*$. For non-linear operators this condition is equivalent to uniqueness of the extension. The class of maximal monotone operators which satisfy this new condition includes class of Gossez type D maximal monotone operators, previously defined and studied by J.-P. Gossez, and all maximal monotone operators of this new class satisfies a restricted version of Brondsted-Rockafellar condition. The central tool in…
Representation formulas for faces and support functions of the values of maximal monotone operators are established in two cases: either the operators are defined on uniformly Banach spaces with uniformly convex duals, or their domains have nonempty interiors on reflexive real Banach spaces. Faces and support functions are characterized by the limit values of the minimal-norm selections of maximal monotone operators in the first case while in the second case they are represented by the limit values of any selection of maximal monotone operators. These obtained formulas are applied to study the…
The aim of this paper is to show that every representative function of a maximal monotone operator is the Fitzpatrick transform of a bifunction corresponding to the operator. In this way we exhibit the relation between the recent theory of representative functions, and the much older theory of saddle functions initiated by Rockafellar.
We are concerned with surjectivity of perturbations of maximal monotone operators in non-reflexive Banach spaces. While in a reflexive setting, a classical surjectivity result due to Rockafellar gives a necessary and sufficient condition to maximal monotonicity, in a non-reflexive space we characterize maximality using a ``enlarged'' version of the duality mapping, introduced previously by Gossez.
In their recent SIAM J. Control Optim. paper from 2009, J. Eckstein and B.F. Svaiter proposed a very general and flexible splitting framework for finding a zero of the sum of finitely many maximal monotone operators. In this short note, we provide a technical result that allows for the removal of Eckstein and Svaiter's assumption that the sum of the operators be maximal monotone or that the underlying Hilbert space be finite-dimensional.
In this paper, we consider the structure of maximally monotone operators in Banach space whose domains have nonempty interior and we present new and explicit structure formulas for such operators. Along the way, we provide new proofs of the norm-to-weak$^{*}$ closedness and of property (Q) for these operators (as recently proven by Voisei). Various applications and limiting examples are given.
Monotone operators are of basic importance in optimization as they generalize simultaneously subdifferential operators of convex functions and positive semidefinite (not necessarily symmetric) matrices. In 1970, Asplund studied the additive decomposition of a maximal monotone operator as the sum of a subdifferential operator and an "irreducible" monotone operator. In 2007, Borwein and Wiersma [SIAM J. Optim. 18 (2007), pp. 946-960] introduced another additive decomposition, where the maximal monotone operator is written as the sum of a subdifferential operator and a "skew" monotone operator. B…
Monotone operator theory and fixed point theory for nonexpansive mappings are central areas in modern nonlinear analysis and optimization. Although these areas are fairly well developed, almost all examples published are based on subdifferential operators, linear relations, or combinations thereof. In this paper, we construct an intriguing maximally monotone operator induced by a certain nonexpansive retraction. We analyze this operator, which does not appear to be assembled from subdifferential operators or linear relations, in some detail. Particular emphasis is placed on duality and strong …
In this note we provide regularity conditions of closedness type which guarantee some surjectivity results concerning the sum of two maximal monotone operators by using representative functions. The first regularity condition we give guarantees the surjectivity of the monotone operator $S(\cdot + p)+T(\cdot)$, where $p\in X$ and $S$ and $T$ are maximal monotone operators on the reflexive Banach space $X$. Then, this is used to obtain sufficient conditions for the surjectivity of $S+T$ and for the situation when $0$ belongs to the range of $S+T$. Several special cases are discussed, some of the…
We analyze and characterize maximal monotonicity of linear relations (set-valued operators with linear graphs). An important tool in our study are Fitzpatrick functions. The results obtained partially extend work on linear and at most single-valued operators by Phelps and Simons and by Bauschke, Borwein and Wang. Furthermore, a description of skew linear relations in terms of the Fitzpatrick family is obtained. We also answer one of Simons problems by showing that if a maximal monotone operator has a convex graph, then this graph must actually be affine.
In this paper, we deal with three aspects of $p$-monotone operators. First we study $p$-monotone operators with a unique maximal extension (called pre-maximal), and with convex graph. We then deal with linear operators, and provide characterizations of $p$-monotonicity and maximal $p$-monotonicity. Finally we show that the Brezis-Browder theorem preserves $p$-monotonicity in reflexive Banach spaces.
In a recent paper in Journal of Convex Analysis the authors studied, in non-reflexive Banach spaces, a class of maximal monotone operators, characterized by the existence of a function in Fitzpatrick's family of the operator which conjugate is above the duality product. This property was used to prove that such operators satisfies a restricted version of Brondsted-Rockafellar property. In this work we will prove that if a single Fitzpatrick function of a maximal monotone operator has a conjugate above the duality product, then all Fitzpatrick function of the operator have a conjugate above the…
Enlargements have proven to be useful tools for studying maximally monotone mappings. It is therefore natural to ask in which cases the enlargement does not change the original mapping. Svaiter has recently characterized non-enlargeable operators in reflexive Banach spaces and has also given some partial results in the nonreflexive case. In the present paper, we provide another characterization of non-enlargeable operators in nonreflexive Banach spaces under a closedness assumption on the graph. Furthermore, and still for general Banach spaces, we present a new proof of the maximality of the s…
A common theme in mathematics is to define generalized solutions to deal with problems that potentially do not have solutions. A classical example is the introduction of least squares solutions via the normal equations associated with a possibly infeasible system of linear equations. In this paper, we introduce a "normal problem" associated with finding a zero of the sum of two maximally monotone operators. If the original problem admits solutions, then the normal problem returns this same set of solutions. The normal problem may yield solutions when the original problem does not admit any; fu…
In his recent Proceedings of the AMS paper "Gossez's skew linear map and its pathological maximally monotone multifunctions", Stephen Simons proved that the closure of the range of the sum of the Gossez operator and a multiple of the duality map is nonconvex whenever the scalar is between 0 and 4. The problem of the convexity of that range when the scalar is equal to 4 was explicitly stated. In this paper, we answer this question in the negative for any scalar greater than or equal to 4. We derive this result from an abstract framework that allows us to also obtain a corresponding result for t…
Maximal monotone operators on a Banach space into its dual can be represented by convex functions bounded below by the duality product. It is natural to ask under which conditions a convex function represents a maximal monotone operator. A satisfactory answer, in the context of reflexive Banach spaces, has been obtained some years ago. Recently, a partial result on non-reflexive Banach spaces was obtained. In this work we study some others conditions which guarantee that a convex function represents a maximal monotone operator in non-reflexive Banach spaces.
We define a family of linear type (D) operators for which the inverse of their maximal monotone extensions to the bidual are not of type (D) and provide an example of an operator in this family.
Gossez type (D) operators are defined in non-reflexive Banach spaces and share with the subdifferential a topological related property, characterized by bounded nets. In this work we present new properties and characterizations of these operators. The class (NI) was defined after Gossez defined the class (D) and seemed to generalize the class (D). One of our main results is the proof that these classes, type (D) and (NI), are identical.
We deal with monotone inclusion problems of the form $0\in Ax+Dx+N_C(x)$ in real Hilbert spaces, where $A$ is a maximally monotone operator, $D$ a cocoercive operator and $C$ the nonempty set of zeros of another cocoercive operator. We propose a forward-backward penalty algorithm for solving this problem which extends the one proposed by H. Attouch, M.-O. Czarnecki and J. Peypouquet in [3]. The condition which guarantees the weak ergodic convergence of the sequence of iterates generated by the proposed scheme is formulated by means of the Fitzpatrick function associated to the maximally monoto…
In this note we use recent results concerning the sum theorem for maximal monotone multifunctions in general Banach spaces to find new characterizations and properties of regular maximal monotone multifunctions and then use these to describe the domain of certain enlargements.
Equivalent conditions that make the normal cone maximal monotone are investigated in the general settings of locally convex spaces. Some consequences such as Bishop Phelps and sum representability results are presented in the last part.
Our goal is to present a new shorter proof for the maximal monotonicity of the Minkowski sum of two maximal monotone multi-valued operators defined in a reflexive Banach space under the classical interiority condition involving their domains.
It is well known that many problems in image recovery, signal processing, and machine learning can be modeled as finding zeros of the sum of maximal monotone and Lipschitz continuous monotone operators. Many papers have studied forward-backward splitting methods for finding zeros of the sum of two monotone operators in Hilbert spaces. Most of the proposed splitting methods in the literature have been proposed for the sum of maximal monotone and inverse-strongly monotone operators in Hilbert spaces. In this paper, we consider splitting methods for finding zeros of the sum of maximal monotone op…
We study the relations between some geometric properties of maximal monotone operators and generic geometric and analytical properties of the functions on the associate Fitzpatrick family of convex representations. We also investigate under which conditions a convex function represents a maximal monotone operator with bounded range and provide an example of a non type (D) operator on this class.
We provide an approach to maximal monotone bifunctions based on the theory of representative functions. Thus we extend to nonreflexive Banach spaces recent results due to A.N. Iusem and, respectively, N. Hadjisavvas and H. Khatibzadeh, where sufficient conditions guaranteeing the maximal monotonicity of bifunctions were introduced. New results involving the sum of two monotone bifunctions are also presented.
In the context of general Banach spaces characterizations for the maximal monotonicity of operators with non-empty domain interior as well as stronger continuity properties for such operators are provided.
In this paper, we survey recent progress on the theory of maximally monotone operators in general Banach space. We also extend various of the results and leave some open questions.
In this paper we prove that maximal H-monotone operators $T:H^n\rightrightarrows V_1$ whose domain is all the Heisenberg group $H^n$ are locally bounded. This implies that they are upper semicontinuous. As a consequence, maximal H-monotonicity of an operator on $H^n$ can be characterized by a suitable version of Minty's type theorem.
We provide a concise analysis about what is known regarding when the closure of the domain of a maximally monotone operator on an arbitrary real Banach space is convex. In doing so, we also provide an affirmative answer to a problem posed by Simons.
Fenchel subdifferential operators of lower semicontinuous proper convex functions on real Banach spaces are classically characterized as those operators that are maximally cyclically monotone or, equivalently, maximally monotone and cyclically monotone. This paper presents an alternative characterization, which does not involve cyclic monotonicity. In the case of subdifferential operators of sublinear functions, the new characterization substantially simplifies. Dually, the new characterization of normal cone operators is very simple, too.
Recently in [1] a new class of maximal monotone operators has been introduced. In this note we study domain range properties as well as connections with other classes and calculus rules for these operators we called strongly-representable. While not every maximal monotone operator is strongly-representable, every maximal monotone NI operator is strongly-representable, and every strongly representable operator is locally maximal monotone, maximal monotone locally, and ANA. As a consequence the conjugate of the Fitzpatrick function of a maximal monotone operator is not necessarily a representati…
We show that every maximally monotone operator of Fitzpatrick-Phelps type defined on a real Banach space must be of dense type. This provides an affirmative answer to a question posed by Stephen Simons in 2001 and implies that various important notions of monotonicity coincide.
The main focus of this paper is to study multi-valued linear monotone operators in the contexts of locally convex spaces via the use of their Fitzpatrick and Penot functions. Notions such as maximal monotonicity, uniqueness, negative-infimum, and (dual-) representability are studied and criteria are provided.
The generalized parallel sum of two monotone operators via a linear continuous mapping is defined as the inverse of the sum of the inverse of one of the operators and with inverse of the composition of the second one with the linear continuous mapping. In this article, by assuming that the operators are maximal monotone of Gossez type (D), we provide sufficient conditions of both interiority- and closedness-type for guaranteeing that their generalized sum via a linear continuous mapping is maximal monotone of Gossez type (D), too. This result will follow as a particular instance of a more gene…
The local equicontinuity of an operator $T:X\rightrightarrows X^{*}$ with proper Fitzpatrick function $φ_{T}$ and defined in a barreled locally convex space $X$ has been shown to hold on the algebraic interior of $\operatorname*{Pr}\,_{X}(\operatorname*{dom}φ_{T})$). The current note presents direct consequences of the aforementioned result with regard to the local equicontinuity of a maximal monotone operator defined in a barreled locally convex space.
Any maximal monotone operator can be characterized by a convex function. The family of such convex functions is invariant under a transformation connected with the Fenchel-Legendre conjugation. We prove that there exist a convex representation of the operator which is a fixed point of this conjugation.
It is shown that, for maximally monotone linear relations defined on a general Banach space, the monotonicities of dense type, of negative-infimum type, and of Fitzpatrick-Phelps type are the same and equivalent to monotonicity of the adjoint. This result also provides affirmative answers to two problems: one posed by Phelps and Simons, and the other by Simons.
This paper is primarily concerned with the problem of maximality for the sum $A+B$ and composition $L^{*}ML$ in non-reflexive Banach space settings under qualifications constraints involving the domains of $A,B,M$. Here $X$, $Y$ are Banach spaces with duals $X^{*}$, $Y^{*}$, $A,B:X\rightrightarrows X^{*}$, $M:Y\rightrightarrows Y^{*}$ are multi-valued maximal monotone operators, and $L:X\to Y$ is linear bounded. Based on the Fitzpatrick function, new characterizations for the maximality of an operator as well as simpler proofs, improvements of previously known results, and several new results …
We give, for general Banach spaces, a characterization of the sequential lower limit of maximal monotone operators of type (D) and prove its representability. As a consequence, using a recent extension of the Moreau-Yosida regularization for type (D) operators, we extend to general Banach spaces the definitions of the variational sum of monotone operators and the variational composition of monotone operators with continuous linear mappings, and we prove that both operators are representable.
We introduce and study the Split Common Null Point Problem (SCNPP) for set-valued maximal monotone mappings in Hilbert spaces. This problem generalizes our Split Variational Inequality Problem (SVIP) [Y. Censor, A. Gibali and S. Reich, Algorithms for the split variational inequality problem, Numerical Algorithms 59 (2012), 301--323]. The SCNPP with only two set-valued mappings entails finding a zero of a maximal monotone mapping in one space, the image of which under a given bounded linear transformation is a zero of another maximal monotone mapping. We present four iterative algorithms that s…
This is a 30 page set of lecture notes, in Plain TeX, which were prepared for and presented as a series of lectures (10 1/2 hours over two weeks) at the 2nd Summer School on Banach Spaces, Related Areas and Applications in Prague and Paseky, Czech Republic, during August, 1993. They consist of a largely self-contained exposition of both classical and recent basic facts about maximal monotone operators on Banach spaces, motivated in part by the goal of highlighting several fundamental properties of such operators which remain open questions in nonreflexive Banach spaces.
