This paper proposes and establishes the iteration-complexity of an inexact proximal accelerated augmented Lagrangian (IPAAL) method for solving linearly constrained smooth nonconvex composite optimization problems. Each IPAAL iteration consists of inexactly solving a proximal augmented Lagrangian subproblem by an accelerated composite gradient (ACG) method followed by a suitable Lagrange multiplier update. It is shown that IPAAL generates an approximate stationary solution in at most ${\cal O}(\log(1/ρ)/ρ^{3})$ ACG iterations, where $ρ>0$ is the given tolerance. It is also shown that the previous complexity bound can be sharpened to ${\cal O}(\log(1/ρ)/ρ^{2.5})$ under additional mildly stronger assumptions. The above bounds are derived assuming that the initial point is neither feasible nor the domain of the composite term of the objective function is bounded. Some preliminary numerical results are presented to illustrate the performance of the IPAAL method.
This paper expands the Cyclic Block Proximal Gradient method for block separable composite minimization by allowing for inexactly computed gradients and proximal maps. The resultant algorithm, the Inexact Cyclic Block Proximal Gradient (I-CBPG) method, shares the same convergence rate as its exactly computed analogue provided the allowable errors decrease sufficiently quickly or are pre-selected to be sufficiently small. We provide numerical experiments that showcase the practical computational advantage of I-CBPG for certain fixed tolerances of approximation error and for a dynamically decrea…
This thesis focuses on developing and analyzing accelerated and inexact first-order methods for solving or finding stationary points of various nonconvex composite optimization (NCO) problems. The main tools mainly come from variational and convex analysis, and the key results are in the form of iteration complexity bounds and how these bounds compare to other ones in the literature.
In this paper we present an inexact proximal point method for variational inequality problem on Hadamard manifolds and study its convergence properties. The proposed algorithm is inexact in two sense. First, each proximal subproblem is approximated by using the enlargement of the vector field in consideration and then the next iterated is obtained by solving this subproblem allowing a suitable error tolerance. As an application, we obtain an inexact proximal point method for constrained optimization problems, equilibrium problems and nonlinear optimization problems on Hadamard manifolds.
In this paper an inexact proximal point method for variational inequalities in Hadamard manifolds is introduced and studied its convergence properties. The main tool used for presenting the method is the concept of enlargement of monotone vector fields, which generalizes the concept of enlargement of monotone operators from the linear setting to the Riemannian context. As an application, an inexact proximal point method for constrained optimization problems is obtained.
We consider Proximal Newton methods with an inexact computation of update steps. To this end, we introduce two inexactness criteria which characterize sufficient accuracy of these update step and with the aid of these investigate global convergence and local acceleration of our method. The inexactness criteria are designed to be adequate for the Hilbert space framework we find ourselves in while traditional inexactness criteria from smooth Newton or finite dimensional Proximal Newton methods appear to be inefficient in this scenario. The performance of the method and its gain in effectiveness …
An adaptive regularization algorithm using inexact function and derivatives evaluations is proposed for the solution of composite nonsmooth nonconvex optimization. It is shown that this algorithm needs at most $O(|\log(ε)|\,ε^{-2})$ evaluations of the problem's functions and their derivatives for finding an $ε$-approximate first-order stationary point. This complexity bound therefore generalizes that provided by [Bellavia, Gurioli, Morini and Toint, 2018] for inexact methods for smooth nonconvex problems, and is within a factor $|\log(ε)|$ of the optimal bound known for smooth and nonsmooth no…
We present two approximate versions of the proximal subgradient method for minimizing the sum of two convex functions (not necessarily differentiable). The algorithms involve, at each iteration, inexact evaluations of the proximal operator and approximate subgradients of the functions (namely: the $ε$-subgradients). The methods use different error criteria for approximating the proximal operators. We provide an analysis of the convergence and rate of convergence properties of these methods, considering various stepsize rules, including both, diminishing and constant stepsizes. For the case whe…
This paper describes and establishes the iteration-complexity of a doubly accelerated inexact proximal point (D-AIPP) method for solving the nonconvex composite minimization problem whose objective function is of the form $f+h$ where $f$ is a (possibly nonconvex) differentiable function whose gradient is Lipschitz continuous and $h$ is a closed convex function with bounded domain. D-AIPP performs two types of iterations, namely, inner and outer ones. Its outer iterations correspond to the ones of the accelerated inexact proximal point scheme. Its inner iterations are the ones performed by an a…
The $\ell_p$ regularization problem with $0< p< 1$ has been widely studied for finding sparse solutions of linear inverse problems and gained successful applications in various mathematics and applied science fields. The proximal gradient algorithm is one of the most popular algorithms for solving the $\ell_p$ regularisation problem. In the present paper, we investigate the linear convergence issue of one inexact descent method and two inexact proximal gradient algorithms (PGA). For this purpose, an optimality condition theorem is explored to provide the equivalences among a local minimum, sec…
Stochastic nonconvex optimization problems with nonlinear constraints have a broad range of applications in intelligent transportation, cyber-security, and smart grids. In this paper, first, we propose an inexact-proximal accelerated gradient method to solve a nonconvex stochastic composite optimization problem where the objective is the sum of smooth and nonsmooth functions, the constraint functions are assumed to be deterministic and the solution to the proximal map of the nonsmooth part is calculated inexactly at each iteration. We demonstrate an asymptotic sublinear rate of convergence for…
This paper considers the problem of minimizing the summation of a differentiable function and a nonsmooth function on a Riemannian manifold. In recent years, proximal gradient method and its invariants have been generalized to the Riemannian setting for solving such problems. Different approaches to generalize the proximal mapping to the Riemannian setting lead versions of Riemannian proximal gradient methods. However, their convergence analyses all rely on solving their Riemannian proximal mapping exactly, which is either too expensive or impracticable. In this paper, we study the convergence…
One of the most popular and important first-order iterations that provides optimal complexity of the classical proximal gradient method (PGM) is the "Fast Iterative Shrinkage/Thresholding Algorithm" (FISTA). In this paper, two inexact versions of FISTA for minimizing the sum of two convex functions are studied. The proposed schemes inexactly solve their subproblems by using relative error criteria instead of exogenous and diminishing error rules. When the evaluation of the proximal operator is difficult, inexact versions of FISTA are necessary and the relative error rules proposed here may hav…
An algorithm for solving nonconvex smooth optimization problems is proposed, analyzed, and tested. The algorithm is an extension of the Trust Region Algorithm with Contractions and Expansions (TRACE) [Math. Prog. 162(1):132, 2017]. In particular, the extension allows the algorithm to use inexact solutions of the arising subproblems, which is an important feature for solving large-scale problems. Inexactness is allowed in a manner such that the optimal iteration complexity of ${\cal O}(ε^{-3/2})$ for attaining an $ε$-approximate first-order stationary point is maintained while the worst-case co…
The proximal gradient algorithm has been popularly used for convex optimization. Recently, it has also been extended for nonconvex problems, and the current state-of-the-art is the nonmonotone accelerated proximal gradient algorithm. However, it typically requires two exact proximal steps in each iteration, and can be inefficient when the proximal step is expensive. In this paper, we propose an efficient proximal gradient algorithm that requires only one inexact (and thus less expensive) proximal step in each iteration. Convergence to a critical point %of the nonconvex problem is still guarant…
This paper presents smoothing schemes for obtaining approximate stationary points of unconstrained or linearly-constrained composite nonconvex-concave min-max (and hence nonsmooth) problems by applying well-known algorithms to composite smooth approximations of the original problems. More specifically, in the unconstrained (resp. constrained) case, approximate stationary points of the original problem are obtained by applying, to its composite smooth approximation, an accelerated inexact proximal point (resp. quadratic penalty) method presented in a previous paper by the authors. Iteration com…
Given two arbitrary closed sets in Euclidean space, a simple transversality condition guarantees that the method of alternating projections converges locally, at linear rate, to a point in the intersection. Exact projection onto nonconvex sets is typically intractable, but we show that computationally-cheap inexact projections may suffice instead. In particular, if one set is defined by sufficiently regular smooth constraints, then projecting onto the approximation obtained by linearizing those constraints around the current iterate suffices. On the other hand, if one set is a smooth manifold …
In this paper, we propose and analyze an inexact version of the symmetric proximal alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) for solving linearly constrained optimization problems. Basically, the method allows its first subproblem to be solved inexactly in such way that a relative approximate criterion is satisfied. In terms of the iteration number $k$, we establish global $\mathcal{O} (1/ \sqrt{k})$ pointwise and $\mathcal{O} (1/ {k})$ ergodic convergence rates of the method for a domain of the acceleration parameters, which is consistent with the largest known one in the exact case.…
We study a general convex optimization problem, which covers various classic problems in different areas and particularly includes many optimal transport related problems arising in recent years. To solve this problem, we revisit the classic Bregman proximal point algorithm (BPPA) and introduce a new inexact stopping condition for solving the subproblems, which can circumvent the underlying feasibility difficulty often appearing in existing inexact conditions when the problem has a complex feasible set. Our inexact condition also covers several existing inexact conditions as special cases and …
This paper analyzes the iteration-complexity of a quadratic penalty accelerated inexact proximal point method for solving linearly constrained nonconvex composite programs. More specifically, the objective function is of the form $f + h$ where $f$ is a differentiable function whose gradient is Lipschitz continuous and $h$ is a closed convex function with bounded domain. The method, basically, consists of applying an accelerated inexact proximal point method for solving approximately a sequence of quadratic penalized subproblems associated to the linearly constrained problem. Each subproblem of…
This paper proposes and develops new linesearch methods with inexact gradient information for finding stationary points of nonconvex continuously differentiable functions on finite-dimensional spaces. Some abstract convergence results for a broad class of linesearch methods are stablished. A general scheme for inexact reduced gradient (IRG) methods is proposed, where the errors in the gradient approximation automatically adapt with the magnitudes of the exact gradients. The sequences of iterations are shown to obtain stationary accumulation points when different stepsize selections are employe…
This paper is concerned with two-block separable convex minimization problems with linear constraints, for which it is either impossible or too expensive to obtain the exact solutions of the subproblems involved in the proximal ADMM (alternating direction method of multipliers). Such structured convex minimization problems often arise from the two-block regroup settlement of three or four-block separable convex optimization problems with linear constraints, or from the constrained total-variation superresolution image reconstruction problems in image processing. For them, we propose an inexact…
First-order methods have been studied for nonlinear constrained optimization within the framework of the augmented Lagrangian method (ALM) or penalty method. We propose an improved inexact ALM (iALM) and conduct a unified analysis for nonconvex problems with either affine equality or nonconvex constraints. Under certain regularity conditions (that are also assumed by existing works), we show an $\tilde{O}(\varepsilon^{-\frac{5}{2}})$ complexity result for a problem with a nonconvex objective and affine equality constraints and an $\tilde{O}(\varepsilon^{-3})$ complexity result for a problem wi…
This paper proposes and analyzes an accelerated inexact dampened augmented Lagrangian (AIDAL) method for solving linearly-constrained nonconvex composite optimization problems. Each iteration of the AIDAL method consists of: (i) inexactly solving a dampened proximal augmented Lagrangian (AL) subproblem by calling an accelerated composite gradient (ACG) subroutine; (ii) applying a dampened and under-relaxed Lagrange multiplier update; and (iii) using a novel test to check whether the penalty parameter of the AL function should be increased. Under several mild assumptions involving the dampening…
Locating proximal points is a component of numerous minimization algorithms. This work focuses on developing a method to find the proximal point of a convex function at a point, given an inexact oracle. Our method assumes that exact function values are at hand, but exact subgradients are either not available or not useful. We use approximate subgradients to build a model of the objective function, and prove that the method converges to the true prox-point within acceptable tolerance. The subgradient $g_k$ used at each step $k$ is such that the distance from $g_k$ to the true subdifferential of…
A trust-region algorithm using inexact function and derivatives values is introduced for solving unconstrained smooth optimization problems. This algorithm uses high-order Taylor models and allows the search of strong approximate minimizers of arbitrary order. The evaluation complexity of finding a $q$-th approximate minimizer using this algorithm is then shown, under standard conditions, to be $\mathcal{O}\big(\min_{j\in\{1,\ldots,q\}}ε_j^{-(q+1)}\big)$ where the $ε_j$ are the order-dependent requested accuracy thresholds. Remarkably, this order is identical to that of classical trust-region …
In this paper, we introduce a \textit{Bi-level OPTimization} (BiOPT) framework for minimizing the sum of two convex functions, where both can be nonsmooth. The BiOPT framework involves two levels of methodologies. At the upper level of BiOPT, we first regularize the objective by a $(p+1)$th-order proximal term and then develop the generic inexact high-order proximal-point scheme and its acceleration using the standard estimation sequence technique. At the lower level, we solve the corresponding $p$th-order proximal auxiliary problem inexactly either by one iteration of the $p$th-order tensor m…
This paper establishes the iteration-complexity of an inner accelerated inexact proximal augmented Lagrangian (IAIPAL) method for solving linearly-constrained smooth nonconvex composite optimization problems that is based on the classical augmented Lagrangian (AL) function. More specifically, each IAIPAL iteration consists of inexactly solving a proximal AL subproblem by an accelerated composite gradient (ACG) method followed by a classical Lagrange multiplier update. Under the assumption that the domain of the composite function is bounded and the problem has a Slater point, it is shown that …
In this paper, we propose and study the asymptotic convergence and nonasymptotic global convergence rates (iteration-complexity) of an inertial under-relaxed version of the relative-error hybrid proximal extragradient (HPE) method for solving monotone inclusion problems. We analyze the proposed method under more flexible assumptions than existing ones on the extrapolation and relative-error parameters. As applications, we propose and/or study inertial under-relaxed forward-backward and Tseng's modified forward-backward type methods for solving structured monotone inclusions.
In this paper, we use Proximal Cubic regularized Newton Methods (PCNM) to optimize the sum of a smooth convex function and a non-smooth convex function, where we use inexact gradient and Hessian, and an inexact subsolver for the cubic regularized second-order subproblem. We propose inexact variants of PCNM and accelerated PCNM respectively, and show that both variants can achieve the same convergence rate as in the exact case, provided that the errors in the inexact gradient, Hessian and subsolver decrease at appropriate rates. Meanwhile, in the online stochastic setting where data comes endle…
We consider the proximal-gradient method for minimizing an objective function that is the sum of a smooth function and a non-smooth convex function. A feature that distinguishes our work from most in the literature is that we assume that the associated proximal operator does not admit a closed-form solution. To address this challenge, we study two adaptive and implementable termination conditions that dictate how accurately the proximal-gradient subproblem is solved. We prove that the number of iterations required for the inexact proximal-gradient method to reach a $τ> 0$ approximate first-ord…
This work presents an adaptive superfast proximal augmented Lagrangian (AS-PAL) method for solving linearly-constrained smooth nonconvex composite optimization problems. Each iteration of AS-PAL inexactly solves a possibly nonconvex proximal augmented Lagrangian (AL) subproblem obtained by an aggressive/adaptive choice of prox stepsize with the aim of substantially improving its computational performance followed by a full Lagrangian multiplier update. A major advantage of AS-PAL compared to other AL methods is that it requires no knowledge of parameters (e.g., size of constraint matrix, objec…
This paper presents two inexact composite gradient methods, one inner accelerated and another doubly accelerated, for solving a class of nonconvex spectral composite optimization problems. More specifically, the objective function for these problems is of the form $f_1 + f_2 + h$ where $f_1$ and $f_2$ are differentiable nonconvex matrix functions with Lipschitz continuous gradients, $h$ is a proper closed convex matrix function, and both $f_2$ and $h$ can be expressed as functions that operate on the singular values of their inputs. The methods essentially use an accelerated composite gradient…
A regularization algorithm allowing random noise in derivatives and inexact function values is proposed for computing approximate local critical points of any order for smooth unconstrained optimization problems. For an objective function with Lipschitz continuous $p$-th derivative and given an arbitrary optimality order $q \leq p$, it is shown that this algorithm will, in expectation, compute such a point in at most $O\left(\left(\min_{j\in\{1,\ldots,q\}}ε_j\right)^{-\frac{p+1}{p-q+1}}\right)$ inexact evaluations of $f$ and its derivatives whenever $q\in\{1,2\}$, where $ε_j$ is the tolerance …
We consider non-differentiable dynamic optimization problems such as those arising in robotics and subspace tracking. Given the computational constraints and the time-varying nature of the problem, a low-complexity algorithm is desirable, while the accuracy of the solution may only increase slowly over time. We put forth the proximal online gradient descent (OGD) algorithm for tracking the optimum of a composite objective function comprising of a differentiable loss function and a non-differentiable regularizer. An online learning framework is considered and the gradient of the loss function i…
This paper shows how, in a quasi metric space, an inexact proximal algorithm with a generalized perturbation term appears to be a nice tool for Behavioral Sciences (Psychology, Economics, Management, Game theory,...). More precisely, the new perturbation term represents an index of resistance to change, defined as a "curved enough" function of the quasi distance between two successive iterates. Using this behavioral point of view, the present paper shows how such a generalized inexact proximal algorithm can modelize the formation of habits and routines in a striking way. This idea comes from a…
This paper proposes an efficient adaptive variant of a quadratic penalty accelerated inexact proximal point (QP-AIPP) method proposed earlier by the authors. Both the QP-AIPP method and its variant solve linearly set constrained nonconvex composite optimization problems using a quadratic penalty approach where the generated penalized subproblems are solved by a variant of the underlying AIPP method. The variant, in turn, solves a given penalized subproblem by generating a sequence of proximal subproblems which are then solved by an accelerated composite gradient algorithm. The main difference …
