Search

This paper presents an accelerated variant of the hybrid proximal extragradient (HPE) method for convex optimization, referred to as the accelerated HPE (A-HPE) framework. Iteration-complexity results are established for the A-HPE framework, as well as a special version of it, where a large stepsize condition is imposed. Two specific implementations of the A-HPE framework are described in the context of a structured convex optimization problem whose objective function consists of the sum of a smooth convex function and an extended real-valued nonsmooth convex function. In the first implementation, a generalization of a variant of Nesterov's method is obtained for the case where the smooth component of the objective function has Lipschitz continuous gradient. In the second implementation, an accelerated Newton proximal extragradient (A-NPE) method is obtained for the case where the smooth component of the objective function has Lipschitz continuous Hessian. It is shown that the A-NPE method has a O(1/k7/2) convergence rate, which improves upon the O(1/k³) convergence rate bound for another accelerated Newton-type method presented by Nesterov. Finally, while Nesterov's method is based on exact solutions of subproblems with cubic regularization terms, the A-NPE method is based on inexact solutions of subproblems with quadratic regularization terms and hence is potentially more tractable from a computational point of view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the development of single-timescale schemes for the distributed computation of equilibria associated with Nash games in which each player solves a convex program. Equilibria associated with such games are wholly captured by the solution set of a variational inequality. Our focus is on a class of games, termed monotone Nash games, that lead to monotone variational inequalities. Distributed extensions of standard approaches for solving such variational problems are characterized by two challenges: (1) Unless suitable assumptions (such as strong monotonicity) are imposed on the mapping arising in the specification of the variational inequality, iterative methods often require the solution of a sequence of regularized problems, a naturally two-timescale process that is harder to implement in practice. (2) Additionally, algorithm parameters for all players (such as steplengths and regularization parameters) have to be chosen centrally and communicated to all players; importantly, these parameters cannot be independently chosen by a player. Motivated by these shortcomings, we present two practically implementable distributed regularization schemes that work on a single timescale; specifically, each scheme requires precisely one gradient or projection step at every iteration. Of these, the first is an iterative Tikhonov regularization (ITR) scheme, while the second is an analogously constructed iterative proximal-point (IPP) method. Both schemes are characterized by the property that the regularization/centering parameter are updated after every iteration, rather than when one has approximately solved the regularized problem. To aid in distributed settings requiring limited coordination across players, the schemes allow players to select their parameters independently and do not insist on central prescription of such parameters. We conclude with an application of these schemes on a networked Cournot game with nonlinear prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent paper by Monteiro and Svaiter, a hybrid proximal extragradient (HPE) framework was used to study the iteration-complexity of a first-order (or, in the context of optimization, second-order) method for solving monotone nonlinear equations. The purpose of this paper is to extend this analysis to study a prox-type first-order method for monotone smooth variational inequalities and inclusion problems consisting of the sum of a smooth monotone map and a maximal monotone point-to-set operator. Each iteration of the method computes an approximate solution of a proximal subproblem obtained by linearizing the smooth part of the operator in the corresponding proximal equation for the original problem, which is then used to perform an extragradient step as prescribed by the HPE framework. Both pointwise and ergodic iteration-complexity results are derived for the aforementioned first-order method using corresponding results obtained here for a subfamily of the HPE framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the problem of minimizing nonsmooth convex functions, defined piecewise by a finite number of functions each of which is either convex quadratic or twice continuously differentiable with positive definite Hessian on the set of interest. This is a particular case of functions with primal-dual gradient structure, a notion closely related to the so-called VU space decomposition: At a given point, nonsmoothness is locally restricted to the directions of the subspace V, while along the subspace U the behavior of the function is twice differentiable. Constructive identification of the two subspaces is important, because it opens the way to devising fast algorithms for nonsmooth optimization (by following iteratively the manifold of smoothness on which superlinear U-Newton steps can be computed). In this work we show that, for the class of functions in consideration, the information needed for this identification can be obtained from the output of a standard bundle method for computing proximal points, provided a minimizer satisfies the nondegeneracy and strong transversality conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the vector optimization problem of finding weakly efficient points for maps from a Hilbert space X to a Banach space Y with respect to the partial order induced by a closed, convex, and pointed cone $C\subset Y$ with a nonempty interior. We develop for this problem an extension of the proximal point method for scalar-valued convex optimization. In this extension, the subproblems consist of finding weakly efficient points for suitable regularizations of the original map. We present both an exact and an inexact version, in which the subproblems are solved only approximately, within a constant relative tolerance. In both cases, we prove weak convergence of the generated sequence to a weakly efficient point, assuming convexity of the map with respect to C and C-completeness of the initial section. In cases where this last assumption fails, we still establish that the generating sequence is, in a suitable sense, a minimizing one. We also exhibit a particular instance of the algorithm for which, under a mild hypothesis on C, the weak limit of the generated sequence is an efficient, rather than a weakly efficient, point. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a general implicit iterative method for finding zeros of a maximal monotone operator in a Hilbert space which unifies three previously studied strategies: relaxation, inertial type extrapolation and projection step. The first two strategies are intended to speed up the convergence of the standard proximal point algorithm, while the third permits one to perform inexact proximal iterations with fixed relative error tolerance. The paper establishes the global convergence of the method for the weak topology under appropriate assumptions on the algorithm parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]