English

Open Problem: Two Riddles in Heavy-Ball Dynamics

Optimization and Control 2025-02-28 v1

Abstract

This short paper presents two open problems on the widely used Polyak's Heavy-Ball algorithm. The first problem is the method's ability to exactly \textit{accelerate} in dimension one exactly. The second question regards the behavior of the method for parameters for which it seems that neither a Lyapunov nor a cycle exists. For both problems, we provide a detailed description of the problem and elements of an answer.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2502.19916,
  title  = {Open Problem: Two Riddles in Heavy-Ball Dynamics},
  author = {Baptiste Goujaud and Adrien Taylor and Aymeric Dieuleveut},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.19916},
  year   = {2025}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T21:59:52.701Z