Projected Subgradient Ascent for Convex Maximization
Optimization and Control
2026-02-23 v2 Numerical Analysis
Numerical Analysis
Abstract
We consider the problem of maximizing a convex function over a closed convex set in a real Hilbert space. For linear functions, we show that a single orthogonal projection suffices to obtain an approximate solution. For continuous convex functions over convex sets, we show that projected subgradient ascent converges to a first-order stationary point when using arbitrarily large step sizes. Taking the step sizes to infinity leads to a deterministic variant of the conditional gradient algorithm, and iterated linear optimization as a special case.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2511.00741,
title = {Projected Subgradient Ascent for Convex Maximization},
author = {Pedro Felzenszwalb and Heon Lee},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.00741},
year = {2026}
}