Related papers: Finite First Hitting Time versus Stochastic Conver…
While first-order stationary points (FOSPs) are the traditional targets of non-convex optimization, they often correspond to undesirable strict saddle points. To circumvent this, attention has shifted towards second-order stationary points…
Theoretical analyses of stochastic search algorithms, albeit few, have always existed since these algorithms became popular. Starting in the nineties a systematic approach to analyse the performance of stochastic search heuristics has been…
A common scenario in a variety of biological systems is that multiple particles are searching in parallel for an immobile target located in a bounded domain, and the fastest among them that arrives to the target first triggers a given…
This paper derives, under minimal modelling assumptions, a simple to use theorem for obtaining both order-$1$ and order-$2$ stability criteria for a common class of particle swarm optimization (PSO) variants. Specifically, PSO variants that…
As the basic model for very large scale integration (VLSI) routing, the Steiner minimal tree (SMT) can be used in various practical problems, such as wire length optimization, congestion, and time delay estimation. In this paper, a novel…
We study simple diffusion where a particle stochastically resets to its initial position at a constant rate r. A finite resetting rate leads to a nonequilibrium stationary state with non-Gaussian fluctuations for the particle position. We…
Gradient Descent (GD) approximators often fail in the solution space with multiple scales of convexities, i.e., in subspace learning and neural network scenarios. To handle that, one solution is to run GD multiple times from different…
In real-world applications, many optimization problems have the time-linkage property, that is, the objective function value relies on the current solution as well as the historical solutions. Although the rigorous theoretical analysis on…
Sparsity-constrained optimization underlies many problems in signal processing, statistics, and machine learning. State-of-the-art hard-thresholding (HT) algorithms rely on an appropriately selected continuous step-size parameter to ensure…
This paper presents the first convergence result for random search algorithms to a subset of the Pareto set of given maximum size k with bounds on the approximation quality. The core of the algorithm is a new selection criterion based on a…
This paper presents a method for choosing a Particle Swarm Optimization based optimizer for the Dynamic Vehicle Routing Problem on the basis of the initially available data of a given problem instance. The optimization algorithm is chosen…
Many physical phenomena are modeled as stochastic searchers looking for targets. In these models, the probability that a searcher finds a particular target, its so-called hitting probability, is often of considerable interest. In this work…
How long does it take a random walker to reach a given target point? This quantity, known as a first passage time (FPT), has led to a growing number of theoretical investigations over the last decade1. The importance of FPTs originates from…
We extend the theoretical framework used to study search processes with stochastic resetting to the case of partially absorbing targets. Instead of an absorption event occurring when the search particle reaches the boundary of a target, the…
We have employed Particle Swarm Optimization to address a stochastic variant of the Smallest Enclosing Sphere estimation problem. An efficient algorithm has been developed to ascertain the optimal center and radius of a sphere encompassing…
We propose novel particle swarm optimization (PSO) variants incorporated with deep neural networks (DNNs) for particles to pursue globally optimal positions in dynamic environments. PSO is a heuristic approach for solving complex…
A central problem in parameterized algorithms is to obtain algorithms with running time $f(k)\cdot n^{O(1)}$ such that $f$ is as slow growing function of the parameter $k$ as possible. In particular, a large number of basic parameterized…
The idea of iterative process optimization based on collected output measurements, or "real-time optimization" (RTO), has gained much prominence in recent decades, with many RTO algorithms being proposed, researched, and developed. While…
A local search algorithm solving an NP-complete optimisation problem can be viewed as a stochastic process moving in an 'energy landscape' towards eventually finding an optimal solution. For the random 3-satisfiability problem, the…
Many physical, chemical, and biological systems depend on the first passage time (FPT) of a diffusive searcher to a target. Typically, this FPT is much slower than the characteristic diffusion timescale. For example, this is the case if the…