Related papers: Strong duality and sensitivity analysis in semi-in…
We consider dynamic programming problems with finite, discrete-time horizons and prohibitively high-dimensional, discrete state-spaces for direct computation of the value function from the Bellman equation. For the case that the value…
Lagrangian decomposition (LD) is a relaxation method that provides a dual bound for constrained optimization problems by decomposing them into more manageable sub-problems. This bound can be used in branch-and-bound algorithms to prune the…
In this paper, we show a way to exploit sparsity in the problem data in a primal-dual potential reduction method for solving a class of semidefinite programs. When the problem data is sparse, the dual variable is also sparse, but the primal…
Semidefinite programs (SDP) are one of the most versatile frameworks in numerical optimization, serving as generalizations of many conic programs and as relaxations of NP-hard combinatorial problems. Their main drawback is their…
Constrained reinforcement learning is to maximize the expected reward subject to constraints on utilities/costs. However, the training environment may not be the same as the test one, due to, e.g., modeling error, adversarial attack,…
We show that the Christensen-Sinclair factorization theorem, when the underlying Hilbert spaces are finite dimensional, is an instance of strong duality of semidefinite programming. This gives an elementary proof of the result and also…
Semidefinite programming (SDP) is a unifying framework that generalizes both linear programming and quadratically-constrained quadratic programming, while also yielding efficient solvers, both in theory and in practice. However, there exist…
This paper addresses the following three topics: positive semidefinite (psd) matrix completions, universal rigidity of frameworks, and the Strong Arnold Property (SAP). We show some strong connections among these topics, using semidefinite…
In this paper we introduce a new dual program, which is representable as a semi-definite linear programming problem, for a primal convex minimax programming model problem and show that there is no duality gap between the primal and the dual…
We show that the semidefinite programs involved in the computer proofs for Kazhdan's property (T) satisfy strong duality and that the dual programs have a geometric interpretation in terms of harmonic cocycles. By dualizing geometric…
This paper explores the potential of Lagrangian duality for learning applications that feature complex constraints. Such constraints arise in many science and engineering domains, where the task amounts to learning optimization problems…
The linear programming (LP) approach is, together with value iteration and policy iteration, one of the three fundamental methods to solve optimal control problems in a dynamic programming setting. Despite its simple formulation,…
This paper demonstrates a practical method for computing the solution of an expectation-constrained robust maximization problem with immediate applications to model-free no-arbitrage bounds and super-replication values for many financial…
The Primal-Dual (PD) algorithm is widely used in convex optimization to determine saddle points. While the stability of the PD algorithm can be easily guaranteed, strict contraction is nontrivial to establish in most cases. This work…
This paper introduces a new robust interior point method analysis for semidefinite programming (SDP). This new robust analysis can be combined with either logarithmic barrier or hybrid barrier. Under this new framework, we can improve the…
Packing and covering semidefinite programs (SDPs) appear in natural relaxations of many combinatorial optimization problems as well as a number of other applications. Recently, several techniques were proposed, that utilize the particular…
In this paper we associate with an infinite family of real extended functions defined on a locally convex space, a sum, called robust sum, which is always well-defined. We also associate with that family of functions a dual pair of problems…
Convex relaxations have emerged as a promising approach for verifying desirable properties of neural networks like robustness to adversarial perturbations. Widely used Linear Programming (LP) relaxations only work well when networks are…
A subset of Q^n is called semilinear (or piecewise linear) if it is Boolean combination of linear half-spaces. We study the computational complexity of the constraint satisfaction problem (CSP) over the rationals when all the constraints…
The use of separable approximations is proposed to mitigate the curse of dimensionality related to the approximation of high-dimensional value functions in optimal control. The separable approximation exploits intrinsic decaying sensitivity…