Related papers: Neon2: Finding Local Minima via First-Order Oracle…

Lower-bound analyses for nonconvex strongly-concave minimax optimization problems have shown that stochastic first-order algorithms require at least $\mathcal{O}(\varepsilon^{-4})$ oracle complexity to find an $\varepsilon$-stationary…

In this work, we study two first-order primal-dual based algorithms, the Gradient Primal-Dual Algorithm (GPDA) and the Gradient Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (GADMM), for solving a class of linearly constrained non-convex…

Escaping from saddle points and finding local minimum is a central problem in nonconvex optimization. Perturbed gradient methods are perhaps the simplest approach for this problem. However, to find $(\epsilon, \sqrt{\epsilon})$-approximate…

Finding approximate stationary points, i.e., points where the gradient is approximately zero, of non-convex but smooth objective functions $f$ over unrestricted $d$-dimensional domains is one of the most fundamental problems in classical…

This paper studies first order methods for solving smooth minimax optimization problems $\min_x \max_y g(x,y)$ where $g(\cdot,\cdot)$ is smooth and $g(x,\cdot)$ is concave for each $x$. In terms of $g(\cdot,y)$, we consider two settings --…

A novel dynamical inertial Newton system, which is called Hessian-driven Nesterov accelerated gradient (H-NAG) flow is proposed. Convergence of the continuous trajectory are established via tailored Lyapunov function, and new first-order…

In a Hilbert space setting, for convex optimization, we show the convergence of the iterates to optimal solutions for a class of accelerated first-order algorithms. They can be interpreted as discrete temporal versions of an inertial…

We consider in this paper a class of single-ratio fractional minimization problems, in which the numerator part of the objective is the sum of a nonsmooth nonconvex function and a smooth nonconvex function while the denominator part is a…

We establish lower bounds on the complexity of finding $\epsilon$-stationary points of smooth, non-convex high-dimensional functions using first-order methods. We prove that deterministic first-order methods, even applied to arbitrarily…

A central challenge to using first-order methods for optimizing nonconvex problems is the presence of saddle points. First-order methods often get stuck at saddle points, greatly deteriorating their performance. Typically, to escape from…

Zeroth-order optimization methods are developed to overcome the practical hurdle of having knowledge of explicit derivatives. Instead, these schemes work with merely access to noisy functions evaluations. One of the predominant approaches…

We consider minimization of a smooth nonconvex objective function using an iterative algorithm based on Newton's method and the linear conjugate gradient algorithm, with explicit detection and use of negative curvature directions for the…

We describe a novel constructive technique for devising efficient first-order methods for a wide range of large-scale convex minimization settings, including smooth, non-smooth, and strongly convex minimization. The technique builds upon a…

We study the oracle complexity of nonsmooth nonconvex optimization, with the algorithm assumed to have access only to local function information. It has been shown by Davis, Drusvyatskiy, and Jiang (2023) that for nonsmooth Lipschitz…

We present a stochastic optimization method that uses a fourth-order regularized model to find local minima of smooth and potentially non-convex objective functions with a finite-sum structure. This algorithm uses sub-sampled derivatives…

While first-order optimization methods such as stochastic gradient descent (SGD) are popular in machine learning (ML), they come with well-known deficiencies, including relatively-slow convergence, sensitivity to the settings of…

This paper optimizes the step coefficients of first-order methods for smooth convex minimization in terms of the worst-case convergence bound (i.e., efficiency) of the decrease in the gradient norm. This work is based on the performance…

We present a variant of accelerated gradient descent algorithms, adapted from Nesterov's optimal first-order methods, for weakly-quasi-convex and weakly-quasi-strongly-convex functions. We show that by tweaking the so-called estimate…

We consider minimizing a function consisting of a quadratic term and a proximable term which is possibly nonconvex and nonsmooth. This problem is also known as scaled proximal operator. Despite its simple form, existing methods suffer from…

Motivated by applications in machine learning and operations research, we study regret minimization with stochastic first-order oracle feedback in online constrained, and possibly non-smooth, non-convex problems. In this setting, the…