Related papers: On Convex Envelopes and Regularization of Non-Conv…
We provide theory for computing the lower semi-continuous convex envelope of functionals of the type f(x) plus an l2 misfit, and discuss applications to various non-convex optimization problems. The latter term is a data fit term whereas f…
Low-rank matrix recovery is a fundamental problem in signal processing and machine learning. A recent very popular approach to recovering a low-rank matrix X is to factorize it as a product of two smaller matrices, i.e., X = UV^T, and then…
We study the set of continuous functions that admit no spurious local optima (i.e. local minima that are not global minima) which we term \textit{global functions}. They satisfy various powerful properties for analyzing nonconvex and…
In this note, we focus on smooth nonconvex optimization problems that obey: (1) all local minimizers are also global; and (2) around any saddle point or local maximizer, the objective has a negative directional curvature. Concrete…
We show that the minimization problem of any non-convex and non-lower semi-continuous function on a compact convex subset of a locally convex real topological vector space can be studied via an associated convex and lower semi-continuous…
Nonconvex methods have emerged as a dominant approach for low-rank matrix estimation, a problem that arises widely in machine learning and AI for learning and representing high-dimensional data. Existing analyses for these methods often…
This work proposes a novel convex-non-convex formulation of the image segmentation and the image completion problems. The proposed approach is based on the minimization of a functional involving two distinct regularization terms: one…
Convexification based on convex envelopes is ubiquitous in the non-linear optimization literature. Thanks to considerable efforts of the optimization community for decades, we are able to compute the convex envelopes of a considerable…
Non-convex optimization is ubiquitous in modern machine learning. Researchers devise non-convex objective functions and optimize them using off-the-shelf optimizers such as stochastic gradient descent and its variants, which leverage the…
We develop a rigorous framework for global non-convex optimization by reformulating the minimization problem as a discounted infinite-horizon optimal control problem. For non-convex, continuous, and possibly non-smooth objective functions…
The minimization of a nonconvex composite function can model a variety of imaging tasks. A popular class of algorithms for solving such problems are majorization-minimization techniques which iteratively approximate the composite nonconvex…
Chapter 1 deals with the problem of the existence of an upper/lower envelope from a convex cone or, more generally, a convex set for functions on the projective limit of vector lattices with values in the completion of the Kantorovich space…
This work considers two popular minimization problems: (i) the minimization of a general convex function $f(\mathbf{X})$ with the domain being positive semi-definite matrices; (ii) the minimization of a general convex function…
In this paper we study the convex envelopes of a new class of functions. Using this approach, we are able to unify two important classes of regularizers from unbiased non-convex formulations and weighted nuclear norm penalties. This opens…
This letter proposes to estimate low-rank matrices by formulating a convex optimization problem with non-convex regularization. We employ parameterized non-convex penalty functions to estimate the non-zero singular values more accurately…
We revisit the classical dual ascent algorithm for minimization of convex functionals in the presence of linear constraints, and give convergence results which apply even for non-convex functionals. We describe limit points in terms of the…
Optimization problems with rank constraints appear in many diverse fields such as control, machine learning and image analysis. Since the rank constraint is non-convex, these problems are often approximately solved via convex relaxations.…
Constrained non-convex optimization is fundamentally challenging, as global solutions are generally intractable and constraint qualifications may not hold. However, in many applications, including safe policy optimization in control and…
A convex envelope for the problem of finding the best approximation to a given matrix with a prescribed rank is constructed. This convex envelope allows the usage of traditional optimization techniques when additional constraints are added…
Matrix factorization is a popular approach for large-scale matrix completion. The optimization formulation based on matrix factorization can be solved very efficiently by standard algorithms in practice. However, due to the non-convexity…