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Optimization over the Stiefel manifold is a fundamental computational problem in many scientific and engineering applications. Despite considerable research effort, high-dimensional optimization problems over the Stiefel manifold remain…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-05-16 Andy Yat-Ming Cheung , Jinxin Wang , Man-Chung Yue , Anthony Man-Cho So

Deciding whether saddle points exist or are approximable for nonconvex-nonconcave problems is usually intractable. This paper takes a step towards understanding a broad class of nonconvex-nonconcave minimax problems that do remain…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-05-30 Peiyuan Zhang , Jingzhao Zhang , Suvrit Sra

We consider a class of nonsmooth optimization problems over the Stiefel manifold, in which the objective function is weakly convex in the ambient Euclidean space. Such problems are ubiquitous in engineering applications but still largely…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-03-26 Xiao Li , Shixiang Chen , Zengde Deng , Qing Qu , Zhihui Zhu , Anthony Man Cho So

In this paper, we study the gradient descent-ascent method for convex-concave saddle-point problems. We derive a new non-asymptotic global convergence rate in terms of distance to the solution set by using the semidefinite programming…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-09-19 Moslem Zamani , Hadi Abbaszadehpeivasti , Etienne de Klerk

From optimal transport to robust dimensionality reduction, a plethora of machine learning applications can be cast into the min-max optimization problems over Riemannian manifolds. Though many min-max algorithms have been analyzed in the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-09-29 Michael I. Jordan , Tianyi Lin , Emmanouil-Vasileios Vlatakis-Gkaragkounis

Recent years have seen increased interest in performance guarantees of gradient descent algorithms for non-convex optimization. A number of works have uncovered that gradient noise plays a critical role in the ability of gradient descent…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-08-21 Stefan Vlaski , Ali H. Sayed

The problem of recovering the configuration of points from their partial pairwise distances, referred to as the Euclidean Distance Matrix Completion (EDMC) problem, arises in a broad range of applications, including sensor network…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-07 Chandler Smith , HanQin Cai , Abiy Tasissa

This paper considers a class of distributed resource allocation problems where each agent privately holds a smooth, potentially non-convex local objective, subject to a globally coupled equality constraint. Built upon the existing method,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-08-12 Lei Qin , Ye Pu

We show that on the manifold of fixed-rank and symmetric positive semi-definite matrices, the Riemannian gradient descent algorithm almost surely escapes some spurious critical points on the boundary of the manifold. Our result is the first…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-06-13 Thomas Y. Hou , Zhenzhen Li , Ziyun Zhang

We provide larger step-size restrictions for which gradient descent based algorithms (almost surely) avoid strict saddle points. In particular, consider a twice differentiable (non-convex) objective function whose gradient has Lipschitz…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-08-06 Hayden Schaeffer , Scott G. McCalla

Loss functions with a large number of saddle points are one of the major obstacles for training modern machine learning models efficiently. First-order methods such as gradient descent are usually the methods of choice for training machine…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-09-29 Lisa Maria Kreusser , Stanley J. Osher , Bao Wang

This paper considers a stochastic optimization problem over the fixed point sets of quasinonexpansive mappings on Riemannian manifolds. The problem enables us to consider Riemannian hierarchical optimization problems over complicated sets,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-12-18 Hideaki Iiduka , Hiroyuki Sakai

In this paper, we propose a Riemannian smoothing steepest descent method to minimize a nonconvex and non-Lipschitz function on submanifolds. The generalized subdifferentials on Riemannian manifold and the Riemannian gradient sub-consistency…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-04-12 Chao Zhang , Xiaojun Chen , Shiqian Ma

Motivated by energy based analyses for descent methods in the Euclidean setting, we investigate a generalisation of such analyses for descent methods over Riemannian manifolds. In doing so, we find that it is possible to derive…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-12-13 Vishwak Srinivasan , Ashia Wilson

We propose perturbed proximal algorithms that can provably escape strict saddles for nonsmooth weakly convex functions. The main results are based on a novel characterization of $\epsilon$-approximate local minimum for nonsmooth functions,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-22 Minhui Huang , Weiming Zhu

We consider the minimization of a cost function $f$ on a manifold $M$ using Riemannian gradient descent and Riemannian trust regions (RTR). We focus on satisfying necessary optimality conditions within a tolerance $\varepsilon$.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-05-01 Nicolas Boumal , P. -A. Absil , Coralia Cartis

In this paper, we present novel randomized algorithms for solving saddle point problems whose dual feasible region is given by the direct product of many convex sets. Our algorithms can achieve an ${\cal O}(1/N)$ and ${\cal O}(1/N^2)$ rate…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2015-11-16 Cong Dang , Guanghui Lan

Given a non-convex twice differentiable cost function f, we prove that the set of initial conditions so that gradient descent converges to saddle points where \nabla^2 f has at least one strictly negative eigenvalue has (Lebesgue) measure…

Dynamical Systems · Mathematics 2016-06-08 Ioannis Panageas , Georgios Piliouras

This paper focuses on minimizing a smooth function combined with a nonsmooth regularization term on a compact Riemannian submanifold embedded in the Euclidean space under a decentralized setting. Typically, there are two types of approaches…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-07-16 Lei Wang , Le Bao , Xin Liu

The paper considers distributed gradient flow (DGF) for multi-agent nonconvex optimization. DGF is a continuous-time approximation of distributed gradient descent that is often easier to study than its discrete-time counterpart. The paper…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-08-13 Brian Swenson , Ryan Murray , H. Vincent Poor , Soummya Kar