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In this paper, we study the black box optimization problem under the Polyak--Lojasiewicz (PL) condition, assuming that the objective function is not just smooth, but has higher smoothness. By using "kernel-based" approximation instead of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-11-29 Aleksandr Lobanov , Alexander Gasnikov , Fedor Stonyakin

In this paper, we consider non-convex optimization problems under \textit{unknown} yet safety-critical constraints. Such problems naturally arise in a variety of domains including robotics, manufacturing, and medical procedures, where it is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-25 Mohammad Fereydounian , Zebang Shen , Aryan Mokhtari , Amin Karbasi , Hamed Hassani

We investigate how to solve smooth matrix optimization problems with general linear inequality constraints on the eigenvalues of a symmetric matrix. We present solution methods to obtain exact global minima for linear objective functions,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-07-23 Casey Garner , Gilad Lerman , Shuzhong Zhang

We propose a unified derivative-free proximal Newton-type algorithm framework for solving composite optimization problems formulated as the sum of a black-box function and a known regularization term. We establish the iteration and oracle…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-08 Zekun Liu , Jinyan Fan

An algorithm is proposed, analyzed, and tested for minimizing locally Lipschitz objective functions that may be nonconvex and/or nonsmooth. The algorithm, which is built upon the gradient-sampling methodology, is designed specifically for…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-02 Albert S. Berahas , Frank E. Curtis , Lara Zebiane

Block majorization-minimization (BMM) is a simple iterative algorithm for constrained nonconvex optimization that sequentially minimizes majorizing surrogates of the objective function in each block while the others are held fixed. BMM…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-01-22 Hanbaek Lyu , Yuchen Li

We introduce the concept of strong high-order approximate minimizers for nonconvex optimization problems. These apply in both standard smooth and composite non-smooth settings, and additionally allow convex or inexpensive constraints. An…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-01-30 Coralia Cartis , Nick Gould , Philippe L. Toint

This paper considers minimax optimization $\min_x \max_y f(x, y)$ in the challenging setting where $f$ can be both nonconvex in $x$ and nonconcave in $y$. Though such optimization problems arise in many machine learning paradigms including…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-04 Tanner Fiez , Chi Jin , Praneeth Netrapalli , Lillian J. Ratliff

We consider the minimization of submodular functions subject to ordering constraints. We show that this optimization problem can be cast as a convex optimization problem on a space of uni-dimensional measures, with ordering constraints…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-07-31 Francis Bach

Based on the ideas of arXiv:1710.06612, we consider the problem of minimization of the Holder-continuous non-smooth functional $f$ with non-positive convex (generally, non-smooth) Lipschitz-continuous functional constraint. We propose some…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-01-03 Fedor Stonyakin , Alexey Stepanov , Alexander Gasnikov , Alexander Titov

Regularization using the L0 pseudo-norm is a common approach to promote sparsity, with widespread applications in machine learning and signal processing. However, solving such problems is known to be NP-hard. Recently, the L0 Bregman…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-03-20 Mhamed Essafri , Luca Calatroni , Emmanuel Soubies

Black-box Large Language Models (LLMs) provide practical and accessible alternatives to other machine learning methods, as they require minimal labeled data and machine learning expertise to develop solutions for various decision making…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-22 Ege Beyazit , KL Navaneet , Prashant Mathur , Roi Blanco , Vidit Bansal , Karim Bouyarmane

In real-life challenges, unforeseen and unknown occurrences commonly influence the data values, which may affect the performance of the problems. The performance of decision-making units (DMUs) is determined using the slack-based measure…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-10-22 Alka Arya , Shubham Singh

This paper deals with the black-box optimization problem. In this setup, we do not have access to the gradient of the objective function, therefore, we need to estimate it somehow. We propose a new type of approximation JAGUAR, that…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-12-03 Andrey Veprikov , Aleksandr Bogdanov , Vladislav Minashkin , Aleksandr Beznosikov

Many recent studies on first-order methods (FOMs) focus on \emph{composite non-convex non-smooth} optimization with linear and/or nonlinear function constraints. Upper (or worst-case) complexity bounds have been established for these…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-07-18 Wei Liu , Qihang Lin , Yangyang Xu

We consider black-box optimization in which only an extremely limited number of function evaluations, on the order of around 100, are affordable and the function evaluations must be performed in even fewer batches of a limited number of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-19 Carlos Ansotegui , Meinolf Sellmann , Tapan Shah , Kevin Tierney

This paper addresses black-box smooth optimization problems, where the objective and constraint functions are not explicitly known but can be queried. The main goal of this work is to generate a sequence of feasible points converging…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-04-25 Baiwei Guo , Yuning Jiang , Giancarlo Ferrari-Trecate , Maryam Kamgarpour

Optimization of convex functions under stochastic zeroth-order feedback has been a major and challenging question in online learning. In this work, we consider the problem of optimizing second-order smooth and strongly convex functions…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-07-01 Qian Yu , Yining Wang , Baihe Huang , Qi Lei , Jason D. Lee

This work considers stochastic optimization problems in which the objective function values can only be computed by a blackbox corrupted by some random noise following an unknown distribution. The proposed method is based on sequential…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-08-15 Charles Audet , Jean Bigeon , Romain Couderc , Michael Kokkolaras

We consider the oracle complexity of constrained convex optimization given access to a Linear Minimization Oracle (LMO) for the constraint set and a gradient oracle for the $L$-smooth, strongly convex objective. This model includes…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-27 Benjamin Grimmer , Ning Liu