English
Related papers

Related papers: Optimality and Stability in Non-Convex Smooth Game…

200 papers

A variant of consensus based distributed gradient descent (\textbf{DGD}) is studied for finite sums of smooth but possibly non-convex functions. In particular, the local gradient term in the fixed step-size iteration of each agent is…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-27 Lei Qin , Michael Cantoni , Ye Pu

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 --…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-07-03 Kiran Koshy Thekumparampil , Prateek Jain , Praneeth Netrapalli , Sewoong Oh

In this work we aim to solve a convex-concave saddle point problem, where the convex-concave coupling function is smooth in one variable and nonsmooth in the other and not assumed to be linear in either. The problem is augmented by a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-08-10 Radu Ioan Bot , Ernö Robert Csetnek , Michael Sedlmayer

Zero-sum games arise in a wide variety of problems, including robust optimization and adversarial learning. However, algorithms deployed for finding a local Nash equilibrium in these games often converge to non-Nash stationary points. This…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-09-30 Kushagra Gupta , Xinjie Liu , Ross Allen , Ufuk Topcu , David Fridovich-Keil

Optimizing non-convex functions is of primary importance in the vast majority of machine learning algorithms. Even though many gradient descent based algorithms have been studied, successive convex approximation based algorithms have been…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-03-06 Amrit Singh Bedi , Ketan Rajawat , Vaneet Aggarwal

We consider the problem of global optimization of an unknown non-convex smooth function with zeroth-order feedback. In this setup, an algorithm is allowed to adaptively query the underlying function at different locations and receives noisy…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-03-26 Yining Wang , Sivaraman Balakrishnan , Aarti Singh

Many machine learning problems can be formulated as minimax problems such as Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), AUC maximization and robust estimation, to mention but a few. A substantial amount of studies are devoted to studying the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-07-14 Yunwen Lei , Zhenhuan Yang , Tianbao Yang , Yiming Ying

This paper investigates probabilistic robustness of nonconvex-nonconcave minimax problems via the scenario approach. Specifically, under convex strategy sets for all players, inspired by recent advances in scenario optimization, we first…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-05-14 Huan Peng , Guanpu Chen , Karl Henrik Johansson

Recently, a new local optimality concept for minimax problems, termed calm local minimax points, has been introduced. In this paper, we extend this concept to a general class of nonsmooth, nonconvex nonconcave minimax problems with coupled…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-07 Xiaoxiao Ma , Jane Ye

In this paper, we minimize the self-centered smoothed gap, a recently introduced optimality measure, in order to solve convex-concave saddle point problems. The self-centered smoothed gap can be computed as the sum of a convex, possibly…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-11-06 Olivier Fercoq

Randomly initialized first-order optimization algorithms are the method of choice for solving many high-dimensional nonconvex problems in machine learning, yet general theoretical guarantees cannot rule out convergence to critical points of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-09-28 Dar Gilboa , Sam Buchanan , John Wright

This paper considers nonsmooth convex optimization with either a subgradient or proximal operator oracle. In both settings, we identify algorithms that achieve the recently introduced game-theoretic optimality notion for algorithms known as…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-11-18 Benjamin Grimmer , Alex L. Wang

We revisit the smooth convex-concave bilinearly-coupled saddle-point problem of the form $\min_x\max_y f(x) + \langle y,\mathbf{B} x\rangle - g(y)$. In the highly specific case where each of the functions $f(x)$ and $g(y)$ is either affine…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-11-25 Dmitry Kovalev , Ekaterina Borodich

This paper considers constrained stochastic nonsmooth minimax optimization problem of the form…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-24 Jinyang Shi , Luo Luo

This study develops a fixed-time convergent saddle point dynamical system for solving min-max problems under a relaxation of standard convexity-concavity assumption. In particular, it is shown that by leveraging the dynamical systems…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-07-28 Kunal Garg , Mayank Baranwal

In this paper we develop a new framework that captures the common landscape underlying the common non-convex low-rank matrix problems including matrix sensing, matrix completion and robust PCA. In particular, we show for all above problems…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-04-04 Rong Ge , Chi Jin , Yi Zheng

Recent focus on robustness to adversarial attacks for deep neural networks produced a large variety of algorithms for training robust models. Most of the effective algorithms involve solving the min-max optimization problem for training…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-03 Yasaman Esfandiari , Aditya Balu , Keivan Ebrahimi , Umesh Vaidya , Nicola Elia , Soumik Sarkar

It is well-known that given a bounded, smooth nonconvex function, standard gradient-based methods can find $\epsilon$-stationary points (where the gradient norm is less than $\epsilon$) in $\mathcal{O}(1/\epsilon^2)$ iterations. However,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-04-19 Ohad Shamir

Most algorithms for solving optimization problems or finding saddle points of convex-concave functions are fixed-point algorithms. In this work we consider the generic problem of finding a fixed point of an average of operators, or an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-17 Grigory Malinovsky , Dmitry Kovalev , Elnur Gasanov , Laurent Condat , Peter Richtárik

Nonsmooth nonconvex-concave minimax problems have attracted significant attention due to their wide applications in many fields. In this paper, we consider a class of nonsmooth nonconvex-concave minimax problems on Riemannian manifolds.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-24 Xiyuan Xie , Qia Li