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We prove lower bounds on the complexity of finding $\epsilon$-stationary points (points $x$ such that $\|\nabla f(x)\| \le \epsilon$) of smooth, high-dimensional, and potentially non-convex functions $f$. We consider oracle-based complexity…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-08-16 Yair Carmon , John C. Duchi , Oliver Hinder , Aaron Sidford

We provide a first-order oracle complexity lower bound for finding stationary points of min-max optimization problems where the objective function is smooth, nonconvex in the minimization variable, and strongly concave in the maximization…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-04-20 Haochuan Li , Yi Tian , Jingzhao Zhang , Ali Jadbabaie

We propose a study of structured non-convex non-concave min-max problems which goes beyond standard first-order approaches. Inspired by the tight understanding established in recent works [Adil et al., 2022, Lin and Jordan, 2022b], we…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-04-18 Abhijeet Vyas , Brian Bullins

A new, fast second-order method is proposed that achieves the optimal $\mathcal{O}\left(|\log(\epsilon)|\epsilon^{-3/2}\right)$ complexity to obtain first-order $\epsilon$-stationary points. Crucially, this is deduced without assuming the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-18 Serge Gratton , Sadok Jerad , Philippe L. Toint

We consider the problem of finding an approximate second-order stationary point of a constrained non-convex optimization problem. We first show that, unlike the gradient descent method for unconstrained optimization, the vanilla projected…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-06-04 Maher Nouiehed , Jason D. Lee , Meisam Razaviyayn

We present a method for solving general nonconvex-strongly-convex bilevel optimization problems. Our method -- the \emph{Restarted Accelerated HyperGradient Descent} (\texttt{RAHGD}) method -- finds an $\epsilon$-first-order stationary…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-07-04 Haikuo Yang , Luo Luo , Chris Junchi Li , Michael I. Jordan

In this paper we present a cubic regularized Newton's method to minimize a smooth function over a Riemannian manifold. The proposed algorithm is shown to reach a second-order $\epsilon$-stationary point within…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-05-16 Junyu Zhang , Shuzhong Zhang

We study the minimax problem $\min_{x\in M} \max_y f_r(x,y):=f(x,y)-h(y)$, where $M$ is a compact submanifold, $f$ is continuously differentiable in $(x, y)$, $h$ is a closed, weakly-convex (possibly non-smooth) function and we assume that…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-12-09 Necdet Serhat Aybat , Jiang Hu , Zhanwang Deng

In recent years, nonconvex minimax problems have attracted significant attention due to their broad applications in machine learning, including generative adversarial networks, robust optimization and adversarial training. Most existing…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-06 Yan Gao , Yongchao Liu

In this paper, we study the iteration complexity of cubic regularization of Newton method for solving composite minimization problems with uniformly convex objective. We introduce the notion of second-order condition number of a certain…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-05-21 Nikita Doikov , Yurii Nesterov

Recent applications that arise in machine learning have surged significant interest in solving min-max saddle point games. This problem has been extensively studied in the convex-concave regime for which a global equilibrium solution can be…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-11-01 Maher Nouiehed , Maziar Sanjabi , Tianjian Huang , Jason D. Lee , Meisam Razaviyayn

We study finite-sum non-convex optimization $\min_{x\in\mathbb{R}^d} F(x) \;=\; \frac{1}{n}\sum_{i=1}^n f_i(x)$ and analyze a variance-reduced cubic Newton method based on EMA-smoothed SARAH estimators for both gradient and Hessian…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-28 Dmitry Pasechnyuk-Vilensky , Dmitry Kamzolov , Martin Takáč

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

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-15 Haoyuan Cai , Sulaiman A. Alghunaim , Ali H. Sayed

This paper proposes a stochastic variant of a classic algorithm---the cubic-regularized Newton method [Nesterov and Polyak 2006]. The proposed algorithm efficiently escapes saddle points and finds approximate local minima for general…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-12-07 Nilesh Tripuraneni , Mitchell Stern , Chi Jin , Jeffrey Regier , Michael I. Jordan

This paper presents the first optimal-rate $p$-th order methods with $p\geq 1$ for finding first and second-order stationary points of non-convex smooth objective functions over Riemannian manifolds. In contrast to the geodesically convex…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-23 David Huckleberry Gutman , George Lobo

In this paper, we focus on the nonconvex-strongly-concave minimax optimization problem (MCC), where the inner maximization subproblem contains constraints that couple the primal variable of the outer minimization problem. We prove that by…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-09-02 Xiaoyin Hu , Kim-Chuan Toh , Shiwei Wang , Nachuan Xiao

This paper studies minimax optimization problems $\min_x \max_y f(x,y)$, where $f(x,y)$ is $m_x$-strongly convex with respect to $x$, $m_y$-strongly concave with respect to $y$ and $(L_x,L_{xy},L_y)$-smooth. Zhang et al. provided the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-20 Yuanhao Wang , Jian Li

This paper concerns the composite problem of minimizing the sum of a twice continuously differentiable function $f$ and a nonsmooth convex function. For this class of nonconvex and nonsmooth problems, by leveraging a practical inexactness…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-05-27 Ruyu Liu , Shaohua Pan , Yitian Qian

Gradient descent-ascent (GDA) is a widely used algorithm for minimax optimization. However, GDA has been proved to converge to stationary points for nonconvex minimax optimization, which are suboptimal compared with local minimax points. In…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-02-21 Ziyi Chen , Zhengyang Hu , Qunwei Li , Zhe Wang , Yi Zhou