Related papers: w-Invexity and Optimality Problem
Submodular continuous functions are a category of (generally) non-convex/non-concave functions with a wide spectrum of applications. We characterize these functions and demonstrate that they can be maximized efficiently with approximation…
Many problems of theoretical and practical interest involve finding a convex or concave function. For instance, optimization problems such as finding the projection on the convex functions in $H^k(\Omega)$, or some problems in economics. In…
This paper studies the strong quasiconvexity of norm and distance functions in finite-dimensional normed spaces. Although the Euclidean norm is known to be strongly quasiconvex on bounded convex sets, a complete characterization of this…
We study a specific convex maximization problem in the space of continuous functions defined on a semi-infinite interval. An unexplained connection to the discrete version of this problem is investigated.
Submodular Functions are a special class of set functions, which generalize several information-theoretic quantities such as entropy and mutual information [1]. Submodular functions have subgradients and subdifferentials [2] and admit…
We show weak lower semi-continuity of functionals assuming the new notion of a "convexly constrained" $\mathcal A$-quasiconvex integrand. We assume $\mathcal A$-quasiconvexity only for functions defined on a set $K$ which is convex.…
In this paper, we study some problems with continuously differentiable quasiconvex objective function. We prove that exactly one of the following two alternatives holds: (I) the gradient of the objective function is different from zero over…
The optimization problem concerning the determination of the minimizer for the sum of convex functions holds significant importance in the realm of distributed and decentralized optimization. In scenarios where full knowledge of the…
Exhausters are families of compact, convex sets which provide minmax or maxmin representations of positively homogeneous functions and they are efficient tools for the study of nonsmooth function. Upper and lower exhausters of positively…
We investigate a class of composite nonconvex functions, where the outer function is the sum of univariate extended-real-valued convex functions and the inner function is the limit of difference-of-convex functions. A notable feature of…
Upper semicontinuous (usc) functions arise in the analysis of maximization problems, distributionally robust optimization, and function identification, which includes many problems of nonparametric statistics. We establish that every usc…
Optimal uncertainty quantification (OUQ) is a framework for numerical extreme-case analysis of stochastic systems with imperfect knowledge of the underlying probability distribution. This paper presents sufficient conditions under which an…
Classes of set functions along with a choice of ground set are a bedrock to determine and develop corresponding variants of greedy algorithms to obtain efficient solutions for combinatorial optimization problems. The class of approximate…
Motivated by a long-standing conjecture of Polya and Szeg\"o about the Newtonian capacity of convex bodies, we discuss the role of concavity inequalities in shape optimization, and we provide several counterexamples to the…
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…
Many uncertainty sets encountered in control systems analysis and design can be expressed in terms of semialgebraic sets, that is as the intersection of sets described by means of polynomial inequalities. Important examples are for instance…
We consider several classes of highly important semidefinite optimization problems that involve both a convex objective function (smooth or nonsmooth) and additional linear or nonlinear smooth and convex constraints, which are ubiquitous in…
This paper provides an unique dual representation of set-valued lower semi-continuous quasiconvex and convex functions. The results are based on a duality result for increasing set valued functions.
We define a class of discrete quasi convex functions, called semi-strictly quasi L$^{\natural}$-convex functions, and show that the steepest descent algorithm for L$^{\natural}$-convex function minimization also works for this class of…
We provide new necessary and sufficient conditons for ensuring strong quasiconvexity in the nonsmooth case and, as a consequence, we provide a proof for the differentiable case. Furthermore, we improve the quadratic growth property for…