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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…
In this paper, we investigate the non-asymptotic stationary convergence behavior of Stochastic Mirror Descent (SMD) for nonconvex optimization. We focus on a general class of nonconvex nonsmooth stochastic optimization problems, in which…
We study distributed non-convex optimization on a time-varying multi-agent network. Each node has access to its own smooth local cost function, and the collective goal is to minimize the sum of these functions. We generalize the results…
We present an information-theoretic approach to lower bound the oracle complexity of nonsmooth black box convex optimization, unifying previous lower bounding techniques by identifying a combinatorial problem, namely string guessing, as a…
In this paper we address the convergence of stochastic approximation when the functions to be minimized are not convex and nonsmooth. We show that the "mean-limit" approach to the convergence which leads, for smooth problems, to the ODE…
Despite its important applications in Machine Learning, min-max optimization of nonconvex-nonconcave objectives remains elusive. Not only are there no known first-order methods converging even to approximate local min-max points, but the…
This paper addresses a class of nonsmooth and nonconvex optimization problems defined on complete Riemannian manifolds. The objective function has a composite structure, combining convex, differentiable, and lower semicontinuous terms,…
A regularization algorithm allowing random noise in derivatives and inexact function values is proposed for computing approximate local critical points of any order for smooth unconstrained optimization problems. For an objective function…
Zhang et al. introduced a novel modification of Goldstein's classical subgradient method, with an efficiency guarantee of $O(\varepsilon^{-4})$ for minimizing Lipschitz functions. Their work, however, makes use of a nonstandard subgradient…
We develop and analyze a set of new sequential simulation-optimization algorithms for large-scale multi-dimensional discrete optimization via simulation problems with a convexity structure. The "large-scale" notion refers to that the…
We investigate the stochastic optimization problem of minimizing population risk, where the loss defining the risk is assumed to be weakly convex. Compositions of Lipschitz convex functions with smooth maps are the primary examples of such…
To solve convex optimization problems with a noisy gradient input, we analyze the global behavior of subgradient-like flows under stochastic errors. The objective function is composite, being equal to the sum of two convex functions, one…
In this work, we develop first-order (Hessian-free) and zero-order (derivative-free) implementations of the Cubically regularized Newton method for solving general non-convex optimization problems. For that, we employ finite difference…
We analyze the complexity of single-loop quadratic penalty and augmented Lagrangian algorithms for solving nonconvex optimization problems with functional equality constraints. We consider three cases, in all of which the objective is…
This work introduces a new cubic regularization method for nonconvex unconstrained multiobjective optimization problems. At each iteration of the method, a model associated with the cubic regularization of each component of the objective…
We study minimization of a structured objective function, being the sum of a smooth function and a composition of a weakly convex function with a linear operator. Applications include image reconstruction problems with regularizers that…
We prove lower bounds for higher-order methods in smooth non-convex finite-sum optimization. Our contribution is threefold: We first show that a deterministic algorithm cannot profit from the finite-sum structure of the objective, and that…
Smooth finite-sum optimization has been widely studied in both convex and nonconvex settings. However, existing lower bounds for finite-sum optimization are mostly limited to the setting where each component function is (strongly) convex,…
We consider the problem of minimizing a continuous function given quantum access to a stochastic gradient oracle. We provide two new methods for the special case of minimizing a Lipschitz convex function. Each method obtains a dimension…
This chapter is devoted to the black-box subgradient algorithms with the minimal requirements for the storage of auxiliary results, which are necessary to execute these algorithms. It starts with the original result of N.Z. Shor which open…