Related papers: MirrorCBO: A consensus-based optimization method i…
Mirror descent (MD), a well-known first-order method in constrained convex optimization, has recently been shown as an important tool to analyze trust-region algorithms in reinforcement learning (RL). However, there remains a considerable…
Mirror descent is a well established tool for solving convex optimization problems with convex constraints. This article introduces continuous-time mirror descent dynamics for approximating optimal Markov controls for stochastic control…
Consensus based optimization is a derivative-free particles-based method for the solution of global optimization problems. Several versions of the method have been proposed in the literature, and different convergence results have been…
In this paper, we propose and analyze algorithms for zeroth-order optimization of non-convex composite objectives, focusing on reducing the complexity dependence on dimensionality. This is achieved by exploiting the low dimensional…
We introduce a novel first-order stochastic swarm intelligence (SI) model in the spirit of consensus formation models, namely a consensus-based optimization (CBO) algorithm, which may be used for the global optimization of a function in…
Modern policy optimization methods roughly follow the policy mirror descent (PMD) algorithmic template, for which there are by now numerous theoretical convergence results. However, most of these either target tabular environments, or can…
This paper is concerned with convergence analysis for the mirror descent (MD) method, a well-known algorithm in convex optimization. An analysis framework via integral quadratic constraints (IQCs) is constructed to analyze the convergence…
In this paper, we analyze the mirror descent algorithm for non-smooth optimization problems in which the objective function is relatively strongly convex, without relying on the standard Lipschitz continuity assumption commonly used in the…
Objective functions in large-scale machine-learning and artificial intelligence applications often live in high dimensions with strong non-convexity and massive local minima. First-order methods, such as the stochastic gradient method and…
In this paper, we examine the convergence of mirror descent in a class of stochastic optimization problems that are not necessarily convex (or even quasi-convex), and which we call variationally coherent. Since the standard technique of…
The minimax excess risk optimization (MERO) problem is a new variation of the traditional distributionally robust optimization (DRO) problem, which achieves uniformly low regret across all test distributions under suitable conditions. In…
This paper introduces a general framework for iterative optimization algorithms and establishes under general assumptions that their convergence is asymptotically geometric. We also prove that under appropriate assumptions, the rate of…
Modern policy optimization methods in reinforcement learning, such as TRPO and PPO, owe their success to the use of parameterized policies. However, while theoretical guarantees have been established for this class of algorithms, especially…
We present stochastic consensus and convergence of the discrete consensus-based optimization (CBO) algorithm with random batch interactions and heterogeneous external noises. Despite the wide applications and successful performance in many…
In this paper, we propose consensus-based optimization for saddle point problems (CBO-SP), a novel multi-particle metaheuristic derivative-free optimization method capable of provably finding global Nash equilibria. Following the idea of…
Distributed optimization often requires finding the minimum of a global objective function written as a sum of local functions. A group of agents work collectively to minimize the global function. We study a continuous-time decentralized…
This paper explores a new framework for reinforcement learning based on online convex optimization, in particular mirror descent and related algorithms. Mirror descent can be viewed as an enhanced gradient method, particularly suited to…
We consider the problem of minimizing the sum of an average function of a large number of smooth convex components and a general, possibly non-differentiable, convex function. Although many methods have been proposed to solve this problem…
In this paper, we present a new stochastic algorithm, namely the stochastic block mirror descent (SBMD) method for solving large-scale nonsmooth and stochastic optimization problems. The basic idea of this algorithm is to incorporate the…
Mirror descent (MD) is a powerful first-order optimization technique that subsumes several optimization algorithms including gradient descent (GD). In this work, we develop a semi-definite programming (SDP) framework to analyze the…