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This paper explores the performance of a random Gaussian smoothing zeroth-order (ZO) scheme for minimising quasar-convex (QC) and strongly quasar-convex (SQC) functions in both unconstrained and constrained settings. For the unconstrained…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-03 Amir Ali Farzin , Yuen-Man Pun , Philipp Braun , Iman Shames

The use of min-max optimization in adversarial training of deep neural network classifiers and training of generative adversarial networks has motivated the study of nonconvex-nonconcave optimization objectives, which frequently arise in…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-03-02 Jelena Diakonikolas , Constantinos Daskalakis , Michael I. Jordan

In this paper, we study zeroth-order algorithms for minimax optimization problems that are nonconvex in one variable and strongly-concave in the other variable. Such minimax optimization problems have attracted significant attention lately…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-04-06 Zhongruo Wang , Krishnakumar Balasubramanian , Shiqian Ma , Meisam Razaviyayn

Non-analytical objectives and constraints often arise in control systems, particularly in problems with complex dynamics, which are challenging yet lack efficient solution methods. In this work, we consider general constrained optimization…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-07-16 Yuke Zhou , Ruiyang Jin , Siyang Gao , Jianxiao Wang , Jie Song

Min-max optimization is emerging as a key framework for analyzing problems of robustness to strategically and adversarially generated data. We propose a random reshuffling-based gradient free Optimistic Gradient Descent-Ascent algorithm for…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-02-22 Chinmay Maheshwari , Chih-Yuan Chiu , Eric Mazumdar , S. Shankar Sastry , Lillian J. Ratliff

We consider max-min and min-max problems with objective functions that are possibly non-smooth, submodular with respect to the minimiser and concave with respect to the maximiser. We investigate the performance of a zeroth-order method…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-29 Amir Ali Farzin , Yuen-Man Pun , Philipp Braun , Tyler Summers , Iman Shames

In this paper, we study zeroth-order algorithms for nonconvex-concave minimax problems, which have attracted widely attention in machine learning, signal processing and many other fields in recent years. We propose a zeroth-order…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-01-26 Zi Xu , Ziqi Wang , Jingjing Shen , Yuhong Dai

In this paper, we consider a class of structured nonsmooth fractional minimization, where the first part of the objective is the ratio of a nonnegative nonsmooth nonconvex function to a nonnegative nonsmooth convex function, while the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-12-25 Junpeng Zhou , Na Zhang , Qia Li

Min-max problems have broad applications in machine learning, including learning with non-decomposable loss and learning with robustness to data distribution. Convex-concave min-max problem is an active topic of research with efficient…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-05-12 Hassan Rafique , Mingrui Liu , Qihang Lin , Tianbao Yang

This paper addresses stochastic optimization of Lipschitz-continuous, nonsmooth and nonconvex objectives over compact convex sets, where only noisy function evaluations are available. While gradient-free methods have been developed for…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-08-26 Anik Kumar Paul , Shalabh Bhatnagar

Zeroth-order (ZO) optimization is one key technique for machine learning problems where gradient calculation is expensive or impossible. Several variance reduced ZO proximal algorithms have been proposed to speed up ZO optimization for…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-10-04 Bin Gu , Xiyuan Wei , Hualin Zhang , Yi Chang , Heng Huang

In this paper we analyze a zeroth-order proximal stochastic gradient method suitable for the minimization of weakly convex stochastic optimization problems. We consider nonsmooth and nonlinear stochastic composite problems, for which…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-04-21 Spyridon Pougkakiotis , Dionysios S. Kalogerias

Zeroth-order (ZO) method has been shown to be a powerful method for solving the optimization problem where explicit expression of the gradients is difficult or infeasible to obtain. Recently, due to the practical value of the constrained…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-09-04 Wanli Shi , Hongchang Gao , Bin Gu

In this paper, we study the problem of constrained robust (min-max) optimization ina black-box setting, where the desired optimizer cannot access the gradients of the objective function but may query its values. We present a principled…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-18 Sijia Liu , Songtao Lu , Xiangyi Chen , Yao Feng , Kaidi Xu , Abdullah Al-Dujaili , Minyi Hong , Una-May O'Reilly

This paper investigates the stochastic distributed nonconvex optimization problem of minimizing a global cost function formed by the summation of $n$ local cost functions. We solve such a problem by involving zeroth-order (ZO) information…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-10-15 Shengjun Zhang , Yunlong Dong , Dong Xie , Lisha Yao , Colleen P. Bailey , Shengli Fu

As application demands for zeroth-order (gradient-free) optimization accelerate, the need for variance reduced and faster converging approaches is also intensifying. This paper addresses these challenges by presenting: a) a comprehensive…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-06-08 Sijia Liu , Bhavya Kailkhura , Pin-Yu Chen , Paishun Ting , Shiyu Chang , Lisa Amini

Zeroth-order optimization (ZO) has been a powerful framework for solving black-box problems, which estimates gradients using zeroth-order data to update variables iteratively. The practical applicability of ZO critically depends on the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-03 Ruiyang Jin , Yuke Zhou , Yujie Tang , Jie Song , Siyang Gao

We study alternating first-order algorithms with no inner loops for solving nonconvex-strongly-concave min-max problems. We show the convergence of the alternating gradient descent--ascent algorithm method by proposing a substantially…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-31 Guido Tapia-Riera , Camille Castera , Nicolas Papadakis

We propose a zero-order optimization method for sequential min-max problems based on two populations of interacting particles. The systems are coupled so that one population aims to solve the inner maximization problem, while the other aims…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-07-25 Giacomo Borghi , Hui Huang , Jinniao Qiu

Many important machine learning applications amount to solving minimax optimization problems, and in many cases there is no access to the gradient information, but only the function values. In this paper, we focus on such a gradient-free…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-23 Tengyu Xu , Zhe Wang , Yingbin Liang , H. Vincent Poor
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