Related papers: Second-order methods for provably escaping strict …
This paper studies first-order algorithms for solving fully composite optimization problems over convex and compact sets. We leverage the structure of the objective by handling its differentiable and non-differentiable components…
In this work, we introduce a novel stochastic second-order method, within the framework of a non-monotone trust-region approach, for solving the unconstrained, nonlinear, and non-convex optimization problems arising in the training of deep…
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…
We analyze stochastic gradient algorithms for optimizing nonconvex problems. In particular, our goal is to find local minima (second-order stationary points) instead of just finding first-order stationary points which may be some bad…
Non-convex optimization is a critical tool in advancing machine learning, especially for complex models like deep neural networks and support vector machines. Despite challenges such as multiple local minima and saddle points, non-convex…
In this paper, we propose two novel non-stationary first-order primal-dual algorithms to solve nonsmooth composite convex optimization problems. Unlike existing primal-dual schemes where the parameters are often fixed, our methods use…
Cohesive fracture is among the few techniques able to model complex fracture nucleation and propagation with a sharp (nonsmeared) representation of the crack. Implicit time-stepping schemes are often favored in mechanics due to their…
Recently, the problem of local minima in very high dimensional non-convex optimization has been challenged and the problem of saddle points has been introduced. This paper introduces a dynamic type of normalization that forces the system to…
We study the smooth minimax optimization problem $\min_{\bf x}\max_{\bf y} f({\bf x},{\bf y})$, where $f$ is $\ell$-smooth, strongly-concave in ${\bf y}$ but possibly nonconvex in ${\bf x}$. Most of existing works focus on finding the…
We design an algorithm which finds an $\epsilon$-approximate stationary point (with $\|\nabla F(x)\|\le \epsilon$) using $O(\epsilon^{-3})$ stochastic gradient and Hessian-vector products, matching guarantees that were previously available…
We study first-order methods (FOMs) for solving \emph{composite nonconvex nonsmooth} optimization with linear constraints. Recently, the lower complexity bounds of FOMs on finding an ($\varepsilon,\varepsilon$)-KKT point of the considered…
Optimization problems involving the minimization of a finite sum of smooth, possibly non-convex functions arise in numerous applications. To achieve a consensus solution over a network, distributed optimization algorithms, such as…
Risk minimization for nonsmooth nonconvex problems naturally leads to first-order sampling or, by an abuse of terminology, to stochastic subgradient descent. We establish the convergence of this method in the path-differentiable case and…
We introduce a new sequential subspace optimization method for large-scale saddle-point problems. It solves iteratively a sequence of auxiliary saddle-point problems in low-dimensional subspaces, spanned by directions derived from…
Nonconvex optimization algorithms with random initialization have attracted increasing attention recently. It has been showed that many first-order methods always avoid saddle points with random starting points. In this paper, we answer a…
In this paper, we study distributed optimization with smooth non-convex local objectives. We propose a novel variant of the well-known EXact firsT-ordeR Algorithm (EXTRA), called Two-timescale EXTRA, by introducing two distinct step-sizes.…
We propose an iterative algorithm for low-rank matrix completion that can be interpreted as both an iteratively reweighted least squares (IRLS) algorithm and a saddle-escaping smoothing Newton method applied to a non-convex rank surrogate…
This paper introduces a novel Homogeneous Second-order Descent Ascent (HSDA) algorithm for nonconvex-strongly concave minimax optimization problems. At each iteration, HSDA uniquely computes a search direction by solving a homogenized…
In centralized settings, it is well known that stochastic gradient descent (SGD) avoids saddle points and converges to local minima in nonconvex problems. However, similar guarantees are lacking for distributed first-order algorithms. The…
The proliferation of saddle points, rather than poor local minima, is increasingly understood to be a primary obstacle in large-scale non-convex optimization for machine learning. Variable elimination algorithms, like Variable Projection…