Related papers: A Monte Carlo Approach for Nonsmooth Convex Optimi…
Operator splitting algorithms are a cornerstone of modern first-order optimization, decomposing complex problems into simpler subproblems solved via proximal operators. However, most functions lack closed-form proximal operators, which has…
First-order optimization algorithms are widely used today. Two standard building blocks in these algorithms are proximal operators (proximals) and gradients. Although gradients can be computed for a wide array of functions, explicit…
The breakthrough ideas in the modern proximal splitting methodologies allow us to express the set of all minimizers of a superposition of multiple nonsmooth convex functions as the fixed point set of computable nonexpansive operators. In…
Convex nonsmooth optimization problems, whose solutions live in very high dimensional spaces, have become ubiquitous. To solve them, the class of first-order algorithms known as proximal splitting algorithms is particularly adequate: they…
In contrast with many other convex optimization classes, state-of-the-art semidefinite programming solvers are yet unable to efficiently solve large scale instances. This work aims to reduce this scalability gap by proposing a novel…
Inverse problems are important mathematical problems that seek to recover model parameters from noisy data. Since inverse problems are often ill-posed, they require regularization or incorporation of prior information about the underlying…
In this paper we analyze a class of nonconvex optimization problem from the viewpoint of abstract convexity. Using the respective generalizations of the subgradient we propose an abstract notion proximal operator and derive a number of…
Proximal splitting algorithms are well suited to solving large-scale nonsmooth optimization problems, in particular those arising in machine learning. We propose a new primal-dual algorithm, in which the dual update is randomized;…
Structured convex optimization problems typically involve a mix of smooth and nonsmooth functions. The common practice is to activate the smooth functions via their gradient and the nonsmooth ones via their proximity operator. We show that,…
The proximity operator of a convex function is a natural extension of the notion of a projection operator onto a convex set. This tool, which plays a central role in the analysis and the numerical solution of convex optimization problems,…
We consider convex optimization with non-smooth objective function and log-concave sampling with non-smooth potential (negative log density). In particular, we study two specific settings where the convex objective/potential function is…
The forward-backward operator splitting algorithm is one of the most important methods for solving the optimization problem of the sum of two convex functions, where one is differentiable with a Lipschitz continuous gradient and the other…
We propose a new first-order optimisation algorithm to solve high-dimensional non-smooth composite minimisation problems. Typical examples of such problems have an objective that decomposes into a non-smooth empirical risk part and a…
We study the proximity operator of the nonconvex, scale-invariant ratio $h(\vx)=\|\vx\|_{1}/\|\vx\|_{2}$ and show it can be computed exactly in any dimension. By expressing $\vx=r\vu$ and exploiting sign and permutation invariance, we…
We consider the problem of minimizing the sum of a smooth function $h$ with a bounded Hessian, and a nonsmooth function. We assume that the latter function is a composition of a proper closed function $P$ and a surjective linear map $\cal…
Finding multiple solutions of non-convex optimization problems is a ubiquitous yet challenging task. Most past algorithms either apply single-solution optimization methods from multiple random initial guesses or search in the vicinity of…
In this paper, we consider a class of nonconvex and nonsmooth fractional programming problems, that involve the sum of a convex, possibly nonsmooth function composed with a linear operator and a differentiable, possibly nonconvex function…
Proximal operators are now ubiquitous in non-smooth optimization. Since their introduction in the seminal work of Moreau, many papers have shown their effectiveness on a wide variety of problems, culminating in their use to construct…
We consider minimizing a function consisting of a quadratic term and a proximable term which is possibly nonconvex and nonsmooth. This problem is also known as scaled proximal operator. Despite its simple form, existing methods suffer from…
We introduce and investigate a new generalized convexity notion for functions called prox-convexity. The proximity operator of such a function is single-valued and firmly nonexpansive. We provide examples of (strongly) quasiconvex, weakly…