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This paper studies second-order methods for nonconvex-strongly-convex bilevel optimization. We propose a novel fully second-order bilevel approximation method (FSBA) that achieves an iteration complexity of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-08 Sheng Yang , Chengchang Liu , Lesi Chen , John C. S. Lui

Existing methods for nonconvex bilevel optimization (NBO) require prior knowledge of first- and second-order problem-specific parameters (e.g., Lipschitz constants and the Polyak-{\L}ojasiewicz (P{\L}) parameters) to set step sizes, a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-01-01 Xu Shi , Yinglin Du , Rufeng Xiao , Rujun Jiang

In this paper, we study a class of bilevel optimization problems, also known as simple bilevel optimization, where we minimize a smooth objective function over the optimal solution set of another convex constrained optimization problem.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-04-25 Ruichen Jiang , Nazanin Abolfazli , Aryan Mokhtari , Erfan Yazdandoost Hamedani

We present a method for solving general nonconvex-strongly-convex bilevel optimization problems. Our method -- the \emph{Restarted Accelerated HyperGradient Descent} (\texttt{RAHGD}) method -- finds an $\epsilon$-first-order stationary…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-07-04 Haikuo Yang , Luo Luo , Chris Junchi Li , Michael I. Jordan

In this paper, we study smooth stochastic multi-level composition optimization problems, where the objective function is a nested composition of $T$ functions. We assume access to noisy evaluations of the functions and their gradients,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-02-15 Krishnakumar Balasubramanian , Saeed Ghadimi , Anthony Nguyen

Heavy-tailed noise is pervasive in modern machine learning applications, arising from data heterogeneity, outliers, and non-stationary stochastic environments. While second-order methods can significantly accelerate convergence in…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-14 Abdurakhmon Sadiev , Peter Richtárik , Ilyas Fatkhullin

Adam has become one of the most popular optimizers for training modern deep neural networks, such as transformers. However, its applicability is largely restricted to single-level optimization problems. In this paper, we aim to extend…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-07 Xiaochuan Gong , Jie Hao , Mingrui Liu

Bilevel optimization is a popular two-level hierarchical optimization, which has been widely applied to many machine learning tasks such as hyperparameter learning, meta learning and continual learning. Although many bilevel optimization…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-11-21 Feihu Huang

Bilevel optimization is a hierarchical framework where an upper-level optimization problem is constrained by a lower-level problem, commonly used in machine learning applications such as hyperparameter optimization. Existing bilevel…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-03 Yuman Wu , Xiaochuan Gong , Jie Hao , Mingrui Liu

We propose efficient methods for solving stochastic simple bilevel optimization problems with convex inner levels, where the goal is to minimize an outer stochastic objective function subject to the solution set of an inner stochastic…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-11-25 Khanh-Hung Giang-Tran , Soroosh Shafiee , Nam Ho-Nguyen

This paper considers stochastic first-order algorithms for convex-concave minimax problems of the form $\min_{\bf x}\max_{\bf y}f(\bf x, \bf y)$, where $f$ can be presented by the average of $n$ individual components which are $L$-average…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-02-01 Luo Luo , Guangzeng Xie , Tong Zhang , Zhihua Zhang

Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) is a cornerstone of large-scale optimization, yet its theoretical behavior under heavy-tailed noise -- common in modern machine learning and reinforcement learning -- remains poorly understood. In this…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-08-08 Ilyas Fatkhullin , Florian Hübler , Guanghui Lan

While stochastic bilevel optimization methods have been extensively studied for addressing large-scale nested optimization problems in machine learning, it remains an open question whether the optimal complexity bounds for solving bilevel…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-24 Tianshu Chu , Dachuan Xu , Wei Yao , Jin Zhang

Stochastic bilevel optimization tackles challenges involving nested optimization structures. Its fast-growing scale nowadays necessitates efficient distributed algorithms. In conventional distributed bilevel methods, each worker must…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-05-30 Yutong He , Jie Hu , Xinmeng Huang , Songtao Lu , Bin Wang , Kun Yuan

We study a class of bilevel optimization problems in which both the upper- and lower-level problems have minimax structures. This setting captures a broad range of emerging applications. Despite the extensive literature on bilevel…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-11 Yiyang Shen , Yutian He , Weiran Wang , Qihang Lin

In this paper we propose a sequential minimax optimization (SMO) method for solving a class of constrained bilevel optimization problems in which the lower-level part is a possibly nonsmooth convex optimization problem, while the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-11-11 Zhaosong Lu , Sanyou Mei

This work provides the first finite-time convergence guarantees for linearly constrained stochastic bilevel optimization using only first-order methods, requiring solely gradient information without any Hessian computations or second-order…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-11-18 Cac Phan , Kai Wang

In this paper, we provide novel optimal (or near optimal) convergence rates for a clipped version of the stochastic subgradient method. We consider nonsmooth convex problems over possibly unbounded domains, under heavy-tailed noise that…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-04-21 Daniela Angela Parletta , Andrea Paudice , Saverio Salzo

Two-level stochastic optimization formulations have become instrumental in a number of machine learning contexts such as continual learning, neural architecture search, adversarial learning, and hyperparameter tuning. Practical stochastic…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-11-08 Tommaso Giovannelli , Griffin Dean Kent , Luis Nunes Vicente

We study the performance of stochastic first-order methods for finding saddle points of convex-concave functions. A notorious challenge faced by such methods is that the gradients can grow arbitrarily large during optimization, which may…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-10 Gergely Neu , Nneka Okolo