Related papers: Generalized gradient flows in Hadamard manifolds a…
Our work is motivated by a desire to study the theoretical underpinning for the convergence of stochastic gradient type algorithms widely used for non-convex learning tasks such as training of neural networks. The key insight, already…
This paper studies minimax optimization problems defined over infinite-dimensional function classes of overparameterized two-layer neural networks. In particular, we consider the minimax optimization problem stemming from estimating linear…
The accelerated method in solving optimization problems has always been an absorbing topic. Based on the fixed-time (FxT) stability of nonlinear dynamical systems, we provide a unified approach for designing FxT gradient flows (FxTGFs).…
We introduce a new convex optimization problem, termed quadratic decomposable submodular function minimization (QDSFM), which allows to model a number of learning tasks on graphs and hypergraphs. The problem exhibits close ties to…
We analyze the convergence of a nonlocal gradient descent method for minimizing a class of high-dimensional non-convex functions, where a directional Gaussian smoothing (DGS) is proposed to define the nonlocal gradient (also referred to as…
In this work, we study optimization problems of the form $\min_x \max_y f(x, y)$, where $f(x, y)$ is defined on a product Riemannian manifold $\mathcal{M} \times \mathcal{N}$ and is $\mu_x$-strongly geodesically convex (g-convex) in $x$ and…
We propose a globally-accelerated, first-order method for the optimization of smooth and (strongly or not) geodesically-convex functions in a wide class of Hadamard manifolds. We achieve the same convergence rates as Nesterov's accelerated…
In this work, we investigate the use of data-driven equation discovery for dynamical systems to model and forecast continuous-time dynamics of unconstrained optimization problems. To avoid expensive evaluations of the objective function and…
Geodesic convexity (g-convexity) is a natural generalization of convexity to Riemannian manifolds. However, g-convexity lacks many desirable properties satisfied by Euclidean convexity. For instance, the natural notions of half-spaces and…
We study the global convergence of generative adversarial imitation learning for linear quadratic regulators, which is posed as minimax optimization. To address the challenges arising from non-convex-concave geometry, we analyze the…
The density functional theory (DFT) in electronic structure calculations can be formulated as either a nonlinear eigenvalue or direct minimization problem. The most widely used approach for solving the former is the so-called…
A popular approach to minimize a finite-sum of convex functions is stochastic gradient descent (SGD) and its variants. Fundamental research questions associated with SGD include: (i) To find a lower bound on the number of times that the…
In this paper, we present a generic framework to extend existing uniformly optimal convex programming algorithms to solve more general nonlinear, possibly nonconvex, optimization problems. The basic idea is to incorporate a local search…
The DC optimal power flow (DCOPF) problem is a fundamental problem in power systems operations and planning. With high penetration of uncertain renewable resources in power systems, DCOPF needs to be solved repeatedly for a large amount of…
This paper proposes novel gradient-flow schemes that yield convergence to the optimal point of a convex optimization problem within a \textit{fixed} time from any given initial condition for unconstrained optimization, constrained…
We prove that the finite-difference based derivative-free descent (FD-DFD) methods have a capability to find the global minima for a class of multiple minima problems. Our main result shows that, for a class of multiple minima objectives…
The paper studies a distributed gradient descent (DGD) process and considers the problem of showing that in nonconvex optimization problems, DGD typically converges to local minima rather than saddle points. The paper considers…
Assuming power travels instantaneously, can be steered by us, and is lost quadratically in each power line, the dynamic optimal power flow problem simplifies to a min-cost dynamic generalized flow with quadratic losses (MCDGFWQL) problem.…
The generalization mystery of overparametrized deep nets has motivated efforts to understand how gradient descent (GD) converges to low-loss solutions that generalize well. Real-life neural networks are initialized from small random values…
Minimizing a convex, quadratic objective of the form $f_{\mathbf{A},\mathbf{b}}(x) := \frac{1}{2}x^\top \mathbf{A} x - \langle \mathbf{b}, x \rangle$ for $\mathbf{A} \succ 0 $ is a fundamental problem in machine learning and optimization.…