English

Solving Minimax Problems with Bilinear Objectives with ADMM

Optimization and Control 2026-04-23 v1 Methodology

Abstract

We consider minimax (saddle-point) problems of the form max_{c \in C} min_{\beta \in S} g(c; \beta), where C and S are compact convex sets, and g is concave-convex. Applying the Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM) requires evaluating a proximal operator that is, in general, as hard as the original problem. We show that when the outcome function g is bilinear, i.e. g(c; \beta) = c^T A \beta, the proximal operator reduces to a generalized projection onto the confidence region S. This reduction is exact -- it involves no approximation or linearization. The resulting ADMM algorithm alternates between (i) a generalized projection onto S and (ii) a Euclidean projection onto C. We describe the derivation, state the algorithm, and discuss convergence.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.20832,
  title  = {Solving Minimax Problems with Bilinear Objectives with ADMM},
  author = {Bob Wilson},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.20832},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

9 pages, 1 figure (color)

R2 v1 2026-07-01T12:30:59.066Z