Searcharxiv⌕ Search

arXiv · 2609.27348

Relative Primal--Dual Gap Certificates for Operator-Composite Trust-Region Methods

Abstract

We study trust-region minimization of a smooth, possibly nonconvex functional plus a convex functional composed with a bounded linear operator. A relative primal--dual gap condition controls both the error in an approximate proximal-gradient step and its linear-model decrease. Together with a computable absolute stationarity test, it yields a finite Cauchy search, convergence of the proximal stationarity measure to zero, and an $O(\varepsilon^{-2})$ bound on outer trials. The outer analysis allows the linear operator to take values in a Banach space and does not require dual attainment. When the operator takes values in a Hilbert space and the regularizer is finite and Lipschitz, the dual proximal-gradient method produces finite gaps tending to zero, provided the required proximal maps and functional values can be evaluated. We prove $O(j^{-1})$ gap bounds for both recovered and averaged primal candidates and give a sharper bound on the primal error for exactly recovered points. A semilinear elliptic control problem with unsmoothed total-variation regularization and an $L^2$ control cost illustrates the method in the full $H^1$ metric. Across five meshes, outer and state Newton counts remain constant, while interior-point iteration counts vary mildly.

Explore related subjects

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Harbir Antil. 2026-09-23. Relative Primal--Dual Gap Certificates for Operator-Composite Trust-Region Methods. https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.27348

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

On the stability of proximal operators in Wasserstein spaces under different notions of convexity

The proximal operator is a fundamental tool in variational analysis and optimization. In the setting of a Hilbert space, given a proper, lower semicontinuous convex functional, its proximal operator is non-expansive, that is, 1-Lipschitz continuous. In the Wasserstein setting, the contraction properties of this operator have been investigated from different perspectives by Carlen and Craig and by Adve and Mészáros, among others, and are not completely understood. In this paper, we study the stability properties of proximal maps, with a particular focus on non-expansivity, under various notions of convexity of the functional that can be considered in the Wasserstein space.

math.OC↗

Symmetry-dependence in Rounding of a Convex Body

The symmetry measure of a convex body $S\subset\mathbb{R}^n$ is given by: $\mathrm{sym}(S):=\max\{α\ge0:\text{ there exists }x\in S\text{ such that }-α(S-x)\subseteq S-x\}$, where such an $x$ is called a Minkowski center. We prove that every convex body $S$ admits a $\sqrt{\frac{n}{\mathrm{sym}(S)}}$-rounding of $S$, namely, there exists an origin-centered ellipsoid $E$ and a center $c$ such that $E\subseteq S-c\subseteq\sqrt{\frac{n}{\mathrm{sym}(S)}}\,E$. This result was conjectured in 2005 by Belloni and Freund. As special cases, this recovers an $n$-rounding of $S$ (since $\mathrm{sym}(S)\ge\frac{1}{n}$), and a $\sqrt{n}$-rounding when $\mathrm{sym}(S)=1$. In the case when $S$ is a polytope given as the convex hull of points, the desired rounding is produced by a regularized minimum-volume covering ellipsoid problem where the regularization is with respect to the Minkowski center. Similarly, when $S$ is a polytope given as the intersection of halfspaces, such a rounding is produced by a regularized maximum-volume inscribed ellipsoid problem. In both of these cases, the rounding can be computed by first solving a linear optimization problem (to compute $\mathrm{sym}(S)$ and a Minkowski center), and then solving a convex optimization problem with a logarithmic determinant objective, second-order cone constraints, and one semidefinite cone constraint. We also show that the factor $\sqrt{\frac{n}{\mathrm{sym}(S)}}$ is nearly tight in its dependence on dimension and symmetry. When $\frac{n+1}{1+\mathrm{sym}(S)}$ is an integer, we show by explicit construction that the factor $\sqrt{\frac{n}{\mathrm{sym}(S)}}$ is tight. In the more general case, for every dimension $n$ and every admissible symmetry value, we construct a polytope $S$ for which every rounding factor is at least $\sqrt{\frac{2}{3}}\sqrt{\frac{n}{\mathrm{sym}(S)}}$.

math.OC↗

Improving the Last-Iterate Guarantees of Anytime Algorithms for Stochastic Monotone Variational Inequalities

We analyze a stochastic algorithm with Halpern-type anchoring for constrained convex-concave problems and monotone variational inequalities. This single-loop and single-call algorithm uses one unbiased sample of the gradient operator at every iteration, to be applicable to monotone games with noisy feedback. With $t$ denoting the iteration counter, we prove an anytime last-iterate convergence rate of $O(t^{-1/4})$ for both the gradient-mapping norm and restricted gap, bypassing the $O(t^{-1/5})$ constrained-anytime bottleneck in the literature. Specializing then to multi-point oracles, we use variance reduction to achieve the $O(t^{-1/2})$ rate with an anytime single-loop algorithm using $2$ samples per iteration. Our results allow constrained problems with a potentially unbounded feasible set; as well as a structured class of stochastic oracles whose variance need not be uniformly bounded.

math.OC↗