On the approximate augmented Lagrangian for nonlinear symmetric cone programming

This paper studies the approximate augmented Lagrangian for nonlinear symmetric cone programming. The analysis is based on some results under the framework of Euclidean Jordan algebras. We formulate the approximate Lagrangian dual problem and study conditions for approximate strong duality results and an approximate exact penalty representation. We also show, under Robinson’s constraint qualification, that the sequence of stationary points of the approximate augmented Lagrangian problems converges to a stationary point of the original nonlinear symmetric cone programming.     

On the convergence of augmented Lagrangian methods for nonlinear semidefinite programming

In this paper, we present new convergence properties of the augmented Lagrangian method for nonlinear semidefinite programs (NSDP). Convergence to the approximately global solutions and optimal values of NSDP is first established for a basic augmented Lagrangian scheme under mild conditions, without requiring the boundedness condition of the multipliers. We then propose four modified augmented Lagrangian methods for NSDP based on different algorithmic strategies. We show that the same convergence of the proposed methods can be ensured under weaker conditions.     

A Unified Approach to the Global Exactness of Penalty and Augmented Lagrangian Functions I: Parametric Exactness

In this two-part study, we develop a unified approach to the analysis of the global exactness of various penalty and augmented Lagrangian functions for constrained optimization problems in finite-dimensional spaces. This approach allows one to verify in a simple and straightforward manner whether a given penalty/augmented Lagrangian function is exact, i.e., whether the problem of unconstrained minimization of this function is equivalent (in some sense) to the original constrained problem, provided the penalty parameter is sufficiently large. Our approach is based on the so-called localization principle that reduces the study of global exactness to a local analysis of a chosen merit function near globally optimal solutions. In turn, such local analysis can be performed with the use of optimality conditions and constraint qualifications. In the first paper, we introduce the concept of global parametric exactness and derive the localization principle in the parametric form. With the use of this version of the localization principle, we recover existing simple, necessary, and sufficient conditions for the global exactness of linear penalty functions and for the existence of augmented Lagrange multipliers of Rockafellar–Wets’ augmented Lagrangian. We also present completely new necessary and sufficient conditions for the global exactness of general nonlinear penalty functions and for the global exactness of a continuously differentiable penalty function for nonlinear second-order cone programming problems. We briefly discuss how one can construct a continuously differentiable exact penalty function for nonlinear semidefinite programming problems as well.     

Saddle Points Theory of Two Classes of Augmented Lagrangians and Its Applications to Generalized Semi-infinite Programming

In this paper, we develop the sufficient conditions for the existence of local and global saddle points of two classes of augmented Lagrangian functions for nonconvex optimization problem with both equality and inequality constraints, which improve the corresponding results in available papers. The main feature of our sufficient condition for the existence of global saddle points is that we do not need the uniqueness of the optimal solution. Furthermore, we show that the existence of global saddle points is a necessary and sufficient condition for the exact penalty representation in the framework of augmented Lagrangians. Based on these, we convert a class of generalized semi-infinite programming problems into standard semi-infinite programming problems via augmented Lagrangians. Some new first-order optimality conditions are also discussed. This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of P.R. China (Grant No. 10571106 and No. 10701047).     

Duality and Exact Penalization for Vector Optimization via Augmented Lagrangian

In this paper, we introduce an augmented Lagrangian function for a multiobjective optimization problem with an extended vector-valued function. On the basis of this augmented Lagrangian, set-valued dual maps and dual optimization problems are constructed. Weak and strong duality results are obtained. Necessary and sufficient conditions for uniformly exact penalization and exact penalization are established. Finally, comparisons of saddle-point properties are made between a class of augmented Lagrangian functions and nonlinear Lagrangian functions for a constrained multiobjective optimization problem.     

Recursive quadratic programming algorithm that uses an exact augmented Lagrangian function

An algorithm for nonlinear programming problems with equality constraints is presented which is globally and superlinearly convergent. The algorithm employs a recursive quadratic programming scheme to obtain a search direction and uses a differentiable exact augmented Lagrangian as line search function to determine the steplength along this direction. It incorporates an automatic adjustment rule for the selection of the penalty parameter and avoids the need to evaluate second-order derivatives of the problem functions. Some numerical results are reported.     

Approximate Augmented Lagrangian Functions and Nonlinear Semidefinite Programs

In this paper, an approximate augmented Lagrangian function for nonlinear semidefinite programs is introduced. Some basic properties of the approximate augmented Lagrange function such as monotonicity and convexity are discussed. Necessary and sufficient conditions for approximate strong duality results are derived. Conditions for an approximate exact penalty representation in the framework of augmented Lagrangian are given. Under certain conditions, it is shown that any limit point of a sequence of stationary points of approximate augmented Lagrangian problems is a KKT point of the original semidefinite program and that a sequence of optimal solutions to augmented Lagrangian problems converges to a solution of the original semidefinite program.     

一类Lagrangian对偶问题的零对偶间隙性质及其最优路径的收敛性

针对一般的非线性规划问题,利用某些Lagrange型函数给出了一类Lagrangian对偶问题的一般模型,并证明它与原问题之间存在零对偶间隙．针对具体的一类增广La- grangian对偶问题以及几类由非线性卷积函数构成的Lagrangian对偶问题,详细讨论了零对偶间隙的存在性．进一步,讨论了在最优路径存在的前提下,最优路径的收敛性质．     

Proximal Point Methods for Lipschitz Functions on Hadamard Manifolds: Scalar and Vectorial Cases

In the second part of our study, we introduce the concept of global extended exactness of penalty and augmented Lagrangian functions, and derive the localization principle in the extended form. The main idea behind the extended exactness consists in an extension of the original constrained optimization problem by adding some extra variables, and then construction of a penalty/augmented Lagrangian function for the extended problem. This approach allows one to design extended penalty/augmented Lagrangian functions having some useful properties (such as smoothness), which their counterparts for the original problem might not possess. In turn, the global exactness of such extended merit functions can be easily proved with the use of the localization principle presented in this paper, which reduces the study of global exactness to a local analysis of a merit function based on sufficient optimality conditions and constraint qualifications. We utilize the localization principle in order to obtain simple necessary and sufficient conditions for the global exactness of the extended penalty function introduced by Huyer and Neumaier, and in order to construct a globally exact continuously differentiable augmented Lagrangian function for nonlinear semidefinite programming problems.     

Some Results about Duality and Exact Penalization

In this paper, we introduce the concept of the valley at 0 augmenting function and apply it to construct a class of valley at 0 augmented Lagrangian functions. We establish the existence of a path of optimal solutions generated by valley at 0 augmented Lagrangian problems and its convergence toward the optimal set of the original problem and obtain the zero duality gap property between the primal problem and the valley at 0 augmented Lagrangian dual problem. Moreover, we establish the exact penalization representation results in the framework of valley at 0 augmented Lagrangian.     

非线性规划问题的精确增广Lagrange函数

对于一般的非线性规划给出一种精确增广Lagrange函数,并讨论其性质.无需假设严格互补条件成立,给出了原问题的局部极小点与增广Lagrange函数在原问题的变量空间上的局部极小的关系.进一步,在适当的假设条件下,建立了两者的全局最优解之间的关系.     

New results on a class of exact augmented Lagrangians

In this paper, a new continuously differentiable exact augmented Lagrangian is introduced for the solution of nonlinear programming problems with compact feasible set. The distinguishing features of this augmented Lagrangian are that it is radially unbounded with respect to the multiplier and that it goes to infinity on the boundary of a compact set containing the feasible region. This allows one to establish a complete equivalence between the unconstrained minimization of the augmented Lagrangian on the product space of problem variables and multipliers and the solution of the constrained problem.The author wishes to thank Dr. L. Grippo for having suggested the topic of this paper and for helpful discussions.     

基于增广Lagrange函数的RQP方法

Recursive quadratic programming is a family of techniques developd by Bartholomew-Biggs and other authors for solving nonlinear programming problems.This paperdescribes a new method for constrained optimization which obtains its search di-rections from a quadratic programming subproblem based on the well-known aug-mented Lagrangian function.It avoids the penalty parameter to tend to infinity.We employ the Fletcher‘s exact penalty function as a merit function and the use of an approximate directional derivative of the function that avoids the need toevaluate the second order derivatives of the problem functions.We prove that thealgorithm possesses global and superlinear convergence properties.At the sametime, numerical results are reported.     

Nonlinear separation approach for the augmented Lagrangian in nonlinear semidefinite programming

This paper aims at showing that the class of augmented Lagrangian functions for nonlinear semidefinite programming problems can be derived, as a particular case, from a nonlinear separation scheme in the image space associated with the given problem. By means of the image space analysis, a global saddle point condition for the augmented Lagrangian function is investigated. It is shown that the existence of a saddle point is equivalent to a regular nonlinear separation of two suitable subsets of the image space. Without requiring the strict complementarity, it is proved that, under second order sufficiency conditions, the augmented Lagrangian function admits a local saddle point. The existence of global saddle points is then obtained under additional assumptions that do not require the compactness of the feasible set. Motivated by the result on global saddle points, we propose two modified primal-dual methods based on the augmented Lagrangian using different strategies and prove their convergence to a global solution and the optimal value of the original problem without requiring the boundedness condition of the multiplier sequence.     

A primal majorized semismooth Newton-CG augmented Lagrangian method for large-scale linearly constrained convex programming

In this paper, we propose a primal majorized semismooth Newton-CG augmented Lagrangian method for large-scale linearly constrained convex programming problems, especially for some difficult problems. The basic idea of this method is to apply the majorized semismooth Newton-CG augmented Lagrangian method to the primal convex problem. And we take two special nonlinear semidefinite programming problems as examples to illustrate the algorithm. Furthermore, we establish the global convergence and the iteration complexity of the algorithm. Numerical experiments demonstrate that our method works very well for the testing problems, especially for many ill-conditioned ones.     

Computing exact solution to nonlinear integer programming: Convergent Lagrangian and objective level cut method

In this paper, we propose a convergent Lagrangian and objective level cut method for computing exact solution to two classes of nonlinear integer programming problems: separable nonlinear integer programming and polynomial zero-one programming. The method exposes an optimal solution to the convex hull of a revised perturbation function by successively reshaping or re-confining the perturbation function. The objective level cut is used to eliminate the duality gap and thus to guarantee the convergence of the Lagrangian method on a revised domain. Computational results are reported for a variety of nonlinear integer programming problems and demonstrate that the proposed method is promising in solving medium-size nonlinear integer programming problems.     

Optimality conditions for nonlinear semidefinite programming via squared slack variables

Mathematical Programming - In this work, we derive second-order optimality conditions for nonlinear semidefinite programming (NSDP) problems, by reformulating it as an ordinary nonlinear...     

带有不等式约束的非线性规划问题的一个精确增广Lagrange函数

对求解带有不等式约束的非线性非凸规划问题的一个精确增广Lagrange函数进行了研究．在适当的假设下,给出了原约束问题的局部极小点与增广Lagrange函数,在原问题变量空间上的无约束局部极小点之间的对应关系．进一步地,在对全局解的一定假设下,还提供了原约束问题的全局最优解与增广Lagrange函数,在原问题变量空间的一个紧子集上的全局最优解之间的一些对应关系．因此,从理论上讲,采用该文给出的增广Lagrange函数作为辅助函数的乘子法,可以求得不等式约束非线性规划问题的最优解和对应的Lagrange乘子．     

A re-scaled twin augmented Lagrangian algorithm for saddle point seeking

In [A. Ouorou, A primal-dual algorithm for monotropic programming and its application to network optimization, Computational Optimization and Application 15 (2002) 125–143], a block-wise Gauss–Seidel method has been developed for monotropic programming problems, using two different quadratic augmented Lagrangian functions defined for the primal and the dual problems. In this paper, we extend the concept by introducing a nonlinear re-scaling principle obtained recently by Polyak [R. Polyak, Nonlinear rescaling vs smoothing technique in constrained optimization, Mathematical Programming 92 (2002) 197–235].     

Augmented Lagrangian Objective Penalty Function

Augmented Lagrangian function is one of the most important tools used in solving some constrained optimization problems. In this article, we study an augmented Lagrangian objective penalty function and a modified augmented Lagrangian objective penalty function for inequality constrained optimization problems. First, we prove the dual properties of the augmented Lagrangian objective penalty function, which are at least as good as the traditional Lagrangian function's. Under some conditions, the saddle point of the augmented Lagrangian objective penalty function satisfies the first-order Karush-Kuhn-Tucker condition. This is especially so when the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker condition holds for convex programming of its saddle point existence. Second, we prove the dual properties of the modified augmented Lagrangian objective penalty function. For a global optimal solution, when the exactness of the modified augmented Lagrangian objective penalty function holds, its saddle point exists. The sufficient and necessary stability conditions used to determine whether the modified augmented Lagrangian objective penalty function is exact for a global solution is proved. Based on the modified augmented Lagrangian objective penalty function, an algorithm is developed to find a global solution to an inequality constrained optimization problem, and its global convergence is also proved under some conditions. Furthermore, the sufficient and necessary calmness condition on the exactness of the modified augmented Lagrangian objective penalty function is proved for a local solution. An algorithm is presented in finding a local solution, with its convergence proved under some conditions.