Existence and sum decomposition of vertex polyhedral convex envelopes

Convex envelopes are a very useful tool in global optimization. However finding the exact convex envelope of a function is a difficult task in general. This task becomes considerably simpler in the case where the domain is a polyhedron and the convex envelope is vertex polyhedral, i.e., has a polyhedral epigraph whose vertices correspond to the vertices of the domain. A further simplification is possible when the convex envelope is sum decomposable, i.e., the convex envelope of a sum of functions coincides with the sum of the convex envelopes of the summands. In this paper we provide characterizations and sufficient conditions for the existence of a vertex polyhedral convex envelope. Our results extend and unify several results previously obtained for special cases of this problem. We then characterize sum decomposability of vertex polyhedral convex envelopes, and we show, among else, that the vertex polyhedral convex envelope of a sum of functions coincides with the sum of the vertex polyhedral convex envelopes of the summands if and only if the latter sum is vertex polyhedral.     

On the solution of Maxwell's equations in polygonal domains

This paper is concerned with the structure of the singular and regular parts of the solution of time‐harmonic Maxwell's equations in polygonal plane domains and their effective numerical treatment. The asymptotic behaviour of the solution near corner points of the domain is studied by means of discrete Fourier transformation and it is proved that the solution of the boundary value problem does not belong locally to H² when the boundary of the domain has non‐acute angles. A splitting of the solution into a regular part belonging to the space H², and an explicitly described singular part is presented. For the numerical treatment of the boundary value problem, we propose a finite element discretization which combines local mesh grading and the singular field methods and derive a priori error estimates that show optimal convergence as known for the classical finite element method for problems with regular solutions. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Minimum Distance to the Complement of a Convex Set: Duality Result

The subject of this paper is to study the problem of the minimum distance to the complement of a convex set. Nirenberg has stated a duality theorem treating the minimum norm problem for a convex set. We state a duality result which presents some analogy with the Nirenberg theorem, and we apply this result to polyhedral convex sets. First, we assume that the polyhedral set is expressed as the intersection of some finite collection of m given half-spaces. We show that a global solution is determined by solving m convex programs. If the polyhedral set is expressed as the convex hull of a given finite set of extreme points, we show that a global minimum for a polyhedral norm is obtained by solving a finite number of linear programs.     

A finite element method dealing the singular points with a cut-off function

We consider an elliptic partial differential equation with input function inH ^-1. We assume that the type of singular part of solution is known and the solution is expressed as a sum of regular and singular term. We use a cut-off function to isolate the singular part and pose a variational problem to find the regular part of the solution. Then we have the solution by adding the regular solution and singular part. Error analysis and some example with computation will be given.     

The No Response Test for the reconstruction of polyhedral objects in electromagnetics

We develop a No Response Test for the reconstruction of a polyhedral obstacle from two or few time-harmonic electromagnetic incident waves in electromagnetics. The basic idea of the test is to probe some region in space with waves which are small on some test domain and, thus, do not generate a response when the scatterer is inside of this test domain. We will prove that the No Response Test checks analytic continuability of a time-harmonic field from the far field pattern into the domain for a non-vibrating test domain B.We show that two incident waves, defined by one incident direction and two appropriately chosen directions of polarization, are enough to recover the convex hull of polyhedrals. Based on this uniqueness result, we build up the No Response Test and we prove convergence in the sense that it fully reconstructs a convex polyhedral scatterer D or the convex hull of an arbitrary polyhedral scatterer.Further, we will describe the algorithmic realization of the No Response Test and show the feasibility of the method by reconstruction of convex polyhedral objects in three dimensions. This is the first formulation of the No Response Test for electromagnetics.     

Regularity and a priori error analysis of a Ventcel problem in polyhedral domains

We consider the regularity of a mixed boundary value problem for the Laplace operator on a polyhedral domain, where Ventcel boundary conditions are imposed on one face of the polyhedron and Dirichlet boundary conditions are imposed on the complement of that face in the boundary. We establish improved regularity estimates for the trace of the variational solution on the Ventcel face and use them to derive a decomposition of the solution into a regular and a singular part that belongs to suitable weighted Sobolev spaces. This decomposition, in turn, via interpolation estimates both in the interior as well as on the Ventcel face, allows us to perform an a priori error analysis for the finite element approximation of the solution on anisotropic graded meshes. Numerical tests support the theoretical analysis. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The skorokhod oblique reflection problem in a convex polyhedron

The Skorokhod oblique reflection problem is studied in the case ofn-dimensional convex polyhedral domains. The natural sufficient condition on the reflection directions is found, which together with the Lipschitz condition on the coefficients gives the existence and uniqueness of the solution. The continuity of the corresponding solution mapping is established. This property enables one to construct in a direct way the reflected (in a convex polyhedral domain) diffusion processes possessing the nice properties.     

Decompositions in Edge and Corner Singularities for the Solution of the Dirichlet Problem of the Laplacian in a Polyhedron

The solution of the three-dimensional Dirichlet problem for the Laplacian in a polyhedral domain has Special singular forms at corners and edges. The main result of this paper is a “tensor-product” decomposition of those singular forms along the edges. Such a decomposition with both edge singularities, additional corner singularities and a smoother remainder refines known regularity results for the solution where either the edge singularities are of non-tensor product form or the remainder term belongs to an anisotropic Sobolev space for data given in an isotropic Sobolev space.     

Note: An algorithm to solve polyhedral convex set optimization problems

We provide a counterexample to the remark in Löhne and Schrage [An algorithm to solve polyhedral convex set optimization problems, Optimization 62 (2013), pp. 131-141] that every solution of a polyhedral convex set optimization problem is a pre-solution. A correct statement is that every solution of a polyhedral convex set optimization problem obtained by the algorithm SetOpt is a pre-solution. We also show that every finite infimizer and hence every solution of a polyhedral convex set optimization problem contains a pre-solution.     

A Carleman estimate for the two dimensional heat equation with mixed boundary conditions

It is well known that in a regular domain, the solutions of the Laplace equation with mixed boundary conditions can present a singular part. In this work, we prove a Carleman estimate for the two dimensional domain heat equation in presence of these singularities.     

Singular Riemannian foliations on simply connected spaces

A singular foliation on a complete Riemannian manifold is said to be Riemannian if each geodesic that is perpendicular at one point to a leaf remains perpendicular to every leaf it meets. The singular foliation is said to admit sections if each regular point is contained in a totally geodesic complete immersed submanifold that meets every leaf orthogonally and whose dimension is the codimension of the regular leaves. A typical example of such a singular foliation is the partition by orbits of a polar action, e.g. the orbits of the adjoint action of a compact Lie group on itself.We prove that a singular Riemannian foliation with compact leaves that admits sections on a simply connected space has no exceptional leaves, i.e., each regular leaf has trivial normal holonomy. We also prove that there exists a convex fundamental domain in each section of the foliation and in particular that the space of leaves is a convex Coxeter orbifold.     

The Fourier-finite element method for the Poisson problem on a non-convex polyhedral cylinder

We study the Poisson problem with zero boundary datum in a (finite) polyhedral cylinder with a non-convex edge. Applying the Fourier sine series to the equation along the edge and by a corner singularity expansion for the Poisson problem with parameter, we define the edge flux coefficient and the regular part of the solution on the polyhedral cylinder. We present a numerical method for approximating the edge flux coefficient and the regular part and show the stability. We derive an error estimate and give some numerical experiments.     

A parallel algorithm for partially separable non-convex global minimization: Linear constraints

The global minimization of large-scale partially separable non-convex problems over a bounded polyhedral set using a parallel branch and bound approach is considered. The objective function consists of a separable concave part, an unseparated convex part, and a strictly linear part, which are all coupled by the linear constraints. These large-scale problems are characterized by having the number of linear variables much greater than the number of nonlinear variables. An important special class of problems which can be reduced to this form are the synomial global minimization problems. Such problems often arise in engineering design, and previous computational methods for such problems have been limited to the convex posynomial case. In the current work, a convex underestimating function to the objective function is easily constructed and minimized over the feasible domain to get both upper and lower bounds on the global minimum function value. At each minor iteration of the algorithm, the feasible domain is divided into subregions and convex underestimating problems over each subregion are solved in parallel. Branch and bound techniques can then be used to eliminate parts of the feasible domain from consideration and improve the upper and lower bounds. It is shown that the algorithm guarantees that a solution is obtained to within any specified tolerance in a finite number of steps. Computational results obtained on the four processor Cray 2, both sequentially and in parallel on all four processors, are also presented.     

Polygonal interface problems:higher regularity results

We continue the study of boundary value problems on two–ndimensional polygona; topological networks, extensions of oblique derivative problems and of interface problems in a polygonal domain of the plane. The aim of this paper is firstly, to deal with non variational problems, secondly, to show that a weak solution may be dplit into a regular part and a singular part and thridly, to give the extract formula for the coeffcients of the singularities.     

Finite element method for elliptic problems with edge singularities

We consider tangentially regular solution of the Dirichlet problem for an homogeneous strongly elliptic operator with constant coefficients, on an infinite vertical polyhedral cylinder based on a bounded polygonal domain in the horizontal xy-plane. The usual complex blocks of singularities in the non-tensor product singular decomposition of the solution are made more explicit by a suitable choice of the regularizing kernel. This permits to design a well-posed semi-discrete singular function method (SFM), which differs from the usual SFM in that the dimension of the space of trial and test functions is infinite. Partial Fourier transform in the z-direction (of edges) enables us to overcome the difficulty of an infinite dimension and to obtain optimal orders of convergence in various norms for the semi-discrete solution. Asymptotic error estimates are also proved for the coefficients of singularities. For practical computations, an optimally convergent full-disc! ! ! retization approach, which consists in coupling truncated Fourier series in the z-direction with the SFM in the xy-plane, is implemented. Other good (though not optimal) schemes, which are based on a tensor product form of singularities are investigated. As an illustration of the results, we consider the Laplace operator.     

On Some Generalized Polyhedral Convex Constructions

Generalized polyhedral convex sets, generalized polyhedral convex functions on locally convex Hausdorff topological vector spaces, and the related constructions such as sum of sets, sum of functions, directional derivative, infimal convolution, normal cone, conjugate function, subdifferential are studied thoroughly in this paper. Among other things, we show how a generalized polyhedral convex set can be characterized through the finiteness of the number of its faces. In addition, it is proved that the infimal convolution of a generalized polyhedral convex function and a polyhedral convex function is a polyhedral convex function. The obtained results can be applied to scalar optimization problems described by generalized polyhedral convex sets and generalized polyhedral convex functions.     

Polygonal interface problems for the biharmonic operator

We study some boundary value problems on two-dimensional polygonal topological networks, where on each face, the considered operator is the biharmonic operator. The transmission conditions we impose along the edges are inspired by the models introduced by H. Le Dret [13] and Destuynder and Nevers [9]. The boundary conditions on the external edges are the classical ones. This class of problem contains the boundary value problems for the biharmonic equation in a plane polygon (see [3, 11, 12, 18]). Conforming to the classical results cited above, we prove that the weak solution of our problem admits a decomposition into a regular part and a singular part, the latter being a linear combination of singular functions depending on the domain and the considered boundary value problem. Finally, we give the exact formula for the coefficients of these singularities.     

A deterministic‐control‐based approach motion by curvature

The level‐set formulation of motion by mean curvature is a degenerate parabolic equation. We show that its solution can be interpreted as the value function of a deterministic two‐person game. More precisely, we give a family of discrete‐time, two‐person games whose value functions converge in the continuous‐time limit to the solution of the motion‐by‐curvature PDE. For a convex domain, the boundary's “first arrival time” solves a degenerate elliptic equation; this corresponds, in our game‐theoretic setting, to a minimum‐exit‐time problem. For a nonconvex domain the two‐person game still makes sense; we draw a connection between its minimum exit time and the evolution of curves with velocity equal to the “positive part of the curvature.” These results are unexpected, because the value function of a deterministic control problem is normally the solution of a first‐order Hamilton‐Jacobi equation. Our situation is different because the usual first‐order calculation is singular. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Minimal covers of the prisms and antiprisms

This paper contains a classification of the regular minimal abstract polytopes that act as covers for the convex polyhedral prisms and antiprisms. It includes a detailed discussion of their topological structure, and completes the enumeration of such covers for convex uniform polyhedra. Additionally, this paper addresses related structural questions in the theory of string C-groups.