A New Complexity Analysis for Full-Newton Step Infeasible Interior-Point Algorithm for Horizontal Linear Complementarity Problems

In this paper, we first present a full-Newton step feasible interior-point algorithm for solving horizontal linear complementarity problems. We prove that the full-Newton step to the central path is quadratically convergent. Then, we generalize an infeasible interior-point method for linear optimization to horizontal linear complementarity problems based on new search directions. This algorithm starts from strictly feasible iterates on the central path of a perturbed problem that is produced by a suitable perturbation in the horizontal linear complementarity problem. We use the so-called feasibility steps that find strictly feasible iterates for the next perturbed problem. By using centering steps for the new perturbed problem, we obtain a strictly feasible iterate close enough to the central path of the new perturbed problem. The complexity of the algorithm coincides with the best known iteration bound for infeasible interior-point methods.     

Solving Continuous Min-Max Problems by an Iterative Entropic Regularization Method

We propose a method of outer approximations, with each approximate problem smoothed using entropic regularization, to solve continuous min-max problems. By using a well-known uniform error estimate for entropic regularization, convergence of the overall method is shown while allowing each smoothed problem to be solved inexactly. In the case of convex objective function and linear constraints, an interior-point algorithm is proposed to solve the smoothed problem inexactly. Numerical examples are presented to illustrate the behavior of the proposed method.     

Improving an interior-point approach for large block-angular problems by hybrid preconditioners

The computational time required by interior-point methods is often dominated by the solution of linear systems of equations. An efficient specialized interior-point algorithm for primal block-angular problems has been used to solve these systems by combining Cholesky factorizations for the block constraints and a conjugate gradient based on a power series preconditioner for the linking constraints. In some problems this power series preconditioner resulted to be inefficient on the last interior-point iterations, when the systems became ill-conditioned. In this work this approach is combined with a splitting preconditioner based on LU factorization, which works well for the last interior-point iterations. Computational results are provided for three classes of problems: multicommodity flows (oriented and nonoriented), minimum-distance controlled tabular adjustment for statistical data protection, and the minimum congestion problem. The results show that, in most cases, the hybrid preconditioner improves the performance and robustness of the interior-point solver. In particular, for some block-angular problems the solution time is reduced by a factor of 10.     

Inexact Interior-Point Method

In this paper, we introduce an inexact interior-point algorithm for a constrained system of equations. The formulation of the problem is quite general and includes nonlinear complementarity problems of various kinds. In our convergence theory, we interpret the inexact interior-point method as an inexact Newton method. This enables us to establish a global convergence theory for the proposed algorithm. Under the additional assumption of the invertibility of the Jacobian at the solution, the superlinear convergence of the iteration sequence is proved.     

Primal-Dual Interior-Point Method for an Optimization Problem Related to the Modeling of Atmospheric Organic Aerosols

A mathematical model for the computation of the phase equilibrium related to atmospheric organic aerosols is presented. The phase equilibrium is given by the global minimum of the Gibbs free energy for a system that involves water and organic components. This minimization problem is equivalent to the determination of the convex hull of the corresponding molar Gibbs free energy function. A geometrical notion of phase simplex related to the convex hull is introduced to characterize mathematically the phases at equilibrium. A primal-dual interior-point algorithm for the efficient solution of the phase equilibrium problem is presented. A novel initialization of the algorithm, based on the properties of the phase simplex, is proposed to ensure the convergence to a global minimum of the Gibbs free energy. For a finite termination of the interior-point method, an active phase identification procedure is incorporated. Numerical results show the robustness and efficiency of the approach for the prediction of liquid-liquid equilibrium in multicomponent mixtures.Communicated by R. GlowinskiThis work was supported by US Environmental Protection Grant X-83234201. The second author was partially supported by Swiss National Science Foundation Grant PBEL2-103152.     

Convergence and polynomiality of primal-dual interior-point algorithms for linear programming with selective addition of inequalities

This paper presents the convergence proof and complexity analysis of an interior-point framework that solves linear programming problems by dynamically selecting and adding relevant inequalities. First, we formulate a new primal–dual interior-point algorithm for solving linear programmes in non-standard form with equality and inequality constraints. The algorithm uses a primal–dual path-following predictor–corrector short-step interior-point method that starts with a reduced problem without any inequalities and selectively adds a given inequality only if it becomes active on the way to optimality. Second, we prove convergence of this algorithm to an optimal solution at which all inequalities are satisfied regardless of whether they have been added by the algorithm or not. We thus provide a theoretical foundation for similar schemes already used in practice. We also establish conditions under which the complexity of such algorithm is polynomial in the problem dimension and address remaining limitations without these conditions for possible further research.     

CurveLP-A MATLAB implementation of an infeasible interior-point algorithm for linear programming

Mehrotra’s algorithm has been the most successful infeasible interior-point algorithm for linear programming since 1990. Most popular interior-point software packages for linear programming are based on Mehrotra’s algorithm. This paper describes a proposal and implementation of an alternative algorithm, an arc-search infeasible interior-point algorithm. We will demonstrate, by testing Netlib problems and comparing the test results obtained by the arc-search infeasible interior-point algorithm and Mehrotra’s algorithm, that the proposed arc-search infeasible interior-point algorithm is a more reliable and efficient algorithm than Mehrotra’s algorithm.     

Feasibility issues in a primal-dual interior-point method for linear programming

A new method for obtaining an initial feasible interior-point solution to a linear program is presented. This method avoids the use of a big-M, and is shown to work well on a standard set of test problems. Conditions are developed for obtaining a near-optimal solution that is feasible for an associated problem, and details of the computational testing are presented. Other issues related to obtaining and maintaining accurate feasible solutions to linear programs with an interior-point method are discussed. These issues are important to consider when solving problems that have no primal or dual interior-point feasible solutions.     

Constraint selection in a build-up interior-point cutting-plane method for solving relaxations of the stable-set problem

The stable-set problem is an NP-hard problem that arises in numerous areas such as social networking, electrical engineering, environmental forest planning, bioinformatics clustering and prediction, and computational chemistry. While some relaxations provide high-quality bounds, they result in very large and expensive conic optimization problems. We describe and test an integrated interior-point cutting-plane method that efficiently handles the large number of nonnegativity constraints in the popular doubly-nonnegative relaxation. This algorithm identifies relevant inequalities dynamically and selectively adds new constraints in a build-up fashion. We present computational results showing the significant benefits of this approach in comparison to a standard interior-point cutting-plane method.     

Fast Algorithms for Large-Scale Generalized Distance Weighted Discrimination

High-dimension-low-sample size statistical analysis is important in a wide range of applications. In such situations, the highly appealing discrimination method, support vector machine, can be improved to alleviate data piling at the margin. This leads naturally to the development of distance weighted discrimination (DWD), which can be modeled as a second-order cone programming problem and solved by interior-point methods when the scale (in sample size and feature dimension) of the data is moderate. Here, we design a scalable and robust algorithm for solving large-scale generalized DWD problems. Numerical experiments on real datasets from the UCI repository demonstrate that our algorithm is highly efficient in solving large-scale problems, and sometimes even more efficient than the highly optimized LIBLINEAR and LIBSVM for solving the corresponding SVM problems. Supplementary material for this article is available online.     

Application of Interior-Point Methods to Model Predictive Control

We present a structured interior-point method for the efficient solution of the optimal control problem in model predictive control. The cost of this approach is linear in the horizon length, compared with cubic growth for a naive approach. We use a discrete-time Riccati recursion to solve the linear equations efficiently at each iteration of the interior-point method, and show that this recursion is numerically stable. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach by applying it to three process control problems.     

A full step infeasible interior-point method for Cartesian $$P_{*}(\kappa )$$-SCLCP

In this paper, a new full Nesterov–Todd step infeasible interior-point method for Cartesian \(P_*(\kappa )\) linear complementarity problem over symmetric cone is considered. Our algorithm starts from a strictly feasible point of a perturbed problem, after a full Nesterov–Todd step for the new perturbed problem the obtained strictly feasible iterate is close to the central path of it, where closeness is measured by some merit function. Furthermore, the complexity bound of the algorithm is the best available for infeasible interior-point methods.     

A primal-dual interior-point method for linear programming based on a weighted barrier function

One motivation for the standard primal-dual direction used in interior-point methods is that it can be obtained by solving a least-squares problem. In this paper, we propose a primal-dual interior-point method derived through a modified least-squares problem. The direction used is equivalent to the Newton direction for a weighted barrier function method with the weights determined by the current primal-dual iterate. We demonstrate that the Newton direction for the usual, unweighted barrier function method can be derived through a weighted modified least-squares problem. The algorithm requires a polynomial number of iterations. It enjoys quadratic convergence if the optimal vertex is nondegenerate.The research of the second author was supported in part by ONR Grants N00014-90-J-1714 and N00014-94-1-0391.     

Interior-point methods for linear programming: a review

The paper reviews some recent advances in interior-point methods for linear programming and indicates directions in which future progress can be made. Most of the interior-point methods belong to any of three categories: affine-scaling methods, potential reduction methods and central path methods. These methods are discussed together with infeasible interior methods and homogeneous self-dual methods for linear programming. Also discussed are some theoretical issues in interior-point methods like dependence of complexity bounds on some non-traditional measures different from the input length L of the problem. Finally, the paper concludes with remarks on the comparison of interior-point methods with the simplex method based on their performance on NITLIB suite, a standard collection of test problems.     

Interior-Point Methods with Decomposition for Solving Large-Scale Linear Programs

This paper deals with an algorithm incorporating the interior-point method into the Dantzig–Wolfe decomposition technique for solving large-scale linear programming problems. The algorithm decomposes a linear program into a main problem and a subproblem. The subproblem is solved approximately. Hence, inexact Newton directions are used in solving the main problem. We show that the algorithm is globally linearly convergent and has polynomial-time complexity.     

A Full Nesterov–Todd Step Infeasible Interior-Point Method for Second-Order Cone Optimization

After a brief introduction to Jordan algebras, we present a primal–dual interior-point algorithm for second-order conic optimization that uses full Nesterov–Todd steps; no line searches are required. The number of iterations of the algorithm coincides with the currently best iteration bound for second-order conic optimization. We also generalize an infeasible interior-point method for linear optimization to second-order conic optimization. As usual for infeasible interior-point methods, the starting point depends on a positive number. The algorithm either finds a solution in a finite number of iterations or determines that the primal–dual problem pair has no optimal solution with vanishing duality gap.     

Insights into the interior-point methods

In this paper, we study the search directions of three important interior-point algorithms, namely, the primal-affine scaling method (with logarithmic barrier function), the dual-affine scaling method (with logarithmic barrier function), and the primal-dual interior point method. From an algebraic point of view, we show that the search directions of these three algorithms are merely Newton directions along three different paths that lead to a solution of the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker conditions of a given linear programming problem. From a geometric point of view, we show that these directions can be obtained by solving certain well-defined subproblems. Both views provide a general platform for studying the existing interior-point methods and deriving new interior-point algorithms. We illustrate the derivation of new interior-point algorithms by replacing the logarithmic barrier function with an entropic barrier function. The results have been generalized and discussed.This work is partially supported by the North Carolina Supercomputing Center 1990 Cray Grant Program sponsored by Cray Research.     

Validated Infeasible Interior-Point Predictor–Corrector Methods for Linear Programming

Many problems arising in practical applications lead to linear programming problems. Hence, they are fundamentally tractable. Recent interior-point methods can exploit problem structure to solve such problems very efficiently. Infeasible interior-point predictor–corrector methods using floating-point arithmetic sometimes compute an approximate solution with duality gap less than a given tolerance even when the problem may not have a solution. We present an efficient verification method for solving linear programming problems which computes a guaranteed enclosure of the optimal solution and which verifies the existence of the solution within the computed interval.     

关于线性规划问题熵障碍对偶法的注记

线性规划是目标优化问题中最常用的模型。关于大规模线性规划问题的有效求解问题一直受到人们的关注。熵障碍对偶法是继内点法之后,又一解线性规划问题的新的算法。本文讨论了熵障碍对偶法的推广形式及其梯度类算法的收敛性。