On the convergence of the iteration sequence in primal-dual interior-point methods

Recently, numerous research efforts, most of them concerned with superlinear convergence of the duality gap sequence to zero in the Kojima—Mizuno—Yoshise primal-dual interior-point method for linear programming, have as a primary assumption the convergence of the iteration sequence. Yet, except for the case of nondegeneracy (uniqueness of solution), the convergence of the iteration sequence has been an important open question now for some time. In this work we demonstrate that for general problems, under slightly stronger assumptions than those needed for superlinear convergence of the duality gap sequence (except of course the assumption that the iteration sequence converges), the iteration sequence converges. Hence, we have not only established convergence of the iteration sequence for an important class of problems, but have demonstrated that the assumption that the iteration sequence converges is redundant in many of the above mentioned works.This research was supported in part by NSF Coop. Agr. No. CCR-8809615. A part of this research was performed in June, 1991 while the second and the third authors were at Rice University as visiting members of the Center for Research in Parallel Computation.Corresponding author. Research supported in part by AFOSR 89-0363, DOE DEFG05-86ER25017 and ARO 9DAAL03-90-G-0093.Research supported in part by NSF DMS-9102761 and DOE DE-FG05-91ER25100.Research supported in part by NSF DDM-8922636.