Primal and dual convergence of a proximal point exponential penalty method for linear programming

We consider the diagonal inexact proximal point iteration where f(x,r)=c ^T x+r∑exp(A _i x-b _i )/r] is the exponential penalty approximation of the linear program min{c ^T x:Ax≤b}. We prove that under an appropriate choice of the sequences λ _k , ε _k and with some control on the residual ν ^k , for every r _k →0⁺ the sequence u ^k converges towards an optimal point u ^∞ of the linear program. We also study the convergence of the associated dual sequence μ _i ^k =exp(A _i u ^k -b _i )/r _k ] towards a dual optimal solution. Received: May 2000 / Accepted: November 2001?Published online June 25, 2002