An asymptotically superlinearly convergent semismooth Newton augmented Lagrangian method for Linear Programming

Powerful interior-point methods (IPM) based commercial solvers, such as Gurobi and Mosek, have been hugely successful in solving large-scale linear programming (LP) problems. The high efficiency of these solvers depends critically on the sparsity of the problem data and advanced matrix factorization techniques. For a large scale LP problem with data matrix $A$ that is dense (possibly structured) or whose corresponding normal matrix $AA^T$ has a dense Cholesky factor (even with re-ordering), these solvers may require excessive computational cost and/or extremely heavy memory usage in each interior-point iteration. Unfortunately, the natural remedy, i.e., the use of iterative methods based IPM solvers, although can avoid the explicit computation of the coefficient matrix and its factorization, is not practically viable due to the inherent extreme ill-conditioning of the large scale normal equation arising in each interior-point iteration. To provide a better alternative choice for solving large scale LPs with dense data or requiring expensive factorization of its normal equation, we propose a semismooth Newton based inexact proximal augmented Lagrangian ({\sc Snipal}) method. Different from classical IPMs, in each iteration of {\sc Snipal}, iterative methods can efficiently be used to solve simpler yet better conditioned semismooth Newton linear systems. Moreover, {\sc Snipal} not only enjoys a fast asymptotic superlinear convergence but is also proven to enjoy a finite termination property. Numerical comparisons with Gurobi have demonstrated encouraging potential of {\sc Snipal} for handling large-scale LP problems where the constraint matrix $A$ has a dense representation or $AA^T$ has a dense factorization even with an appropriate re-ordering.Comment: Due to the limitation "The abstract field cannot be longer than 1,920 characters", the abstract appearing here is slightly shorter than that in the PDF fil

A recursively feasible and convergent Sequential Convex Programming procedure to solve non-convex problems with linear equality constraints

A computationally efficient method to solve non-convex programming problems with linear equality constraints is presented. The proposed method is based on a recursively feasible and descending sequential convex programming procedure proven to converge to a locally optimal solution. Assuming that the first convex problem in the sequence is feasible, these properties are obtained by convexifying the non-convex cost and inequality constraints with inner-convex approximations. Additionally, a computationally efficient method is introduced to obtain inner-convex approximations based on Taylor series expansions. These Taylor-based inner-convex approximations provide the overall algorithm with a quadratic rate of convergence. The proposed method is capable of solving problems of practical interest in real-time. This is illustrated with a numerical simulation of an aerial vehicle trajectory optimization problem on commercial-of-the-shelf embedded computers

A second-derivative trust-region SQP method with a "trust-region-free" predictor step

In (NAR 08/18 and 08/21, Oxford University Computing Laboratory, 2008) we introduced a second-derivative SQP method (S2QP) for solving nonlinear nonconvex optimization problems. We proved that the method is globally convergent and locally superlinearly convergent under standard assumptions. A critical component of the algorithm is the so-called predictor step, which is computed from a strictly convex quadratic program with a trust-region constraint. This step is essential for proving global convergence, but its propensity to identify the optimal active set is Paramount for recovering fast local convergence. Thus the global and local efficiency of the method is intimately coupled with the quality of the predictor step.\ud \ud In this paper we study the effects of removing the trust-region constraint from the computation of the predictor step; this is reasonable since the resulting problem is still strictly convex and thus well-defined. Although this is an interesting theoretical question, our motivation is based on practicality. Our preliminary numerical experience with S2QP indicates that the trust-region constraint occasionally degrades the quality of the predictor step and diminishes its ability to correctly identify the optimal active set. Moreover, removal of the trust-region constraint allows for re-use of the predictor step over a sequence of failed iterations thus reducing computation. We show that the modified algorithm remains globally convergent and preserves local superlinear convergence provided a nonmonotone strategy is incorporated