Conic Optimization Theory: Convexification Techniques and Numerical Algorithms

Optimization is at the core of control theory and appears in several areas of this field, such as optimal control, distributed control, system identification, robust control, state estimation, model predictive control and dynamic programming. The recent advances in various topics of modern optimization have also been revamping the area of machine learning. Motivated by the crucial role of optimization theory in the design, analysis, control and operation of real-world systems, this tutorial paper offers a detailed overview of some major advances in this area, namely conic optimization and its emerging applications. First, we discuss the importance of conic optimization in different areas. Then, we explain seminal results on the design of hierarchies of convex relaxations for a wide range of nonconvex problems. Finally, we study different numerical algorithms for large-scale conic optimization problems.Comment: 18 page

On a Problem of Weighted Low-Rank Approximation of Matrices

We study a weighted low rank approximation that is inspired by a problem of constrained low rank approximation of matrices as initiated by the work of Golub, Hoffman, and Stewart (Linear Algebra and Its Applications, 88-89(1987), 317-327). Our results reduce to that of Golub, Hoffman, and Stewart in the limiting cases. We also propose an algorithm based on the alternating direction method to solve our weighted low rank approximation problem and compare it with the state-of-art general algorithms such as the weighted total alternating least squares and the EM algorithm