7,131 research outputs found
A Distributed Newton Method for Network Utility Maximization
Most existing work uses dual decomposition and subgradient methods to solve
Network Utility Maximization (NUM) problems in a distributed manner, which
suffer from slow rate of convergence properties. This work develops an
alternative distributed Newton-type fast converging algorithm for solving
network utility maximization problems with self-concordant utility functions.
By using novel matrix splitting techniques, both primal and dual updates for
the Newton step can be computed using iterative schemes in a decentralized
manner with limited information exchange. Similarly, the stepsize can be
obtained via an iterative consensus-based averaging scheme. We show that even
when the Newton direction and the stepsize in our method are computed within
some error (due to finite truncation of the iterative schemes), the resulting
objective function value still converges superlinearly to an explicitly
characterized error neighborhood. Simulation results demonstrate significant
convergence rate improvement of our algorithm relative to the existing
subgradient methods based on dual decomposition.Comment: 27 pages, 4 figures, LIDS report, submitted to CDC 201
Lyapunov Approach to Consensus Problems
This paper investigates the weighted-averaging dynamic for unconstrained and
constrained consensus problems. Through the use of a suitably defined adjoint
dynamic, quadratic Lyapunov comparison functions are constructed to analyze the
behavior of weighted-averaging dynamic. As a result, new convergence rate
results are obtained that capture the graph structure in a novel way. In
particular, the exponential convergence rate is established for unconstrained
consensus with the exponent of the order of . Also, the
exponential convergence rate is established for constrained consensus, which
extends the existing results limited to the use of doubly stochastic weight
matrices
Distributed Interior-point Method for Loosely Coupled Problems
In this paper, we put forth distributed algorithms for solving loosely
coupled unconstrained and constrained optimization problems. Such problems are
usually solved using algorithms that are based on a combination of
decomposition and first order methods. These algorithms are commonly very slow
and require many iterations to converge. In order to alleviate this issue, we
propose algorithms that combine the Newton and interior-point methods with
proximal splitting methods for solving such problems. Particularly, the
algorithm for solving unconstrained loosely coupled problems, is based on
Newton's method and utilizes proximal splitting to distribute the computations
for calculating the Newton step at each iteration. A combination of this
algorithm and the interior-point method is then used to introduce a distributed
algorithm for solving constrained loosely coupled problems. We also provide
guidelines on how to implement the proposed methods efficiently and briefly
discuss the properties of the resulting solutions.Comment: Submitted to the 19th IFAC World Congress 201
On the abundance of extreme voids II : a survey of void mass functions
The abundance of cosmic voids can be described by an analogue of halo mass functions for galaxy clusters. In this work, we explore a number of void mass functions: from those based on excursion-set theory to new mass functions obtained by modifying halo mass functions. We show how different void mass functions vary in their predictions for the largest void expected in an observational volume, and compare those predictions to observational data. Our extreme-value formalism is shown to be a new practical tool for testing void theories against simulation and observation
Accelerated Consensus via Min-Sum Splitting
We apply the Min-Sum message-passing protocol to solve the consensus problem
in distributed optimization. We show that while the ordinary Min-Sum algorithm
does not converge, a modified version of it known as Splitting yields
convergence to the problem solution. We prove that a proper choice of the
tuning parameters allows Min-Sum Splitting to yield subdiffusive accelerated
convergence rates, matching the rates obtained by shift-register methods. The
acceleration scheme embodied by Min-Sum Splitting for the consensus problem
bears similarities with lifted Markov chains techniques and with multi-step
first order methods in convex optimization
Structural relaxation in the hydrogen-bonding liquids N-methylacetamide and water studied by optical Kerr-effect spectroscopy
Structural relaxation in the peptide model N-methylacetamide (NMA) is studied
experimentally by ultrafast optical Kerr-effect spectroscopy over the
normal-liquid temperature range and compared to the relaxation measured in
water at room temperature. It is seen that in both hydrogen-bonding liquids,
beta relaxation is present and in each case it is found that this can be
described by the Cole-Cole function. For NMA in this temperature range, the
alpha and beta relaxations are each found to have an Arrhenius temperature
dependence with indistinguishable activation energies. It is known that the
variations on the Debye function, including the Cole-Cole function, are
unphysical, and we introduce two general modifications: one allows for the
initial rise of the function, determined by the librational frequencies, and
the second allows the function to be terminated in the alpha relaxation
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