427 research outputs found
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
Recent Advances in Computational Methods for the Power Flow Equations
The power flow equations are at the core of most of the computations for
designing and operating electric power systems. The power flow equations are a
system of multivariate nonlinear equations which relate the power injections
and voltages in a power system. A plethora of methods have been devised to
solve these equations, starting from Newton-based methods to homotopy
continuation and other optimization-based methods. While many of these methods
often efficiently find a high-voltage, stable solution due to its large basin
of attraction, most of the methods struggle to find low-voltage solutions which
play significant role in certain stability-related computations. While we do
not claim to have exhausted the existing literature on all related methods,
this tutorial paper introduces some of the recent advances in methods for
solving power flow equations to the wider power systems community as well as
bringing attention from the computational mathematics and optimization
communities to the power systems problems. After briefly reviewing some of the
traditional computational methods used to solve the power flow equations, we
focus on three emerging methods: the numerical polynomial homotopy continuation
method, Groebner basis techniques, and moment/sum-of-squares relaxations using
semidefinite programming. In passing, we also emphasize the importance of an
upper bound on the number of solutions of the power flow equations and review
the current status of research in this direction.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures. Submitted to the Tutorial Session at IEEE 2016
American Control Conferenc
Algorithm 950: Ncpol2sdpa---Sparse Semidefinite Programming Relaxations for Polynomial Optimization Problems of Noncommuting Variables
A hierarchy of semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxations approximates the
global optimum of polynomial optimization problems of noncommuting variables.
Generating the relaxation, however, is a computationally demanding task, and
only problems of commuting variables have efficient generators. We develop an
implementation for problems of noncommuting problems that creates the
relaxation to be solved by SDPA -- a high-performance solver that runs in a
distributed environment. We further exploit the inherent sparsity of
optimization problems in quantum physics to reduce the complexity of the
resulting relaxations. Constrained problems with a relaxation of order two may
contain up to a hundred variables. The implementation is available in Python.
The tool helps solve problems such as finding the ground state energy or
testing quantum correlations.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures, 1 table, 2 algorithms, the algorithm is
available at http://peterwittek.github.io/ncpol2sdpa
Certification of inequalities involving transcendental functions: combining SDP and max-plus approximation
We consider the problem of certifying an inequality of the form ,
, where is a multivariate transcendental function, and
is a compact semialgebraic set. We introduce a certification method, combining
semialgebraic optimization and max-plus approximation. We assume that is
given by a syntaxic tree, the constituents of which involve semialgebraic
operations as well as some transcendental functions like , ,
, etc. We bound some of these constituents by suprema or infima of
quadratic forms (max-plus approximation method, initially introduced in optimal
control), leading to semialgebraic optimization problems which we solve by
semidefinite relaxations. The max-plus approximation is iteratively refined and
combined with branch and bound techniques to reduce the relaxation gap.
Illustrative examples of application of this algorithm are provided, explaining
how we solved tight inequalities issued from the Flyspeck project (one of the
main purposes of which is to certify numerical inequalities used in the proof
of the Kepler conjecture by Thomas Hales).Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, 3 tables, Appears in the Proceedings of the
European Control Conference ECC'13, July 17-19, 2013, Zurich, pp. 2244--2250,
copyright EUCA 201
Certification of Bounds of Non-linear Functions: the Templates Method
The aim of this work is to certify lower bounds for real-valued multivariate
functions, defined by semialgebraic or transcendental expressions. The
certificate must be, eventually, formally provable in a proof system such as
Coq. The application range for such a tool is widespread; for instance Hales'
proof of Kepler's conjecture yields thousands of inequalities. We introduce an
approximation algorithm, which combines ideas of the max-plus basis method (in
optimal control) and of the linear templates method developed by Manna et al.
(in static analysis). This algorithm consists in bounding some of the
constituents of the function by suprema of quadratic forms with a well chosen
curvature. This leads to semialgebraic optimization problems, solved by
sum-of-squares relaxations. Templates limit the blow up of these relaxations at
the price of coarsening the approximation. We illustrate the efficiency of our
framework with various examples from the literature and discuss the interfacing
with Coq.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figures, 2 table
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