Riemannian Smoothing Gradient Type Algorithms]{Riemannian Smoothing Gradient Type Algorithms for Nonsmooth Optimization Problem on Compact Riemannian Submanifold Embedded in Euclidean Space

In this paper, we introduce the notion of generalized $\epsilon$-stationarity for a class of nonconvex and nonsmooth composite minimization problems on compact Riemannian submanifold embedded in Euclidean space. To find a generalized $\epsilon$-stationarity point, we develop a family of Riemannian gradient-type methods based on the Moreau envelope technique with a decreasing sequence of smoothing parameters, namely Riemannian smoothing gradient and Riemannian smoothing stochastic gradient methods. We prove that the Riemannian smoothing gradient method has the iteration complexity of $\mathcal{O}(\epsilon^{-3})$ for driving a generalized $\epsilon$-stationary point. To our knowledge, this is the best-known iteration complexity result for the nonconvex and nonsmooth composite problem on manifolds. For the Riemannian smoothing stochastic gradient method, one can achieve the iteration complexity of $\mathcal{O}(\epsilon^{-5})$ for driving a generalized $\epsilon$-stationary point. Numerical experiments are conducted to validate the superiority of our algorithms

Projection Robust Wasserstein Distance and Riemannian Optimization

Projection robust Wasserstein (PRW) distance, or Wasserstein projection pursuit (WPP), is a robust variant of the Wasserstein distance. Recent work suggests that this quantity is more robust than the standard Wasserstein distance, in particular when comparing probability measures in high-dimensions. However, it is ruled out for practical application because the optimization model is essentially non-convex and non-smooth which makes the computation intractable. Our contribution in this paper is to revisit the original motivation behind WPP/PRW, but take the hard route of showing that, despite its non-convexity and lack of nonsmoothness, and even despite some hardness results proved by~\citet{Niles-2019-Estimation} in a minimax sense, the original formulation for PRW/WPP \textit{can} be efficiently computed in practice using Riemannian optimization, yielding in relevant cases better behavior than its convex relaxation. More specifically, we provide three simple algorithms with solid theoretical guarantee on their complexity bound (one in the appendix), and demonstrate their effectiveness and efficiency by conducing extensive experiments on synthetic and real data. This paper provides a first step into a computational theory of the PRW distance and provides the links between optimal transport and Riemannian optimization.Comment: Accepted by NeurIPS 2020; The first two authors contributed equally; fix the confusing parts in the proof and refine the algorithms and complexity bound

Smoothing algorithms for nonsmooth and nonconvex minimization over the stiefel manifold

We consider a class of nonsmooth and nonconvex optimization problems over the Stiefel manifold where the objective function is the summation of a nonconvex smooth function and a nonsmooth Lipschitz continuous convex function composed with an linear mapping. We propose three numerical algorithms for solving this problem, by combining smoothing methods and some existing algorithms for smooth optimization over the Stiefel manifold. In particular, we approximate the aforementioned nonsmooth convex function by its Moreau envelope in our smoothing methods, and prove that the Moreau envelope has many favorable properties. Thanks to this and the scheme for updating the smoothing parameter, we show that any accumulation point of the solution sequence generated by the proposed algorithms is a stationary point of the original optimization problem. Numerical experiments on building graph Fourier basis are conducted to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed algorithms.Comment: 22 page

Smoothing Gradient Tracking for Decentralized Optimization over the Stiefel Manifold with Non-smooth Regularizers

Recently, decentralized optimization over the Stiefel manifold has attacked tremendous attentions due to its wide range of applications in various fields. Existing methods rely on the gradients to update variables, which are not applicable to the objective functions with non-smooth regularizers, such as sparse PCA. In this paper, to the best of our knowledge, we propose the first decentralized algorithm for non-smooth optimization over Stiefel manifolds. Our algorithm approximates the non-smooth part of objective function by its Moreau envelope, and then existing algorithms for smooth optimization can be deployed. We establish the convergence guarantee with the iteration complexity of $\mathcal{O} (\epsilon^{-4})$. Numerical experiments conducted under the decentralized setting demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our algorithm