Second order adjoints for solving PDE-constrained optimization problems

Inverse problems are of utmost importance in many fields of science and engineering. In the variational approach inverse problems are formulated as PDE-constrained optimization problems, where the optimal estimate of the uncertain parameters is the minimizer of a certain cost functional subject to the constraints posed by the model equations. The numerical solution of such optimization problems requires the computation of derivatives of the model output with respect to model parameters. The first order derivatives of a cost functional (defined on the model output) with respect to a large number of model parameters can be calculated efficiently through first order adjoint sensitivity analysis. Second order adjoint models give second derivative information in the form of matrix-vector products between the Hessian of the cost functional and user defined vectors. Traditionally, the construction of second order derivatives for large scale models has been considered too costly. Consequently, data assimilation applications employ optimization algorithms that use only first order derivative information, like nonlinear conjugate gradients and quasi-Newton methods. In this paper we discuss the mathematical foundations of second order adjoint sensitivity analysis and show that it provides an efficient approach to obtain Hessian-vector products. We study the benefits of using of second order information in the numerical optimization process for data assimilation applications. The numerical studies are performed in a twin experiment setting with a two-dimensional shallow water model. Different scenarios are considered with different discretization approaches, observation sets, and noise levels. Optimization algorithms that employ second order derivatives are tested against widely used methods that require only first order derivatives. Conclusions are drawn regarding the potential benefits and the limitations of using high-order information in large scale data assimilation problems

A New Hybrid Approach for Solving Large-scale Monotone Nonlinear Equations

In this paper, a new hybrid conjugate gradient method for solving monotone nonlinear equations is introduced. The scheme is a combination of the Fletcher-Reeves (FR) and Polak-Ribiére-Polyak (PRP) conjugate gradient methods with the Solodov and Svaiter projection strategy. Using suitable assumptions, the global convergence of the scheme with monotone line search is provided. Lastly, a numerical experiment was used to enumerate the suitability of the proposed scheme for large-scale problems

A Three-Term Conjugate Gradient Method with Sufficient Descent Property for Unconstrained Optimization

Conjugate gradient methods are widely used for solving large-scale unconstrained optimization problems, because they do not need the storage of matrices. In this paper, we propose a general form of three-term conjugate gradient methods which always generate a sufficient descent direction. We give a sufficient condition for the global convergence of the proposed general method. Moreover, we present a specific three-term conjugate gradient method based on the multi-step quasi-Newton method. Finally, some numerical results of the proposed method are given

A dai-liao hybrid conjugate gradient method for unconstrained optimization

One of todays’ best-performing CG methods is Dai-Liao (DL) method which depends on non-negative parameter  and conjugacy conditions for its computation. Although numerous optimal selections for the parameter were suggested, the best choice of  remains a subject of consideration. The pure conjugacy condition adopts an exact line search for numerical experiments and convergence analysis. Though, a practical mathematical experiment implies using an inexact line search to find the step size. To avoid such drawbacks, Dai and Liao substituted the earlier conjugacy condition with an extended conjugacy condition. Therefore, this paper suggests a new hybrid CG that combines the strength of Liu and Storey and Conjugate Descent CG methods by retaining a choice of Dai-Liao parameterthat is optimal. The theoretical analysis indicated that the search direction of the new CG scheme is descent and satisfies sufficient descent condition when the iterates jam under strong Wolfe line search. The algorithm is shown to converge globally using standard assumptions. The numerical experimentation of the scheme demonstrated that the proposed method is robust and promising than some known methods applying the performance profile Dolan and Mor´e on 250 unrestricted problems.  Numerical assessment of the tested CG algorithms with sparse signal reconstruction and image restoration in compressive sensing problems, file restoration, image video coding and other applications. The result shows that these CG schemes are comparable and can be applied in different fields such as temperature, fire, seismic sensors, and humidity detectors in forests, using wireless sensor network techniques

Numerical Comparison of Line Search Criteria in Nonlinear Conjugate Gradient Algorithms

One of the open problems known to researchers on the application of nonlinear conjugate gradient methods for addressing unconstrained optimization problems is the influence of accuracy of linear search procedure on the performance of the conjugate gradient algorithm. Key to any CG algorithm is the computation of an optimalstep size for which many procedures have been postulated. In this paper, we assess and compare the performance of a modified Armijo and Wolfe line search procedures on three variants of nonlinear CGM by carrying out a numerical test. Experiments reveal that our modified procedure and the strong Wolfe procedures guaranteed fast convergence

A Simple Sufficient Descent Method for Unconstrained Optimization

We develop a sufficient descent method for solving large-scale unconstrained optimization problems. At each iteration, the search direction is a linear combination of the gradient at the current and the previous steps. An attractive property of this method is that the generated directions are always descent. Under some appropriate conditions, we show that the proposed method converges globally. Numerical experiments on some unconstrained minimization problems from CUTEr library are reported, which illustrate that the proposed method is promising