Existence and solution methods for equilibria

Equilibrium problems provide a mathematical framework which includes optimization, variational inequalities, fixed-point and saddle point problems, and noncooperative games as particular cases. This general format received an increasing interest in the last decade mainly because many theoretical and algorithmic results developed for one of these models can be often extended to the others through the unifying language provided by this common format. This survey paper aims at covering the main results concerning the existence of equilibria and the solution methods for finding them

A first-order stochastic primal-dual algorithm with correction step

We investigate the convergence properties of a stochastic primal-dual splitting algorithm for solving structured monotone inclusions involving the sum of a cocoercive operator and a composite monotone operator. The proposed method is the stochastic extension to monotone inclusions of a proximal method studied in {\em Y. Drori, S. Sabach, and M. Teboulle, A simple algorithm for a class of nonsmooth convex-concave saddle-point problems, 2015} and {\em I. Loris and C. Verhoeven, On a generalization of the iterative soft-thresholding algorithm for the case of non-separable penalty, 2011} for saddle point problems. It consists in a forward step determined by the stochastic evaluation of the cocoercive operator, a backward step in the dual variables involving the resolvent of the monotone operator, and an additional forward step using the stochastic evaluation of the cocoercive introduced in the first step. We prove weak almost sure convergence of the iterates by showing that the primal-dual sequence generated by the method is stochastic quasi Fej\'er-monotone with respect to the set of zeros of the considered primal and dual inclusions. Additional results on ergodic convergence in expectation are considered for the special case of saddle point models

Variable Metric Forward-Backward Splitting with Applications to Monotone Inclusions in Duality

We propose a variable metric forward-backward splitting algorithm and prove its convergence in real Hilbert spaces. We then use this framework to derive primal-dual splitting algorithms for solving various classes of monotone inclusions in duality. Some of these algorithms are new even when specialized to the fixed metric case. Various applications are discussed

The generalized bregman distance

Recently, a new kind of distance has been introduced for the graphs of two point-to-set operators, one of which is maximally monotone. When both operators are the subdifferential of a proper lower semicontinuous convex function, this kind of distance specializes under modest assumptions to the classical Bregman distance. We name this new kind of distance the generalized Bregman distance, and we shed light on it with examples that utilize the other two most natural representative functions: the Fitzpatrick function and its conjugate. We provide sufficient conditions for convexity, coercivity, and supercoercivity: properties which are essential for implementation in proximal point type algorithms. We establish these results for both the left and right variants of this new kind of distance. We construct examples closely related to the Kullback-Leibler divergence, which was previously considered in the context of Bregman distances and whose importance in information theory is well known. In so doing, we demonstrate how to compute a difficult Fitzpatrick conjugate function, and we discover natural occurrences of the Lambert \scrW function, whose importance in optimization is of growing interest. © 2021 Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematic

Multi-valued, singular stochastic evolution inclusions

We provide an abstract variational existence and uniqueness result for multi-valued, monotone, non-coercive stochastic evolution inclusions in Hilbert spaces with general additive and Wiener multiplicative noise. As examples we discuss certain singular diffusion equations such as the stochastic 1-Laplacian evolution (total variation flow) in all space dimensions and the stochastic singular fast diffusion equation. In case of additive Wiener noise we prove the existence of a unique weak-* mean ergodic invariant measure.Comment: 39 pages, in press: J. Math. Pures Appl. (2013