The lifted Newton method and its application in optimization

We present a new “lifting” approach for the solution of nonlinear optimization problems (NLPs) that have objective and constraint functions with intermediate variables. Introducing these as additional degrees of freedom into the original problem, combined with adding suitable new constraints to ensu...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Albersmeyer, Jan (Author) , Diehl, Moritz (Author)
Format: Article (Journal)
Language:English
Published: 2010
In: SIAM journal on optimization
Year: 2010, Volume: 20, Issue: 3, Pages: 1655-1684
ISSN:1095-7189
DOI:10.1137/080724885
Online Access:Verlag, lizenzpflichtig, Volltext: https://doi.org/10.1137/080724885
Verlag, lizenzpflichtig, Volltext: https://epubs.siam.org/doi/10.1137/080724885
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Author Notes:Jan Albersmeyer and Moritz Diehl
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Summary:We present a new “lifting” approach for the solution of nonlinear optimization problems (NLPs) that have objective and constraint functions with intermediate variables. Introducing these as additional degrees of freedom into the original problem, combined with adding suitable new constraints to ensure equivalence of the problems, we propose to solve this augmented system instead of the original system by a Newton-type method. This often offers advantages in terms of convergence rates and region of attraction. The main contribution of this article is an efficient algorithmic trick to generate the quantities needed for a Newton-type method on the augmented (“lifted”) system with (a) almost no additional computational cost per iteration compared to a nonlifted Newton method, and (b) with negligible programming burden. We derive lifted schemes for Newton's method, as well as for constrained Gauss-Newton and adjoint based sequential quadratic programming (SQP) methods, and show equivalence of the new efficiently lifted approaches with “full-space” lifted Newton iterations. We establish conditions on the intermediate functions that imply faster local quadratic convergence for lifted versus nonlifted Newton iterations, a phenomenon often observed in practice but not yet explained theoretically. Finally, we compare numerically the behavior of the lifted approach with the nonlifted approach on several test problems, including a large scale example with 27 million intermediate variables. The algorithms and examples are available as open-source code in the C++ package LiftOpt.
Item Description:Gesehen am 16.11.2022
Physical Description:Online Resource
ISSN:1095-7189
DOI:10.1137/080724885