A Geometric Integration Approach to Nonsmooth, Nonconvex Optimisation

The optimisation of nonsmooth, nonconvex functions without access to gradients is a particularly challenging problem that is frequently encountered, for example in model parameter optimisation problems. Bilevel optimisation of parameters is a standard setting in areas such as variational regularisation problems and supervised machine learning. We present efficient and robust derivative-free methods called randomised Itoh–Abe methods. These are generalisations of the Itoh–Abe discrete gradient method, a well-known scheme from geometric integration, which has previously only been considered in the smooth setting. We demonstrate that the method and its favourable energy dissipation properties are well defined in the nonsmooth setting. Furthermore, we prove that whenever the objective function is locally Lipschitz continuous, the iterates almost surely converge to a connected set of Clarke stationary points. We present an implementation of the methods, and apply it to various test problems. The numerical results indicate that the randomised Itoh–Abe methods can be superior to state-of-the-art derivative-free optimisation methods in solving nonsmooth problems while still remaining competitive in terms of efficiency.

Constrained nonsmooth problems of the calculus of variations

The paper is devoted to an analysis of optimality conditions for nonsmooth multidimensional problems of the calculus of variations with various types of constraints, such as additional constraints at the boundary and isoperimetric constraints. To derive optimality conditions, we study generalised concepts of differentiability of nonsmooth functions called codifferentiability and quasidifferentiability. Under some natural and easily verifiable assumptions we prove that a nonsmooth integral functional defined on the Sobolev space is continuously codifferentiable and compute its codifferential and quasidifferential. Then we apply general optimality conditions for nonsmooth optimisation problems in Banach spaces to obtain optimality conditions for nonsmooth problems of the calculus of variations. Through a series of simple examples we demonstrate that our optimality conditions are sometimes better than existing ones in terms of various subdifferentials, in the sense that our optimality conditions can detect the non-optimality of a given point, when subdifferential-based optimality conditions fail to disqualify this point as non-optimal.

A parameter-free unconstrained reformulation for nonsmooth problems with convex constraints

In the present paper we propose to rewrite a nonsmooth problem subjected to convex constraints as an unconstrained problem. We show that this novel formulation shares the same global and local minima with the original constrained problem. Moreover, the reformulation can be solved with standard nonsmooth optimization methods if we are able to make projections onto the feasible sets. Numerical evidence shows that the proposed formulation compares favorably against state-of-art approaches. Code can be found at https://github.com/jth3galv/dfppm.

Fast High-Order Difference Scheme for the Modified Anomalous Subdiffusion Equation Based on Fast Discrete Sine Transform

The modified anomalous subdiffusion equation plays an important role in the modeling of the processes that become less anomalous as time evolves. In this paper, we consider the efficient difference scheme for solving such time-fractional equation in two space dimensions. By using the modified L1 method and the compact difference operator with fast discrete sine transform technique, we develop a fast Crank-Nicolson compact difference scheme which is proved to be stable with the accuracy of O τ min 1 + α , 1 + β + h 4 . Here, α and β are the fractional orders which both range from 0 to 1, and τ and h are, respectively, the temporal and spatial stepsizes. We also consider the method of adding correction terms to efficiently deal with the nonsmooth problems. Numerical examples are provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

Classification of Chaotic Signals of the Recurrence Matrix Using a Convolutional Neural Network and Verification through the Lyapunov Exponent

This study classified chaotic time series data, including smooth and nonsmooth problems in a dynamic system, using a convolutional neural network (CNN) and verified it through the Lyapunov exponent. For this, the classical nonlinear differential equation by the Lorenz model was used to analyze a smooth dynamic system. The vibro-impact model was used for the nonsmooth dynamic system. Recurrence is a fundamental property of a dynamic system, and a recurrence plot is a representative method to visualize the recurrence characteristics of reconstructed phase space. Therefore, this study calculated the Lyapunov exponent by parametric analysis and visualized the corresponding recurrence matrix to show the dynamic characteristics as an image. In addition, the dynamic characteristics were classified using the proposed CNN model. The proposed CNN model determined chaos with an accuracy of more than 92%.