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Linear Programming, LP, problems with finite optimal value have a zero duality gap and a primal–dual strictly complementary optimal solution pair. On the other hand, there exist Semidefinite Programming, SDP, problems which have a nonzero duality gap (different primal and dual optimal values; not both infinite). The duality gap is assured to be zero if a constraint qualification, e.g., Slater’s condition (strict feasibility) holds. Measures of strict feasibility, also called distance to infeasibility, have been used in complexity analysis, and, it is known that (near) loss of strict feasibility results in numerical difficulties. In addition, there exist SDP problems which have a zero duality gap but no strict complementary primal–dual optimal solution. We refer to these problems as hard instances of SDP. The assumption of strict complementarity is essential for asymptotic superlinear and quadratic rate convergence proofs. In this paper, we introduce a procedure for generating hard instances of SDP with a specified complementarity nullity (the dimension of the common nullspace of primal–dual optimal pairs). We then show, empirically, that the complementarity nullity correlates well with the observed local convergence rate and the number of iterations required to obtain optimal solutions to a specified accuracy, i.e., we show, even when Slater’s condition holds, that the loss of strict complementarity results in numerical difficulties. We include two new measures of hardness that correlate well with the complementarity nullity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of weak sharp minima is an important tool in the analysis of the perturbation behavior of certain classes of optimization problems as well as in the convergence analysis of algorithms designed to solve these problems. It has been studied extensively by several authors. This paper is the second of a series on this subject where the basic results on weak sharp minima in Part I are applied to a number of important problems in convex programming. In Part II we study applications to the linear regularity and bounded linear regularity of a finite collection of convex sets as well as global error bounds in convex programming. We obtain both new results and reproduce several existing results from a fresh perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract. This paper concerns with convergence properties of the classical proximal point algorithm for finding zeroes of maximal monotone operators in an infinite-dimensional Hilbert space. It is well known that the proximal point algorithm converges weakly to a solution under very mild assumptions. However, it was shown by Guler [11] that the iterates may fail to converge strongly in the infinite-dimensional case. We propose a new proximal-type algorithm which does converge strongly, provided the problem has a solution. Moreover, our algorithm solves proximal point subproblems inexactly, with a constructive stopping criterion introduced in [31]. Strong convergence is forced by combining proximal point iterations with simple projection steps onto intersection of two half spaces containing the solution set. Additional cost of this extra projection step is essentially negligible since it amounts, at most, to solving a linear system of two equations in two unknowns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]