Superquantile-Gibbs Relaxation for Minima-selection in Bilevel Optimization

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Masiha, Saeed, Shen, Zebang, Kiyavash, Negar, He, Niao
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Masiha, Saeed
Shen, Zebang
Kiyavash, Negar
He, Niao
author_facet Masiha, Saeed
Shen, Zebang
Kiyavash, Negar
He, Niao
contents Bilevel optimization (BLO) becomes fundamentally more challenging when the lower-level objective admits multiple minimizers. Beyond the unique-minimizer setting, two difficulties arise: (1) evaluating the hyper-objective $F_{\max}$ requires minima selection, i.e., optimizing over a potentially topologically disconnected set; (2) $F_{\max}$ can be discontinuous without structural assumptions. We show both can be circumvented under a local Polyak--Lojasiewicz (PL) condition (PL$^\circ$) on the lower-level objective. Under PL$^\circ$, $F_{\max}$ is Lipschitz continuous and, for every upper-level variable, the set of lower-level minimizers is topologically connected and a closed embedded submanifold of common intrinsic dimension $k$. This intrinsic dimension $k$, rather than the ambient one, governs BLO complexity. We give a method that finds an $(ε,ρ)$-Goldstein stationary point of $F_{\max}$ with at most $\mathcal{O}(m^{8k+11}ε^{-2}(ερ)^{-8k-10})$ gradient-oracle queries, where $m$ is the upper-level dimension. The key is a Superquantile--Gibbs relaxation that turns minima selection into a sampling problem solvable via Langevin dynamics. To our knowledge, this is the first work to rigorously treat minima selection in BLO and quantify how its complexity scales with the intrinsic dimensionality of the lower-level problem.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_05991
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Superquantile-Gibbs Relaxation for Minima-selection in Bilevel Optimization
Masiha, Saeed
Shen, Zebang
Kiyavash, Negar
He, Niao
Optimization and Control
Bilevel optimization (BLO) becomes fundamentally more challenging when the lower-level objective admits multiple minimizers. Beyond the unique-minimizer setting, two difficulties arise: (1) evaluating the hyper-objective $F_{\max}$ requires minima selection, i.e., optimizing over a potentially topologically disconnected set; (2) $F_{\max}$ can be discontinuous without structural assumptions. We show both can be circumvented under a local Polyak--Lojasiewicz (PL) condition (PL$^\circ$) on the lower-level objective. Under PL$^\circ$, $F_{\max}$ is Lipschitz continuous and, for every upper-level variable, the set of lower-level minimizers is topologically connected and a closed embedded submanifold of common intrinsic dimension $k$. This intrinsic dimension $k$, rather than the ambient one, governs BLO complexity. We give a method that finds an $(ε,ρ)$-Goldstein stationary point of $F_{\max}$ with at most $\mathcal{O}(m^{8k+11}ε^{-2}(ερ)^{-8k-10})$ gradient-oracle queries, where $m$ is the upper-level dimension. The key is a Superquantile--Gibbs relaxation that turns minima selection into a sampling problem solvable via Langevin dynamics. To our knowledge, this is the first work to rigorously treat minima selection in BLO and quantify how its complexity scales with the intrinsic dimensionality of the lower-level problem.
title Superquantile-Gibbs Relaxation for Minima-selection in Bilevel Optimization
topic Optimization and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.05991