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Main Authors: Chen, Xiaojun, Kelley, C. T., Wang, Lei
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.07961
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author Chen, Xiaojun
Kelley, C. T.
Wang, Lei
author_facet Chen, Xiaojun
Kelley, C. T.
Wang, Lei
contents This paper studies the complexity of projected gradient descent methods for a class of strongly convex constrained optimization problems where the objective function is expressed as a summation of $m$ component functions, each possessing a gradient that is Hölder continuous with an exponent $α_i \in (0, 1]$. Under this formulation, the gradient of the objective function may fail to be globally Hölder continuous, thereby rendering existing complexity results inapplicable to this class of problems. Our theoretical analysis reveals that, in this setting, the complexity of projected gradient methods is determined by $\hatα = \min_{i \in \{1, \dotsc, m\}} α_i$. We first prove that, with an appropriately fixed stepsize, the complexity bound for finding an approximate minimizer with a distance to the true minimizer less than $\varepsilon$ is $O (\log (\varepsilon^{-1}) \varepsilon^{2 (\hatα - 1) / (1 + \hatα)})$, which extends the well-known complexity result for $\hatα = 1$. Next we show that the complexity bound can be improved to $O (\log (\varepsilon^{-1}) \varepsilon^{2 (\hatα - 1) / (1 + 3 \hatα)})$ if the stepsize is updated by the universal scheme. We illustrate our complexity results by numerical examples arising from elliptic equations with a non-Lipschitz term.
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institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
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spellingShingle Complexity of Projected Gradient Methods for Strongly Convex Optimization with Hölder Continuous Gradient Terms
Chen, Xiaojun
Kelley, C. T.
Wang, Lei
Optimization and Control
This paper studies the complexity of projected gradient descent methods for a class of strongly convex constrained optimization problems where the objective function is expressed as a summation of $m$ component functions, each possessing a gradient that is Hölder continuous with an exponent $α_i \in (0, 1]$. Under this formulation, the gradient of the objective function may fail to be globally Hölder continuous, thereby rendering existing complexity results inapplicable to this class of problems. Our theoretical analysis reveals that, in this setting, the complexity of projected gradient methods is determined by $\hatα = \min_{i \in \{1, \dotsc, m\}} α_i$. We first prove that, with an appropriately fixed stepsize, the complexity bound for finding an approximate minimizer with a distance to the true minimizer less than $\varepsilon$ is $O (\log (\varepsilon^{-1}) \varepsilon^{2 (\hatα - 1) / (1 + \hatα)})$, which extends the well-known complexity result for $\hatα = 1$. Next we show that the complexity bound can be improved to $O (\log (\varepsilon^{-1}) \varepsilon^{2 (\hatα - 1) / (1 + 3 \hatα)})$ if the stepsize is updated by the universal scheme. We illustrate our complexity results by numerical examples arising from elliptic equations with a non-Lipschitz term.
title Complexity of Projected Gradient Methods for Strongly Convex Optimization with Hölder Continuous Gradient Terms
topic Optimization and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.07961