Optimal Spectral Design with Prior Information

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Kleywegt, Anton J., Milz, Johannes, Singh, Mohit, Xie, Weijun
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
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author Kleywegt, Anton J.
Milz, Johannes
Singh, Mohit
Xie, Weijun
author_facet Kleywegt, Anton J.
Milz, Johannes
Singh, Mohit
Xie, Weijun
contents We study a class of spectral design problems in which a prior positive semidefinite information matrix is updated by a sum of rank-one matrices constructed from chosen design vectors subject to a bound on their Euclidean norm. The objective of a spectral design problem is any symmetric convex function of the eigenvalues of the updated information matrix. This framework unifies classical optimal experimental design criteria, including A-, D-, and E-optimality. It also arises in model-based derivative-free optimization, where sampling directions determine the conditioning and accuracy of regression models. Although the objective is symmetric and convex in the eigenvalues, the optimization problem with design vectors/matrix as decision variables is nonconvex, and optimal solutions of their convex relaxations may not be feasible for the spectral design problem. We use tight eigenvalue relaxations to obtain a convex reformulation, and we apply the Schur--Horn theorem to construct a simple polynomial-time algorithm for solving the spectral design problem. We illustrate the optimal spectral designs computed by our algorithm. Moreover, a small set of numerical experiments shows the potential of spectral designs for derivative-free optimization.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_27837
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Optimal Spectral Design with Prior Information
Kleywegt, Anton J.
Milz, Johannes
Singh, Mohit
Xie, Weijun
Optimization and Control
We study a class of spectral design problems in which a prior positive semidefinite information matrix is updated by a sum of rank-one matrices constructed from chosen design vectors subject to a bound on their Euclidean norm. The objective of a spectral design problem is any symmetric convex function of the eigenvalues of the updated information matrix. This framework unifies classical optimal experimental design criteria, including A-, D-, and E-optimality. It also arises in model-based derivative-free optimization, where sampling directions determine the conditioning and accuracy of regression models. Although the objective is symmetric and convex in the eigenvalues, the optimization problem with design vectors/matrix as decision variables is nonconvex, and optimal solutions of their convex relaxations may not be feasible for the spectral design problem. We use tight eigenvalue relaxations to obtain a convex reformulation, and we apply the Schur--Horn theorem to construct a simple polynomial-time algorithm for solving the spectral design problem. We illustrate the optimal spectral designs computed by our algorithm. Moreover, a small set of numerical experiments shows the potential of spectral designs for derivative-free optimization.
title Optimal Spectral Design with Prior Information
topic Optimization and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.27837