Projection free methods on product domains

Abstract

Projection-free block-coordinate methods avoid high computational cost per iteration, and at the same time exploit the particular problem structure of product domains. Frank–Wolfe-like approaches rank among the most popular ones of this type. However, as observed in the literature, there was a gap between the classical Frank–Wolfe theory and the block-coordinate case, with no guarantees of linear convergence rates even for strongly convex objectives in the latter. Moreover, most of previous research concentrated on convex objectives. This study now deals also with the non-convex case and reduces above-mentioned theory gap, in combining a new, fully developed convergence theory with novel active set identification results which ensure that inherent sparsity of solutions can be exploited in an efficient way. Preliminary numerical experiments seem to justify our approach and also show promising results for obtaining global solutions in the non-convex case.