Time-adaptive Lagrangian variational integrators for accelerated optimization

Abstract

A variational framework for accelerated optimization was recently introduced on normed vector spaces and Riemannian manifolds in ^[1] and ^[2]. It was observed that a careful combination of time-adaptivity and symplecticity in the numerical integration can result in a significant gain in computational efficiency. It is however well known that symplectic integrators lose their near-energy preservation properties when variable time-steps are used. The most common approach to circumvent this problem involves the Poincaré transformation on the Hamiltonian side, and was used in ^[3] to construct efficient explicit algorithms for symplectic accelerated optimization. However, the current formulations of Hamiltonian variational integrators do not make intrinsic sense on more general spaces such as Riemannian manifolds and Lie groups. In contrast, Lagrangian variational integrators are well-defined on manifolds, so we develop here a framework for time-adaptivity in Lagrangian variational integrators and use the resulting geometric integrators to solve optimization problems on vector spaces and Lie groups.