Hessian barrier algorithms for non-convex conic optimization

A key problem in mathematical imaging, signal processing and computational statistics is the minimization of non-convex objective functions that may be non-differentiable at the relative boundary of the feasible set. This paper proposes a new family of first- and second-order interior-point methods for non-convex optimization problems with linear and conic constraints, combining logarithmically homogeneous barriers with quadratic and cubic regularization respectively. Our approach is based on a potential-reduction mechanism and, under the Lipschitz continuity of the corresponding derivative with respect to the local barrier-induced norm, attains a suitably defined class of approximate first- or second-order KKT points with worst-case iteration complexity \(O(\varepsilon ^{-2})\) (first-order) and \(O(\varepsilon ^{-3/2})\) (second-order), respectively. Based on these findings, we develop new path-following schemes attaining the same complexity, modulo adjusting constants. These complexity bounds are known to be optimal in the unconstrained case, and our work shows that they are upper bounds in the case with complicated constraints as well. To the best of our knowledge, this work is the first which achieves these worst-case complexity bounds under such weak conditions for general conic constrained non-convex optimization problems.