The paper introduces a new convergence framework for solving distributionally robust optimization problems formulated as nonconvex, nonconcave minimax problems over a Euclidean space and a Riemannian manifold. It defines a "basin saddle point"—a locally defined Nash equilibrium—and proves that a Riemannian gradient ascent–descent algorithm converges to such points under a local Łojasiewicz growth condition. The authors apply this theory to a statistical risk DRO problem over Gaussian measures, deriving explicit convergence rates and constants in terms of data dimension, loss moments, and reference covariance.
arXiv:2209. 15130v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: We study a general matrix optimization problem with a fixed-rank positive semidefinite (PSD) constraint.
arXiv:2609. 17089v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: The choice of Riemannian metric can strongly influence the convergence of gradient-based optimization over covariance matrices.
arXiv:2607. 06723v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Most gradient-based optimization methods move parameters through a fixed background geometry, even when their internal states implicitly define changing notions of length, curvature, and preconditioning.
The paper develops a formal Riemannian framework for the Sinkhorn divergence, a debiased entropic optimal transport metric. It proves Hadamard differentiability of the Sinkhorn metric tensor, derives the Levi‑Civita covariant derivative, and obtains geodesic and parallel transport equations as ODEs on a fixed RKHS. Using Banach‑space ODE theory, the authors linearize these equations to establish √ n‑consistent Gaussian limits for plug‑in estimators of the exponential map, logarithmic map, parallel transport, and the induced Sinkhorn distance, and show bootstrap consistency for all these objects.
The paper presents a convergence analysis of the Wasserstein proximal algorithm without requiring geodesic convexity of the objective functional. By assuming a Wasserstein analog of the Euclidean Polyak–Łojasiewicz inequality, the authors prove that the algorithm achieves unbiased, linear convergence, improving on previous rates that required strong geodesic convexity. The analysis is extended to inexact proximal steps for geodesically semiconvex objectives, and numerical experiments show faster convergence than noisy gradient descent on mean‑field neural networks.
arXiv:2510. 01943v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Quasar-convex functions form a broad nonconvex class with applications to linear dynamical systems, generalized linear models, and Riemannian optimization, among others.
arXiv:2510. 21033v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: We develop a theory of iso-Riemannian optimization for problems constrained to learned data manifolds, a setting in which classical Riemannian optimization - and Riemannian gradient descent in particular - can be poorly suited.
When analyzing a manifold learning algorithm for data lying on a smooth, compact, connected Riemannian submanifold $(\mathcal{M}, g)$ of $\mathbb{R}^d$, a key estimate for the geodesic distance $d_g$ is that there exists $K > 0$ such that $0 \leq d_g(p, q)^2 - \|p-q\|^2 \leq K d_g(p, q)^4$ for all $p, q \in \mathcal{M}$. We observe that more generally, when $\mathcal{M}$ is equipped with a smooth symmetric divergence $D$ satisfying a non-degeneracy condition and $g$ is given by $g_p := \frac{1}{2}\mathrm{Hess}_p(D(p, \cdot))$ for all $p \in \mathcal{M}$, there exists $K > 0$ such that $\left| D(p, q) - d_g(p, q)^2 \right| \leq K d_g(p, q)^4$ for all $p, q \in \mathcal{M}$.
The paper introduces a Projected Riemannian Gradient Descent (RGD) algorithm for computing the Bures‑Wasserstein barycenter of positive definite matrices, achieving dimension‑independent linear convergence at unit step size. It resolves a previous dichotomy by showing that clipping eigenvalues to a fixed interval yields a closed‑form, non‑expansive projection in the BW metric, allowing the algorithm to match the empirical speed of unit‑step RGD while maintaining theoretical guarantees. The method also extends to the invariant matrix projection problem, providing a unified dimension‑independent analysis.
arXiv:2411. 15067v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: We investigate proximal descent methods, inspired by the minimizing movement scheme introduced by Jordan, Kinderlehrer and Otto, for optimizing entropy-regularized functionals on the Wasserstein space.
arXiv:2609. 13646v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: This work addresses decentralized online Riemannian optimization on Hadamard manifolds.
arXiv:2610.07228v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Natural gradient descent (NGD) underlies common methods in ML. For dually flat families, idealized NGD on the forward Kullback--Leibler objective fol...