Proximal quasi-Newton methods for nondifferentiable convex optimization

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. The method is based on Rockafellar’s proximal point algorithm and a cutting-plane technique. At each step, we use an approximate proximal point p^a(x_k) of x_k to define a v_k∈∂_εkf(p^a(x_k)) with ε_k≤α∥v_k∥, where α is a constant. The method monitors the reduction in the value of ∥v_k∥ to identify when a line search on f should be used. The quasi-Newton step is used to reduce the value of ∥v_k∥. Without the differentiability of f, the method converges globally and the rate of convergence is Q-linear. Superlinear convergence is also discussed to extend the characterization result of Dennis and Moré. Numerical results show the good performance of the method.