Finding Stationary Points by Comparisons

We study gradient testing and gradient estimation of smooth functions using only a comparison oracle that, given two points, indicates which one has the larger function value. For any smooth $f\colon\mathbb R^n\to\mathbb R$, $\mathbf{x}\in\mathbb R^n$, and $\varepsilon>0$, we design a gradient testing algorithm that determines whether the normalized gradient $\nabla f(\mathbf{x})/\|\nabla f(\mathbf{x})\|$ is $\varepsilon$-close or $2\varepsilon$-far from a given unit vector $\mathbf{v}$ using $O(1)$ queries, as well as a gradient estimation algorithm that outputs an $\varepsilon$-estimate of $\nabla f(\mathbf{x})/\|\nabla f(\mathbf{x})\|$ using $O(n\log(1/\varepsilon))$ queries which we prove to be optimal. Furthermore, we study gradient estimation in the quantum comparison oracle model where queries can be made in superpositions, and develop a quantum algorithm using $O(\log (n/\varepsilon))$ queries.

We study the query complexity of min-max optimization of a nonconvex-nonconcave function $f$ over $[0,1]^d \times [0,1]^d$. We show that, given oracle access to $f$ and to its gradient $\nabla f$, any algorithm that finds an $\varepsilon$-approximate stationary point must make a number of queries that is exponential in $1/\varepsilon$ or $d$.

We prove two lower bounds for the first order oracle complexity of minimizing a $d$-dimensional $1$-Lipschitz convex function over the unit ball with $m$ bits of memory. We first show that any such (possibly randomized) algorithm must make $\tildeΩ(\frac{d^2}{\sqrt{m}})$ oracle queries. For deterministic optimization algorithms, we show that $\tildeΩ(\min\{d^{1.6},\frac{d^{8/3}}{m^{2/3}}\})$ queries are required. For all memory regimes of interest, these improves upon the previous best known lower bounds of $\tildeΩ(\max\{\frac{d^{8/3}}{m^{4/3}},\frac{d^{4/3}}{m^{1/6}}\})$ and $\tildeΩ(\frac{d^{5/3}}{m^{1/3}})$ for randomized and deterministic algorithms respectively. Notably, due to existing upper bounds, our lower bound for deterministic algorithms is the first to show a sharp oracle complexity phase transition around $m\approx d^2$, where a polylogarithmic change in memory leads to a $\mathsf{poly}(d)$ change in the number of required oracle calls. Further, when the suboptimality is polynomially small in $d$, our lower bound randomized algorithms is the first to show that $\tildeΩ(d^2)$ memory is necessary to nearly match the optimal query complexity among algorithms without memory constraints. Previously, such a result was only known for the regime where the suboptimality is quasipolynomially small in $d$.