VA & Opt Webinar: Lyudmila Polyakova

Title: Smooth approximations of D.C. functions

Speaker: Lyudmila Polyakova (Saint-Petersburg State University)

Date and Time: May 5th, 2021, 17:00 AEST (Register here for remote connection via Zoom)

Abstract: An investigation of properties of difference of convex functions is based on the basic facts and theorems of convex analysis, as the class of convex functions is one of the most investigated among nonsmooth functions. For an arbitrary convex function a family of continuously differentiable approximations is constructed using the infimal convolution operation. If the domain of the considered function is compact then such smooth convex approximations are uniform in the Chebyshev metric. Using this technique a smooth approximation is constructed for the d.c. functions. The optimization properties of these approximations are studied.