Analogous to the nonlinear complementarity problem and the semi-definite complementarity problem, a popular approach to solving the second-order cone complementarity problem (SOCCP) is to reformulate it as an unconstrained minimization of a certain merit function over R n. In this paper, we present a descent method for solving the unconstrained minimization reformulation of the SOCCP which is based on the FischerBurmeister merit function (FBMF) associated with second-order cone [J.-S. Chen, P. Tseng, An unconstrained smooth minimization reformulation of the second-order cone complementarity problem, Math. Programming 104 (2005) 293327], and prove its global convergence. Particularly, we compare the numerical performance of the method for the symmetric affine SOCCP generated randomly with the FBMF approach [J.-S. Chen, P. Tseng, An unconstrained smooth minimization reformulation

We investigate a one-parametric class of merit functions for the second-order cone complementarity problem (SOCCP) which is closely related to the popular FischerBurmeister (FB) merit function and natural residual merit function. In fact, it will reduce to the FB merit function if the involved parameter <i></i> equals 2, whereas as <i></i> tends to zero, its limit will become a multiple of the natural residual merit function. In this paper, we show that this class of merit functions enjoys several favorable properties as the FB merit function holds, for example, the smoothness. These properties play an important role in the reformulation method of an unconstrained minimization or a nonsmooth system of equations for the SOCCP. Numerical results are reported for some convex second-order cone programs (SOCPs) by solving the unconstrained minimization reformulation of the KKT optimality conditions, which indicate that the

We consider the Tikhonov regularization method for the second-order cone complementarity problem (SOCCP) with the Cartesian P 0-property. We show that many results of the regularization method for the P 0-nonlinear complementarity problem still hold for this important class of nonmonotone SOCCP. For example, under the more general setting, every regularized problem has the unique solution, and the solution trajectory generated is bounded if the original SOCCP has a nonempty and bounded solution set. We also propose an inexact regularization algorithm by solving the sequence of regularized problems approximately with the merit function approach based on FischerBurmeister merit function, and establish the convergence result of the algorithm. Preliminary numerical results are also reported, which verify the favorable theoretical properties of the proposed method.

Abstract Recently, J.-S. Chen and P. Tseng extended two merit functions for the nonlinear complementarity problem (NCP) and the semidefinite complementarity problem (SDCP) to the second-order cone commplementarity problem (SOCCP) and showed several favorable properties. In this paper, we extend a merit function for the NCP studied by Yamada, Yamashita, and Fukushima to the SOCCP and show that the SOCCP is equivalent to an unconstrained smooth minimization via this new merit function. Furthermore, we study conditions under which the new merit function provides a global error bound which plays an important role in analyzing the convergence rate of iterative methods for solving the SOCCP; and conditions under which the new merit function has bounded level sets which ensures that the sequence generated by a descent method has at least one accumulation point.

In this paper, we extend the one-parametric class of merit functions proposed by Kanzow and Kleinmichel [C. Kanzow, H. Kleinmichel, A new class of semismooth Newton-type methods for nonlinear complementarity problems, Comput. Optim. Appl. 11 (1998) 227251] for the nonnegative orthant complementarity problem to the general symmetric cone complementarity problem (SCCP). We show that the class of merit functions is continuously differentiable everywhere and has a globally Lipschitz continuous gradient mapping. From this, we particularly obtain the smoothness of the FischerBurmeister merit function associated with symmetric cones and the Lipschitz continuity of its gradient. In addition, we also consider a regularized formulation for the class of merit functions which is actually an extension of one of the NCP function classes studied by [C. Kanzow, Y. Yamashita, M. Fukushima, New NCP functions and