First-order methods have been popularly used for solving large-scale problems. However, many existing works only consider unconstrained problems or those with simple constraint. In this paper, we develop two first-order methods for constrained convex programs, for which the constraint set is represented by affine equations and smooth nonlinear inequalities. Both methods are based on the classic augmented Lagrangian function. They update the multipliers in the same way as the augmented Lagrangian method (ALM) but employ different primal variable updates. The first method, at each iteration, performs a single proximal gradient step to the primal variable, and the second method is a block update version of the first one.

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We investigate some properties related to the generalized Newton method for the Fischer-Burmeister (FB) function over second-order cones, which allows us to reformulate the second-order cone complementarity problem (SOCCP) as a semismooth system of equations. Specifically, we characterize the B-subdifferential of the FB function at a general point and study the condition for every element of the B-subdifferential at a solution being nonsingular. In addition, for the induced FB merit function, we establish its coerciveness and provide a weaker condition than Chen and Tseng (Math. Program. 104:293327, 2005) for each stationary point to be a solution, under suitable Cartesian <i>P</i>-properties of the involved mapping. By this, a damped Gauss-Newton method is proposed, and the global and superlinear convergence results are obtained. Numerical results are reported for the second-order cone programs

Like the matrix-valued functions used in solutions methods for semidefinite programs (SDPs) and semidefinite complementarity problems (SDCPs), the vector-valued functions associated with second-order cones are defined analogously and also used in solutions methods for second-order-cone programs (SOCPs) and second-order-cone complementarity problems (SOCCPs). In this article, we study further about these vector-valued functions associated with second-order cones (SOCs). In particular, we define the so-called SOC-convex and SOC-monotone functions for any given function . We discuss the SOC-convexity and SOC-monotonicity for some simple functions, e.g., <i>f</i>(<i>t</i>) = <i>t</i> ² <i>t</i> ³ 1/<i>t</i> <i>t</i> ^1/2, |<i>t</i>|, and [<i>t</i>]₊. Some characterizations of SOC-convex and SOC-monotone functions are studied, and some conjectures about the relationship between SOC-convex and SOC-monotone functions are proposed.

It is well known that complementarity functions play an important role in dealing with complementarity problems. In this paper, we propose a few new classes of complementarity functions for nonlinear complementarity problems and second-order cone complementarity problems. The constructions of such new complementarity functions are based on discrete generalization which is a novel idea in contrast to the continuous generalization of FischerBurmeister function. Surprisingly, these new families of complementarity functions possess continuous differentiability even though they are discrete-oriented extensions. This feature enables that some methods like derivative-free algorithm can be employed directly for solving nonlinear complementarity problems and second-order cone complementarity problems. This is a new discovery to the literature and we believe that such new complementarity functions