Nonconvex reformulations via low-rank factorization for stochastic convex semidefinite optimization problem have attracted arising attention due to their empirical efficiency and scalability. Compared with the original convex formulations, the nonconvex ones typically involve much fewer variables, allowing them to scale to scenarios with millions of variables. However, it opens a new challenge that under what conditions the nonconvex stochastic algorithms may find the population minimizer within the optimal statistical precision despite their empirical success in applications. In this paper, we provide an answer that the stochastic gradient descent (SGD) method can be adapted to solve the nonconvex reformulation of the original convex problem, with a global linear convergence when using a fixed step size, i.e., converging exponentially fast to the population minimizer within an optimal statistical precision in the restricted strongly convex case. If a diminishing step size is adopted, the bad effect caused by the variance of gradients on the optimization error can be eliminated but the rate is dropped to be sublinear. The core of our treatment relies on a novel second-order descent lemma, which is more general than the existing best result in the literature and improves the analysis on both online and batch algorithms. The developed theoretical results and effectiveness of the suggested SGD are also verified by a series of experiments.

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A surgery on a knot in 3-sphere is called SU(2)-cyclic if it gives a manifold whose fundamental group has no non-cyclic SU(2) representations. Using holonomy perturbations on the Chern-Simons functional, we prove that the distance of two SU(2)-cyclic surgery coefficients is bounded by the sum of the absolute values of their numerators. This is an analog of Culler-Gordon-Luecke-Shalen's cyclic surgery theorem.

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We investigate mirror symmetry for toric Calabi-Yau manifolds from the perspective of the SYZ conjecture. Starting with a non-toric special Lagrangian torus fibration on a toric Calabi-Yau manifold $X$, we construct a complex manifold $\check{X}$ using T-duality modified by quantum corrections. These corrections are encoded by Fourier transforms of generating functions of certain open Gromov-Witten invariants. We conjecture that this complex manifold $\check{X}$, which belongs to the Hori-Iqbal-Vafa mirror family, is inherently written in canonical flat coordinates. In particular, we obtain an enumerative meaning for the (inverse) mirror maps, and this gives a geometric reason for why their Taylor series expansions in terms of the K\"ahler parameters of $X$ have integral coefficients. Applying the results in \cite{Chan10} and \cite{LLW10}, we compute the open Gromov-Witten invariants in terms of local BPS invariants and give evidences of our conjecture for several 3-dimensional examples including $K_{\proj^2}$ and $K_{\proj^1\times\proj^1}$.