In the paper, we consider a continuation approach for the binary quadratic program (BQP) based on a class of NCP-functions. More specifically, we recast the BQP as an equivalent minimization and then seeks its global minimizer via a global continuation method. Such approach had been considered in [11] which is based on the FischerBurmeister function. We investigate this continuation approach again by using a more general function, called the generalized FischerBurmeister function. However, the theoretical background for such extension can not be easily carried over. Indeed, it needs some subtle analysis.

This paper is devoted to the study of the proximal point algorithm for solving monotone and nonmonotone nonlinear complementarity problems. The proximal point algorithm is to generate a sequence by solving subproblems that are regularizations of the original problem. After given an appropriate criterion for approximate solutions of subproblems by adopting a merit function, the proximal point algorithm is verified to have global and superlinear convergence properties. For the purpose of solving the subproblems efficiently, we introduce a generalized Newton method and show that only one Newton step is eventually needed to obtain a desired approximate solution that approximately satisfies the appropriate criterion under mild conditions. The motivations of this paper are twofold. One is analyzing the proximal point algorithm based on the generalized Fischer-Burmeister function which includes the Fischer-Burmeister function as special case, another one is trying to see if there are relativistic change on numerical performance when we adjust the parameter in the generalized Fischer-Burmeister.

Merit function approach is a popular method to deal with complementarity problems, in which the complementarity problem is recast as an unconstrained minimization via merit function or complementarity function. In this paper, for the complementarity problem associated with <i>p</i>-order cone, which is a type of nonsymmetric cone complementarity problem, we show the readers how to construct merit functions for solving <i>p</i>-order cone complementarity problem. In addition, we study the conditions under which the level sets of the corresponding merit functions are bounded, and we also assert that these merit functions provide an error bound for the <i>p</i>-order cone complementarity problem. These results build up a theoretical basis for the merit method for solving <i>p</i>-order cone complementarity problem.

In this paper, we explore a unified way to construct smoothing functions for solving the absolute value equation associated with second-order cone (SOCAVE). Numerical comparisons are presented, which illustrate what kinds of smoothing functions work well along with the smoothing Newton algorithm. In particular, the numerical experiments show that the well known loss function widely used in engineering community is the worst one among the constructed smoothing functions, which indicates that the other proposed smoothing functions can be employed for solving engineering problems.

In this article, we extend two classes of merit functions for the second-order complementarity problem (SOCP) to infinite-dimensional SOCP. These two classes of merit functions include several popular merit functions, which are used in nonlinear complementarity problem, (NCP)/(SDCP) semidefinite complementarity problem, and SOCP, as special cases. We give conditions under which the infinite-dimensional SOCP has a unique solution and show that all these merit functions provide an error bound for infinite-dimensional SOCP and have bounded level sets. These results are very useful for designing solution methods for infinite-dimensional SOCP.