In the paper [J.-S. Chen, S. Pan, A family of NCP-functions and a descent method for the nonlinear complementarity problem, Computational Optimization and Applications, 40 (2008) 389404], the authors proposed a derivative-free descent algorithm for nonlinear complementarity problems (NCPs) by the generalized FischerBurmeister merit function: p (a, b)= 1 2 [(a, b) p(a+ b)] 2, and observed that the choice of the parameter p has a great influence on the numerical performance of the algorithm. In this paper, we analyze the phenomenon theoretically for a derivative-free descent algorithm which is based on a penalized form of p and uses a different direction from that of Chen and Pan. More specifically, we show that the algorithm proposed is globally convergent and has a locally R-linear convergence rate, and furthermore, its convergence rate will become worse when the parameter p decreases

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 show that the gradient mapping of the squared norm of FischerBurmeister function is globally Lipschitz continuous and semismooth, which provides a theoretical basis for solving nonlinear second-order cone complementarity problems via the conjugate gradient method and the semismooth Newtons method.

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

The study of this paper consists of two aspects. One is characterizing the so-called circular cone convexity of f by exploiting the second-order differentiability of f L ; the other is introducing the concepts of determinant and trace associated with circular cone and establishing their basic inequalities. These results show the essential role played by the angle , which gives us a new insight when looking into properties about circular cone. MSC:26A27, 26B05, 26B35, 49J52, 90C33, 65K05.