Continuous Dynamics Related to Monotone Inclusions and Non-Smooth Optimization Problems

Abstract

The aim of this survey is to present the main important techniques and tools from variational analysis used for first and second order dynamical systems of implicit type for solving monotone inclusions and non-smooth optimization problems. The differential equations are expressed by means of the resolvent (in case of a maximally monotone set valued operator) or the proximal operator for non-smooth functions. The asymptotic analysis of the trajectories generated relies on Lyapunov theory, where the appropriate energy functional plays a decisive role. While the most part of the paper is related to monotone inclusions and convex optimization problems in the variational case, we present also results for dynamical systems for solving non-convex optimization problems, where the Kurdyka-Łojasiewicz property is used.