Beyond first-order methods for non-convex non-concave min-max optimization
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We propose a study of structured non-convex non-concave min-max problems which goes beyond standard first-order approaches. Inspired by the tight understanding established in recent works [Adil et al., 2022, Lin and Jordan, 2022b], we develop a suite of higher-order methods which show the improvements attainable beyond the monotone and Minty condition settings. Specifically, we provide a new understanding of the use of discrete-time p^th-order methods for operator norm minimization in the min-max setting, establishing an O(1/ϵ^2/p) rate to achieve ϵ-approximate stationarity, under the weakened Minty variational inequality condition of Diakonikolas et al. [2021]. We further present a continuous-time analysis alongside rates which match those for the discrete-time setting, and our empirical results highlight the practical benefits of our approach over first-order methods.
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