Convergence to a second-order point of a trust-region algorithm with a nonmonotonic penalty parameter for constrained optimization

Abstract

In a recent paper (Ref. 1), the author proposed a trust-region algorithm for solving the problem of minimizing a nonlinear function subject to a set of equality constraints. The main feature of the algorithm is that the penalty parameter in the merit function can be decreased whenever it is warranted. He studied the behavior of the penalty parameter and proved several global and local convergence results. One of these results is that there exists a subsequence of the iterates generated by the algorithm that converges to a point that satisfies the first-order necessary conditions. In the current paper, we show that, for this algorithm, there exists a subsequence of iterates that converges to a point that satisfies both the first-order and the second-order necessary conditions.