Projected gradient descent accumulates at Bouligand stationary points

Abstract: This paper considers the projected gradient descent (PGD) algorithm for the problem of minimizing a continuously differentiable function on a nonempty closed subset of a Euclidean vector space. Without further assumptions, this problem is intractable and algorithms are only expected to find a stationary point. PGD generates a sequence in the set whose accumulation points are known to be Mordukhovich stationary. In this paper, these accumulation points are proven to be Bouligand stationary, and even proximally stationary if the gradient is locally Lipschitz continuous. These are the strongest stationarity properties that can be expected for the considered problem.