A Unified Study of Necessary and Sufficient Optimality Conditions for Minimax and Chebyshev Problems with Cone Constraints

Abstract: We present a unified study of first and second order necessary and sufficient optimality conditions for minimax and Chebyshev optimisation problems with cone constraints. First order optimality conditions for such problems can be formulated in several different forms: in terms of a linearised problem, in terms of Lagrange multipliers (KKT-points), in terms of subdifferentials and normal cones, in terms of a nonsmooth penalty function, in terms of cadres with positive cadre multipliers, and in an alternance form. We describe interconnections between all these forms of necessary and sufficient optimality conditions and prove that seemingly different conditions are in fact equivalent. We also demonstrate how first order optimality conditions can be reformulated in a more convenient form for particular classes of cone constrained optimisation problems and extend classical second order optimality condition for smooth cone constrained problems to the case of minimax and Chebyshev problems with cone constraints. The optimality conditions obtained in this article open a way for a development of new efficient structure-exploiting methods for solving cone constrained minimax and Chebyshev problems.