Zeroth-Order Nonsmooth Nonconvex Optimization with Convex Liftings and Its Application to State-Feedback $H_\infty$ Policy Optimization

Abstract: Direct policy optimization is widely used in reinforcement learning and control, but generally leads to nonconvex optimization problems. For state-feedback $H_\infty$ control, the policy objective is also nonsmooth, despite possessing a benign landscape whose hidden convexity can be revealed by the recently developed extended convex lifting framework. Motivated by recent advances in hidden convex optimization, we study zeroth-order optimization of nonsmooth, nonconvex problems admitting a convex lifting. We propose a zeroth-order proximal point algorithm: An inexact proximal-point outer loop constructs strongly convex subproblems, while an inner loop approximately solves each subproblem using only function evaluations. With probability at least $1-δ$, our proposed algorithm returns an $ε$-optimal solution using $\widetilde{O}\left(dε<sup>{-3}\right)$ function evaluations, while all iterates remain feasible without explicit projection. Finally, we verify that the assumptions underlying our analysis hold for discrete-time state-feedback $H_\infty$ policy optimization, yielding an oracle complexity of $\widetilde{O}\left(n_u n_xε<sup>{-3}\right)$ for attaining a prescribed objective value gap, where $n_u\times n_x$ is the dimension of the feedback gain to be optimized over.