Abstract
In this paper, we address a variational problem involving the sum of two maximal monotone operators combined with a finite family of nonexpansive operators. To solve this problem, we propose iterative algorithms based on single-valued mappings. First, we examine cases involving two or three maximal monotone operators, introducing novel algorithms to obtain their solutions. Secondly, we extend our analysis by applying the Ishikawa iterative scheme within the framework of fixed-point theory. This allows us to establish strong convergence results. Finally, we provide an illustrative example to demonstrate the effectiveness and applicability of the proposed methods.
MSC:
47H05; 47H10; 47J25
1. Introduction
Convex analysis, monotone operator theory, and the theory of nonexpansive mappings constitute the foundational pillars of nonlinear analysis; they are intricately connected through their shared mathematical structures. A wide range of practical minimization and variational problems can be elegantly reformulated as monotone inclusion problems, underscoring the unifying role these theories play in addressing complex mathematical challenges (see [1,2,3,4,5]).
One of the most classical problems in this framework is given as follows:
where is a real Hilbert space endowed with an inner product and associated norm , and A is a maximal monotone operator. This problem has attracted the attention of numerous researchers, notably Rockafellar (1976) (see [6]), who developed several iterative algorithms to approximate a solution set.
The set of zeros for operator A can be equivalently characterized as follows:
where for every , the operator
denotes the resolvent of A. Among the various algorithms proposed to approximate points in S, the well-known Mann iterative process (see [7,8]) is defined by the following:
and, under suitable assumptions of the sequence , it converges strongly to a fixed point of , which corresponds to a solution of the first inclusion problem defined at the beginning of this paper.
In this work, we extend this line of research by studying a more general problem formulated as follows:
where is an -inverse strongly monotone operator; is a -strongly monotone operator; and represents nonexpansive mappings on .
If for all , and both A and B are maximal monotone operators defined on a Hilbert space, the problem reduces to the well-studied case addressed by many authors (see [1,9,10,11,12]) using the Douglas–Rachford iterative algorithm (DRIA), defined by the following:
A. Beddani further introduced an alternative approach for finding (see [13,14]), through the following function:
If exists such that , then .
In our study, we adopt and generalize the Douglas–Rachford Splitting Algorithm (DRSA) to address problems involving both monotone and nonexpansive operators (see [15,16]). We introduce a new operator defined below,
and based on this formulation, we propose several iterative schemes. One of them is the Ishikawa-type iterative sequence (see [17]), which ensures strong convergence under appropriate conditions.
To establish these results, we first recall some preliminary concepts from convex analysis and monotone operator theory, which serve as the foundation for the proposed algorithms.
2. Preliminaries
2.1. Operators and Monotonicity
Let be a real Hilbert space, and let be a set-valued operator. We denote the domain of A by by the following:
We state that A has the full domain if . The range of A is defined as follows:
The graph of A is given by the following:
Let be a finite family of operators. Then the sum operator is defined as follows:
Definition 1
([18]). The operator A is said to be monotone if
Definition 2
([18]). The operator A is said to be -strongly monotone with if
An operator A is said to be nonexpansive if
Proposition 1
([1]). For all and , the following is true:
- If A is α-strongly monotone, then is -Lipschitz continuous.
- If A is α-inverse strongly monotone, then the Yosida approximation is -Lipschitz continuous.
Proposition 2
([19]).
Proposition 3
([19]). For any , , we have
2.2. Maximal Monotone Operators and Convex Functions
Operator A is said to be maximal monotone if it satisfies the following:
- A is monotone.
- If B is another monotone operator such that the graph of A (i.e., the set of all pairs ) is contained in the graph of B, then .
Let be convex subsets of a Hilbert space , and let be a function.
Definition 3
([15]). A function f is said to be convex if
If the inequality is strict for all , then f is called strictly convex. Moreover, f is said to be α-strongly convex if
Definition 4
([15]). Let be a convex function. The set
is called the subdifferential of f at x. The function f is said to be subdifferentiable at x if . An element of the subdifferential is called a subgradient.
A classical example of a maximal monotone operator is given by the subdifferential of the function defined on . The subdifferential of f is expressed as follows:
It can be verified that no monotone operator on properly contains . Consequently, is a maximal monotone operator.
Lemma 1
([20]). Given any maximal monotone operator A, a real number , and , we have if and only if .
Lemma 2
([17]). Let a real sequence satisfy the following condition:
where , , and , . Then, .
3. Main Result
In this section, we present our main results related to the problem under consideration. Our objective is to address and solve various cases of the following monotone inclusion problem:
where is -inverse strongly monotone operator; is -strongly monotone; and represents a finite family of nonexpansive operators .
Let us define the operator , and S as follows:
First, we aim to study the problem defined by the sum of two maximally monotone opertaors, A and B, both defined on a Hilbert space . This problem can be formulated as follows. Find element such that
So, let us propose a simple algorithm using the Yosida approximation, which can be used to solve (2).
Proposition 4.
For any , , we have
Proof.
Let , , and we have
which is equivalent to
after simplifying
Therefore,
so we conclude that
This completes the proof. □
Proposition 5.
Let and define the operator by
If is a fixed point of , then is a solution of the monotone inclusion problem (2).
Proof.
Assume that is a fixed point of . By definition, this implies the following:
Subtracting from both sides, we obtain
Let us define . Then,
Substituting these into the previous equation gives the following:
Thus, we have
which means that z is a solution of the monotone inclusion (2), as claimed. □
Theorem 1.
We now turn to the study of the principal problem (1).
Theorem 2.
For all , if if , then .
Proof.
Let be a fixed point of , so
This completes the proof. □
3.1. Algorithm 1
In this algorithm, we impose an additional condition on the family , which is that the operators must be bijective.
Proposition 6.
For all , if , then the system defined as follows:
which has the solution .
Proof.
Let , then exist such that ; this implies
Let us propose,
Therefore,
Consequently,
This implies that is the solution of (3). □
Theorem 3.
Proof.
Let us assume that the last system converges to in so we have
Therefore,
Then,
After simplifying,
We have also, .
Consequently,
So we conclude that is the fixed point of , which proves that is the solution of (1). □
Below we will examine the case when , so the problem (1) is defined as follows. Find an element x in the Hilbert space such that
where A and B are two maximal monotone operators defined on Hilbert space and C is a nonexpansive single valued mapping also defined on . Then the algorithm is defined as follows:
3.2. Algorithm 2
Proposition 7.
Let be a finite family of nonexpansive operators defined on H, where A is α-inverse strongly monotone operator and B is a β-strongly monotone operator defined on a real Hilbert space. For all , and , is a L-lipschitzian operator where
Proof.
□
Theorem 4.
For all λ, α and β are positive real numbers if , and , where . Then, is contractive mapping.
Proof.
If is contractive, then the inequality satisfies the following:
After simplification, the next step is to solve the resulting polynomial inequality involving parameters , n, and :
where we have
This implies
Hence, we deduce the following conditions:
This completes the proof. □
In this part, we modify the Ishikawa algorithm to achieve faster convergence of our sequence . Accordingly, we present the following theorem that defines the modified algorithm:
Theorem 5.
Let be a real Hilbert space and be a closed convex subspace of . Let be contractive mapping. Let be a sequence defined iteratively for each integer by
where and are sequences of positive numbers satisfying the following conditions:
- ,
- ,
- .
If converges, then it converges to a unique fixed point of .
3.3. Convergence Analysis
Ishikawa has shown that for any points x, y, z in a Hilbert space and any real number , the following is true:
Let be a fixed point of , then we have
From the contraction condition we have
On the other hand,
which expands to
Similarly, we can express the following:
Moreover, we have the following inequality:
Thus,
This shows that is decreasing for all sufficiently large k. There exists a subsequence of such that
Now, we show that is a Cauchy sequence. Indeed,
Taking the limit as , we have
Thus, is a Cauchy sequence, and hence, convergent.
Call the limit . Then,
Using the contraction of , we have
Taking the limit as , we obtain the following:
Hence, we conclude that
Taking the limit as , we deduce that , i.e., . Now, we aim to prove that the sequence converges to the unique fixed point of .
We know that
Suppose that ; then,
On the other hand,
And similarly,
Hence (13) can be rewritten as follows:
However, we also have
Given that , , , and , there exists a natural number N such that for ,
Thus, for , we have
where .
From the boundedness of C, it follows that is bounded. Therefore, we conclude that
From Lemma 2, we conclude that . This completes the proof.
3.4. Maximal Monotone Operators and Minimization Problem
We consider the following composite convex optimization problem:
where
- is a continuously differentiable function with a Lipschitz continuous gradient, i.e., is 1-Lipschitz;
- G and H are convex, closed, and proper functions.
Proposition 8.
Let , and . Then, the minimization problem (18) is equivalent to finding a zero of the sum of maximal monotone operators; that is,
3.5. Example
Let f, G, and H be three real-valued functions defined on as follows:
We consider the following minimization problem:
Let us define the following monotone operators corresponding to the gradients of G, H, and f:
Then, the minimization problem above is equivalent to the inclusion problem:
We know the resolvents of the operators are given by the following:
and hence,
According to Theorem 5, we proceed by choosing the parameters:
Application of the Algorithm 2
We demonstrate single-valued mapping:
For , this becomes
We initialize the process as follows:
and define
Iteration Steps
At each iteration , we update the following:
These choices still satisfy the assumptions of Theorem 5 and ensure that the sequence converges to the unique fixed point of , which is
4. Conclusions
In conclusion, problem (1) has been extensively studied by numerous authors under various settings. The research began with the case of finding the zeros of a single maximal monotone operator and was later extended to the case involving the sum of two maximal monotone operators, where several authors proposed generalized algorithms.
In our work, we studied problem (1) under different scenarios and proposed several algorithms that contributed to its solution. We also support our theoretical results with a set of simple numerical examples, illustrating the convergence of the sequences proposed in this paper to the same solution of the problem.
Nevertheless, the development of alternative algorithms under suitable conditions that can efficiently handle this class of problems remains an open area of research, providing valuable opportunities for further exploration and advancement.
Author Contributions
Writing—original draft, A.B. (Ali Berrailes) and A.B. (Abdallah Beddani). All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding
This research received no external funding.
Data Availability Statement
No new data were created or analyzed in this study. Data sharing is not applicable to this article.
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
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