Limited Memory BFGS Method for Least Squares Semidefinite Programming with Banded Structure

This work is intended to solve the least squares semidefinite program with a banded structure. A limited memory BFGS method is presented to solve this structured program of high dimension. In the algorithm, the inverse power iteration and orthogonal iteration are employed to calculate partial eigenvectors instead of full decomposition of n × n matrices. One key feature of the algorithm is that it is proved to be globally convergent under inexact gradient information. Preliminary numerical results indicate that the proposed algorithm is comparable with the inexact smoothing Newton method on some large instances of the structured problem.