1. Introduction
Throughout, let
H be a real Hilbert space endowed with inner product
and induced norm
. Let
be a closed and convex set. Let
be a bifunction. Recall that
f is said to be monotone if
f is said to be pseudomonotone if
Clearly, we have the inclusion relation:
.
In this paper, our research is associated with the equilibrium problem [
1] of seeking an element
such that
The solution set of the equilibrium problem in Equation (3) is denoted by
.
Equilibrium problems have been studied extensively in the literature (see, e.g., [
2,
3,
4,
5]). Many problems, such as variational inequalities [
6,
7,
8,
9,
10,
11,
12,
13,
14,
15], fixed point problems [
16,
17,
18,
19,
20,
21], and Nash equilibrium in noncooperative games theory [
1,
22], can be formulated in the form of Equation (3). An important method for solving Equation (3) is the proximal point method, which was originally introduced by Martinet [
23] and further developed by Rockafellar [
24] for finding a zero of maximal monotone operators. In 2000, Konnov [
25] extended the proximal point method to the monotone equilibrium problem. However, the proximal point method cannot be applied for solving the pseudomonotone equilibrium problem [
26].
Another basis algorithm for solving the equilibrium problem is the projection algorithm [
27]. However, the projection algorithm may fail to converge for the pseudomonotone monotone equilibrium problem. To overcome this disadvantage, the extragradient algorithm [
4] can be applied to solve the pseudomonotone equilibrium problem. More precisely, the extragradient algorithm generates a sequence
iteratively as follows
However, the main difficulty of the extragradient algorithm in Equation (4) is that, at each iterative step, it requires to solve two strongly convex programs. Consequently, the subgradient algorithm [
28,
29] has been proposed and developed for solving a large class of equilibrium problems that solves only one strongly convex program rather than two as in the extragradient algorithm, and the convergence results show the efficiency of the algorithms.
At the same time, to solve the equilibrium problem in Equation (3), the bifunction
f is always to be assumed to possess the following Lipschitz-type condition [
30]:
where
and
are two positive constants.
It should be pointed out that the condition in Equation (5), in general, is not satisfied. Moreover, even if the condition in Equation (5) holds, finding the constants and is not an easy task. To avoid this difficulty, one can merge in the algorithm, a linesearch procedure into the iterative step. The current study continues developing subgradient algorithms without Lipschitz-type condition for solving the equilibrium problem.
Another problem of interest is the fixed point problem of nonlinear operators. Recall that an operator
is said to be pseudocontractive if
and
S is called
L-Lipschitz if
for some
and for all
. If
, then
S is said to be nonexpansive.
It is easy to see that the class of pseudocontractive operators includes the class of nonexpansive operators. The interest in pseudocontractive operators [
2,
31] is due mainly to their connection with the important class of nonlinear monotone (accretive) operators.
The fixed point problem has numerous applications in science and engineering, and it includes the optimization problem [
32], the convex feasibility problem [
2], the variational inequality problem [
33], and so on. The fixed point problem can be solved by using iterative methods, such as the Mann method [
34], the Halpern method [
35], and the hybrid method [
36].
In this paper, we devote to study iterative algorithms for finding a common element of the set of solutions of the equilibrium problem and the set of fixed points of a wide class of nonlinear operators. The main motivation for considering such a common problem is due to its possible applications in network resource allocation, signal processing, and image recovery [
28,
37]. Recently, iterative algorithms for solving a common problem of the equilibrium problem and the fixed point problem have been investigated by many researchers [
28,
38,
39,
40]. Especially, Nguyen, Strodiot, and Nguyen [
41] (Algorithm 3) presented the following hybrid self-adaptive method, for solving the equilibrium and the fixed point problem:
Let and . Let and . Let and set .
Step 1. Compute and where m is the smallest nonnegative integer such that
Step 2. Calculate , where and if and otherwise.
Step 3. Calculate , where is nonexpansive.
Step 4. Compute , where
Step 5. Set and return to Step 1.
We observe that, in the above algorithm, f is assumed to be monotone, the involved operator is nonexpansive, and the construction of half-space is complicated.
The purpose of this paper is to improve and extend the main result in [
41] to a general case: (i) We consider the pseudomonotone equilibrium problem, that is,
f is assumed to be pseudomonotone. (ii) We extend
from the nonexpansive operator to the pseudocontractive operator which includes the nonexpansive operator as a special case. (iii) We adapt the half-space
to a simple form. We propose an iterative algorithm for seeking a common solution of the pseudomonotone equilibrium problem and fixed point of pseudocontractive operators. The suggested iterative algorithm is based on the projected method and subgradient method with a linearsearch technique. We show the strong convergence result for the iterative sequence generated by this algorithm.
The paper is organized as follows. In
Section 2, we collect several notations and lemmas that are used in the paper. In
Section 3, we adapt and suggest an iterative algorithm and prove its convergence. In
Section 4, we give some applications. Finally, a concluding remark is included.
2. Notations and Lemmas
Throughout, we assume that is a convex and closed subset of a real Hilbert space H. The following symbols are needed in the paper.
indicates the weak convergence of to as .
implies the strong convergence of to as .
means the set of fixed points of S.
.
Let be a function.
g is said to be proper if .
g is said to be lower semicontinuous if is closed for each .
g is said to be convex if for every and .
g is said to be -strongly convex if for every and .
Let
be a proper, lower semicontinuous, and convex function. Then, the subdifferential
of
g is defined by
for each
.
It is known that possesses the following properties:
- (i)
is a set-valued maximal monotone operator.
- (ii)
If g is -strongly convex (), then is -strongly monotone (i.e., ).
- (iii)
is a solution to the optimization problem
if and only if
, where
means the normal cone of
C at
defined by
Let be a bi-function satisfying the following assumptions:
- (f1):
for all ;
- (f2):
f is pseudomonotone on ;
- (f3):
f is jointly sequently weakly continuous on , where is an open convex set containing C (recall that f is called jointly sequently weakly continuous on , if and , then ); and
- (f4):
is convex and subdifferentiable for all .
For each , we use to denote the subdifferential of at x.
Recall that the metric projection
is an orthographic projection from
H onto
C, which possesses the following characteristic: for given
,
The following lemmas are used in the next section.
Lemma 1 ([
42])
. In a Hilbert space H, we have and . Lemma 2 ([
31])
. Assume that the operator is L-Lipschitz pseudocontractive. Then, for all and , we havewhere . The next lemma plays a critical role which can be considered as an infinite-dimensional version of Theorem 24.5 in [
43]. The proof can be found in [
44].
Lemma 3. Assume that the bi-function satisfies Assumptions (f3) and (f4). For given two points and two sequences and , if and , respectively, then, for any , there exist and verifyingfor every , where . The following lemma is the demi-closed principle of the pseudocontractive operator.
Lemma 4 ([
45]).
If the operator is continuous pseudocontractive, then:- (i)
the fixed point set is closed and convex; and
- (ii)
S satisfies demi-closedness, i.e., and as imply that .
Lemma 5 ([
46])
. For given a sequence and , if and for all , then . 3. Main Results
In this section, we first present our algorithm to solve the pseudomonotone equilibrium problem and fixed point problem and, consequently, we prove the convergence of the suggested algorithm, see Algorithm 1. Next, we state several assumptions on the underlying spaces, the involved operators, and the control parameters.
Assumptions:
- (A1):
is closed convex and is a given open set which contains C;
- (A2):
the function
satisfies Assumptions (f1)–(f4) stated in
Section 2 (under this condition
is closed and convex [
3]);
- (A3):
the operator is Lipschitz pseudocontractive with Lipschitz constant ;
- (A4):
the intersection ;
- (C1):
the sequence satisfies: with for all ;
- (C2):
the sequences and satisfy: ; and
- (C3):
and are two constants.
Algorithm 1: Let be an initial guess. |
- Step 1.
Set and compute . Set . - Step 2.
Assume that the current sequence has been given and then calculate - Step 3.
Compute by the following manner where takes the smallest nonnegative integer verifying - Step 4.
Calculate the sequence via - Step 5.
Calculate the next iterate by the following form - Step 6.
Set and return to Step 2.
|
Proposition 1. For each , we have Proof. According to Equation (8), by the definition of
, we have
It follows from Equation (14) that there exists
verifying
it yields that
By the definition of subgradient of
at
, we obtain
Combine Equations (15) and (16) to conclude the desired result. □
Remark 1. The search rule in Equation (10) is well-defined, i.e., there exists such that Equation (10) holds.
Proof. Case 1. . In this case, . Consequently, because of (f1). Thus, Equation (10) holds and .
Case 2.
. Suppose that the search rule in Equation (10) is not well-defined. Hence,
must violate the inequality in Equation (10), i.e., for every
, we have
Noting that
and letting
, we conclude that
as
. Thanks to Condition (f3), we deduce that
and
. This, together with Equation (17), implies that
Letting
in Equation (13) and noting that
, we deduce
Combine the above inequality and Equation (18) to derive that . Hence, , which is incompatible with the assumption. Consequently, the search rule in Equation (10) is well-defined. □
Remark 2. If , then and thus and is well-defined.
Proof. Suppose that
. Since
, from Equation (9),
. By using the convexity of
, we have
Substituting Equation (10) into the last inequality, we get On the other hand, by the assumption and the definition of the subdifferential, we deduce . Hence, , which is a contradiction. □
Proposition 2. The sequence generated by Equation (12) is well-defined.
Proof. Firstly, we prove by induction that
for all
.
is obvious. Suppose that
for some
. Pick up
. In the light of Equation (12) and Lemmas 1 and 2, we obtain
Since f is pseudomonotone and , . According to , by the subdifferential inequality, we have . It follows that .
Case 1.
. In terms of Equation (11), we get
Combining Equations (19) and (20), we obtain
and hence
.
Case 2. . In this case, and is obvious. Thus, for all .
Secondly, we show that is closed and convex for all . It is obvious that is closed and convex. Suppose that is closed and convex for some . For , note that is equivalent to . It is obvious that is nonempty, closed convex. Therefore, the sequence is well-defined. □
Proposition 3. and .
Proof. Since
, by the property in Equation (7) of the metric projection, for any
, we have
It yields
which, by selecting
, implies that the sequence
is bounded.
By terms of Equation (22), we have
due to
. Thus,
From Equation (23), we deduce
. Thus, the limit
exists, denoted by
q. This, together with Equation (24), implies that
. Thanks to the definition of
and
, we derive
. Hence,
By Equation (21), we obtain
It follows from Equation (26) that
□
Proposition 4. .
Proof. Selecting any
, there exists a subsequence
such that
. Set
for each
. Noting that
, then there exists
such that
Observe that
is
-strongly monotone because
is
-strongly convex due to the convexity of
. Thus, we have
where
.
Taking into account Equations (28) and (29), we obtain
Since
, by Lemma 3, for any
, there exist
and
such that
The above inclusion and Equation (30) yield that there exists
such that
for all
. This indicates that the sequence
is bounded owing to the boundedness of
. Then, there exists a subsequence of
, again denoted by
such that
. Consequently, by the definition of
, it is also bounded. Thus, there exists a subsequence of
, without loss of generality, still denoted by
that converges to
Applying Lemma 3, for any
, there exist
and
such that
Thus,
is bounded. This, together with Equation (25), implies
Next, we show
. We consider two cases. Case 1:
. According to Equation (13), we have
Since is sequently weakly continuous on the open set , letting in Equation (32), we deduce that , i.e., .
Case 2:
. By the convexity of
, we get
which results that
. Furthermore, from Equation (10), we have
Hence,
If
, then there exists a subsequence of
, still denoted by
, such that
. In the light of Equations (31) and (33), we conclude that
. In the case where
as
, let
be the smallest positive integers such that, for each
i,
where
.
Consequently,
must violate the above search rule in Equation (34), i.e.,
where
.
At the same time, by Equation (13), we obtain
From Equations (35) and (36), we have
Letting
in Equation (37) and noting that
,
and
, we deduce
It yields that . This, together with Equation (36), implies that . Consequently, . Again, applying Equation (13), we conclude that for all , i.e., .
Next, we show . Observe that by Equation (25) and thus . This, together with Lemma 4 and Equation (27), implies that . Thus, . □
Theorem 1. The iterate defined by Algorithm 1 converges strongly to .
Proof. First, by Conditions (A2) and (A4) and Lemma 4,
is nonempty, closed and convex. Hence,
is well-defined. Thanks to Equation (23), we deduce
By Proposition 4, we obtain . Hence, all conditions of Lemma 5 are fulfilled. Consequently, we conclude that by the conclusion of Lemma 5. □
Remark 3. In Algorithm 1, if S is nonexpansive, then the conclusion still holds. The construction of half-space in Algorithm 1 is simpler than that in [41]. Our result improves and extends the corresponding result in [41]. 4. Applications
In Equation (3), setting
, the EP in Equation (3) reduces to the following variational inequality (VI) of seeking
verifying
The solution set of the variational inequality in Equation (38) is denoted by .
In this case, solving strongly convex program
is converted to solve
. The Armijo-like assumption
can be expressed as
Consequently, we obtain the following algorithm for solving a common problem of the VI and the FPP, see Algorithm 2.
Theorem 2. Let be a closed convex and Δ be a given open set which contains C. Let be a pseudomonotone and jointly sequently weakly continuous operator. Let the operator be Lipschitz pseudocontractive with Lipschitz constant . Suppose that the intersection . Assume that Conditions (C1)–(C3) are satisfied. Then, the iterate defined by Algorithm 2 converges strongly to .
In Algorithm 2, setting
, the identity operator, then
and Condition (C2) reduces to Condition (C4):
. In this case, we have the following Algorithm 3 and corollary for solving the VI.
Algorithm 2: Let be an initial guess. |
- Step 1.
Set and compute . Set . - Step 2.
Assume that the current sequence has been given and then calculate - Step 3.
Compute by the following manner where takes the smallest nonnegative integer verifying - Step 4.
Calculate the sequence via - Step 5.
Calculate the next iterate by the following form - Step 6.
Set and return to Step 2.
|
Algorithm 3: Let be an initial guess. |
- Step 1.
Set and compute . Set . - Step 2.
Assume that the current sequence has been given and then calculate - Step 3.
Compute by the following manner where takes the smallest nonnegative integer verifying - Step 4.
Calculate the sequence via - Step 5.
Calculate the next iterate by the following form - Step 6.
Set and return to Step 2.
|
Corollary 1. Let be a closed convex and Δ be a given open set which contains C. Let be a pseudomonotone and jointly sequently weakly continuous operator. Suppose that . Assume that Conditions (C1), (C3), and (C4) are satisfied. Then, the iterate defined by Algorithm 3 converges strongly to .