A mapping on an inner-product space is firmly nonexpansive when
Every firmly nonexpansive mapping is nonexpansive, and the resolvent of a maximal monotone operator is firmly nonexpansive.
The first-order subgradient inequality for a differentiable convex function gives
and, after interchanging and ,
Adding and rearranging yields
Thus the gradient is a monotone operator.
If , the defining equation becomes , so .
A map is firmly nonexpansive in the -inner product when
Put and . The two implicit equations give
Because is a monotone operator,
Therefore
which is precisely firm nonexpansiveness. In particular, the preconditioned proximal point algorithm map is nonexpansive in the norm induced by the positive-definite matrix .
Use the sign convention
for the Lagrangian function in constrained optimization. The Lagrangian dual problem is
where is the convex conjugate. For this convex problem with affine equality constraints, the stationarity and feasibility parts of the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker conditions are
They say exactly that the displayed operator satisfies
Thus its zeros are precisely the primal-dual optimal points, subject to the usual attainment assumptions.
For and , the Euclidean inner product gives
The last two terms cancel by the defining property of the matrix transpose, and the first is nonnegative by part a. Hence is a monotone operator.
Given a positive-definite matrix , the preconditioned proximal point map is
It is firmly nonexpansive in the weighted inner product whenever is monotone.
Proximal point algorithm 2026-09-28
The proximal point algorithm seeks a zero of a monotone operator by repeatedly applying its resolvent:
For , this is iteration of a proximal operator.