Write and , with Euclidean adjoints determined by the chosen discretization and boundary conditions. Take the usual positive total generalized variation weights . Introduce a primal variable through
The support function of the row-ball product is a sum of row norms. Convex duality gives the equivalent augmented saddle problem
The equality follows by dualizing the row-ball constraint. With positive radii, strictly satisfies both row constraints, supplying the finite-dimensional qualification for this splitting. The original feasible dual set is compact and nonempty, and the quadratic primal term is coercive; saddle points exist. The TGV divergence splitting avoids the difficult projection onto .
Use the Chambolle–Pock algorithm. Choose with ; the sufficient bound is convenient. Initialize and , . For , compute
The dual update is a Euclidean projection onto a convex set onto ; the two primal updates are the quadratic proximal operator and radial soft thresholding. Their signs follow from . All substeps are closed form, and the standard finite-dimensional primal-dual convergence result applies to this saddle problem with the stated step-size condition. The iterates satisfy ; the additional constraint is enforced through the splitting at convergence, not claimed for every intermediate iterate. If a weight is zero, the corresponding row projection or support-function proximal step is interpreted directly rather than by division by zero.
For the Euclidean norm, rotational symmetry and minimizing the radial objective give the radial soft thresholding formula
Indeed, if , an optimal is a nonnegative scalar multiple of ; minimizing over gives . The gradient of a Moreau envelope is consequently
At this is , and the two expressions agree when . The Moreau envelope of the Euclidean norm itself is
Thus a quadratic core replaces the nondifferentiable tip while the outer gradient remains the normalized radial direction. The Euclidean norm has an unbounded effective domain, unlike the earlier bounded-domain hypothesis; the preceding argument explicitly shows that this restriction is unnecessary here.
Figure 1.
The absolute value and its Moreau envelope with tau equal to one, together with the continuous clipped gradient replacing the jump at the origin
.
For convex optimization, this Moreau–Yosida regularisation permits gradient descent and other methods for functions with a Lipschitz gradient, using a gradient Lipschitz constant . It approximates the norm uniformly: . Smaller improves approximation but makes the permitted gradient steps smaller. Minimizing alone preserves the minimizers and minimum value of ; replacing one term in a larger objective can shift the minimizer, so the smoothing parameter controls that approximation error.
TGV divergence splitting 2026-10-06
For a quadratic data term and divergence maps , the dual constraint can be split through . For a product of Euclidean row balls of radius , its support function is . The resulting saddle coupling is . The Chambolle–Pock algorithm then uses a row-ball projection, a quadratic proximal operator and radial soft thresholding, with no projection onto an intersection involving a divergence operator.