Convergence of inexact descent methods for nonconvex optimization on Riemannian manifolds

Abstract: In this paper we present an abstract convergence analysis of inexact descent methods in Riemannian context for functions satisfying Kurdyka-Lojasiewicz inequality. In particular, without any restrictive assumption about the sign of the sectional curvature of the manifold, we obtain full convergence of a bounded sequence generated by the proximal point method, in the case that the objective function is nonsmooth and nonconvex, and the subproblems are determined by a quasi distance which does not necessarily coincide with the Riemannian distance. Moreover, if the objective function is $C^1$ with $L$-Lipschitz gradient, not necessarily convex, but satisfying Kurdyka-Lojasiewicz inequality, full convergence of a bounded sequence generated by the steepest descent method is obtained.