Complexity Bounds for Smooth Convex Multiobjective Optimization

Abstract: We study the oracle complexity of finding $\varepsilon$-Pareto stationary points in smooth multiobjective optimization with $m$ objectives. The progress metric is the Pareto stationarity gap $\mathcal{G}(x)$ (the norm of an optimal convex combination of gradients). Our contributions are fourfold. (i) For strongly convex objectives, any span first-order method (iterates lie in the span of past gradients) exhibits linear convergence no faster than $\exp(-\Theta(T/\sqrt{\kappa}))$ after $T$ oracle calls, where $\kappa$ is the condition number, implying $\Theta(\sqrt{\kappa}\log(1/\varepsilon))$ iterations; this matches classical accelerated upper bounds. (ii) For convex problems and oblivious one-step methods (a fixed scalarization with pre-scheduled step sizes), we prove a lower bound of order $1/T$ on the best gradient norm among the first $T$ iterates. (iii) Although accelerated gradient descent is outside this restricted class, it is an oblivious span method and attains the same $1/T$ upper rate on a fixed scalarization. (iv) For convex problems and general span methods with adaptive scalarizations, we establish a universal lower bound of order $1/T^{2}$ on the gradient norm of the final iterate after $T$ steps, highlighting a gap between known upper bounds and worst-case guarantees. All bounds hold on non-degenerate instances with distinct objectives and non-singleton Pareto fronts; rates are stated up to universal constants and natural problem scaling.