Singularity theory for nonlinear optimization problems (Q1092622)

The paper deals with the theory of singularities of smooth mappings and its application to the study of reduction of nonlinear optimization problems to simpler forms. In generate singularity theory applied to a smooth function \(f: R^ n\to R^ m\) with a critical point at the origin addresses issues of determining, unfolding and classification. While the catastrophe theory solves these three problems for \(m=1\), its generalization to singularity theory handles the determinacy and unfolding issues and provides good information about the classification problem for small m and n. In the current work, these results are used in an applied setting for handling certain types of nonlinear optimization problems. In particular, various results of singularity theory are summarized and then applied to solving the above three problems for \(m=1\). This is followed by a discussion of how these results can be applied to nonlinear programming by highlighting the constraint space simplification, sensitivity analysis and unfoldings, and transitivity of Kuhn-Tucker conditions.