Krylov Methods for Low-Rank Regularization

TL;DR

This paper develops efficient Krylov-based algorithms for low-rank regularization in large-scale linear inverse problems, improving computational efficiency and solution quality over existing methods.

Contribution

It introduces a novel Krylov method leveraging reweighted norms and Kronecker properties for nuclear norm regularization, with adaptive parameter tuning and reformulation within flexible Krylov frameworks.

Findings

New solvers outperform existing methods in speed and accuracy.

Reweighted norm approach effectively enforces low-rank solutions.

Numerical experiments demonstrate improved reconstruction quality.

Abstract

This paper introduces new solvers for the computation of low-rank approximate solutions to large-scale linear problems, with a particular focus on the regularization of linear inverse problems. Although Krylov methods incorporating explicit projections onto low-rank subspaces are already used for well-posed systems that arise from discretizing stochastic or time-dependent PDEs, we are mainly concerned with algorithms that solve the so-called nuclear norm regularized problem, where a suitable nuclear norm penalization on the solution is imposed alongside a fit-to-data term expressed in the 2-norm: this has the effect of implicitly enforcing low-rank solutions. By adopting an iteratively reweighted norm approach, the nuclear norm regularized problem is reformulated as a sequence of quadratic problems, which can then be efficiently solved using Krylov methods, giving rise to an inner-outer iteration scheme. Our approach differs from the other solvers available in the literature in that: (a) Kronecker product properties are exploited to define the reweighted 2-norm penalization terms; (b) efficient preconditioned Krylov methods replace gradient (projection) methods; (c) the regularization parameter can be efficiently and adaptively set along the iterations. Furthermore, we reformulate within the framework of flexible Krylov methods both the new inner-outer methods for nuclear norm regularization and some of the existing Krylov methods incorporating low-rank projections. This results in an even more computationally efficient (but heuristic) strategy, that does not rely on an inner-outer iteration scheme. Numerical experiments show that our new solvers are competitive with other state-of-the-art solvers for low-rank problems, and deliver reconstructions of increased quality with respect to other classical Krylov methods.