{"ID":6537345,"CreatedAt":"2026-07-14T02:54:43.516908796Z","UpdatedAt":"2026-07-15T03:28:55.185153975Z","DeletedAt":null,"paper_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.11878","arxiv_id":"2607.11878","title":"Optimal Parameter-Free First-Order Methods for Convex Optimization with Unknown Growth and Smoothness","abstract":"We study deterministic first-order minimization of a convex function without prior knowledge of the objective's growth, smoothness regime, or associated parameters. We develop anytime, parameter-free bundle-level methods that adapt simultaneously to these unknown properties and attain best-known oracle complexities. For nonsmooth Lipschitz objectives satisfying quadratic growth, the proposed bundle-level W-certificate method (BLW) achieves the optimal complexity without requiring the growth modulus or target accuracy as input. We then introduce an accelerated variant, A-BLW. Without knowing the Hölder smoothness parameters, the quadratic-growth modulus, or the target accuracy, A-BLW attains the optimal rates in the nonsmooth, weakly smooth, and smooth regimes. Central to both methods is an affine W-certificate, a condition based on the descent-slowness of an affine minorant that converts the geometry of a bundle model into an optimality-gap guarantee under quadratic growth. A stopping-time analysis further shows that the same A-BLW algorithm, without modification, achieves the corresponding best-known rates for general convex objectives and for objectives satisfying Hölder growth of order at least two. Numerical experiments illustrate the practical performance of the proposed methods.","short_abstract":"We study deterministic first-order minimization of a convex function without prior knowledge of the objective's growth, smoothness regime, or associated parameters. We develop anytime, parameter-free bundle-level methods that adapt simultaneously to these unknown properties and attain best-known oracle complexities. Fo...","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.11878","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2607.11878v1","authors":"[\"Liwei Jiang\",\"Ke Tang\",\"Zhe Zhang\"]","published":"2026-07-13T17:57:45Z","proceeding":"math.OC","tasks":"[\"math.OC\"]","methods":"[]","has_code":false}