Anderson acceleration of the proximal point method: the exact adaptive minimax, a spectral phase transition, and optimal safeguarding

Abstract

\noindent We study residual-polynomial acceleration of the proximal point method (PPM) for maximal monotone inclusions, with Anderson acceleration (AA) as the prototypical adaptive scheme. We answer three questions exactly. (i)~The minimax complexity over all adaptive methods is precisely $d_0/(K+1)$ per $K$ resolvent evaluations. The upper bound is attained by the averaged-reflection estimator; the matching lower bound uses an explicit skew-adjoint instance with resolvent eigenvalues at the roots of $u^{K+1}=-1$ and $\csc^2$-distributed masses, on which every degree-$K$ polynomial method satisfies $\|r(y_K)\|\ge 1/(K+1)$. The optimal polynomial is uniquely the Fej\'er kernel, and the same instance certifies a per-step floor. (ii)~A sharp phase transition separates regimes: Jackson-kernel polynomials achieve $O(d_0/(K^2 s))$ when the spectral floor $s$ satisfies $sK\to\infty$, while at the critical scale $s\asymp 1/K$ the barrier is exactly $1/(K+1)$. The picture extends to normal operators and the nonlinear family $M=S+N_C$. (iii)~On linear problems AA-PPM needs no safeguarding; on nonlinear problems certification of the $O(1/k)$ envelope requires exactly two oracle evaluations per iteration, and this factor is optimal. We also correct and complete the theory for structured problems---affine, strongly monotone, piecewise-affine, and H\"olderian growth---and confirm all predictions numerically.