Iterative reweighted methods for $$\ell _1-\ell _p$$ minimization

In this paper, we focus on the \(\ell _1-\ell _p\) minimization problem with \(0ell _p\) norm being non-Lipschizian. In theory, we derive computable lower bounds for nonzero entries of the generalized first-order stationary points of \(\ell _1-\ell _p\) minimization, and hence of its local minimizers. In algorithms, based on three locally Lipschitz continuous \(\epsilon \)-approximation to \(\ell _p\) norm, we design several iterative reweighted \(\ell _1\) and \(\ell _2\) methods to solve those approximation problems. Furthermore, we show that any accumulation point of the sequence generated by these methods is a generalized first-order stationary point of \(\ell _1-\ell _p\) minimization. This result, in particular, applies to the iterative reweighted \(\ell _1\) methods based on the new Lipschitz continuous \(\epsilon \)-approximation introduced by Lu (Math Program 147(1–2):277–307, 2014), provided that the approximation parameter \(\epsilon \) is below a threshold value. Numerical results are also reported to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed methods.