Global Convergence of Algorithms with Nonmonotone Line Search Strategy in Unconstrained Optimization

In this paper we state some nonmonotone line search strategies for unconstrained optimization algorithms. Abstracting from the concrete line search strategy we prove two general convergence results. Using this theory we can show the global convergence of the BFGS method with nonmonotone line search strategy. In contrast to some former results about nonmonotone line search strategies, both our convergence results and their proofs are natural generalizations of known results for the monotone case. © 2002, birkhäuser verlag, basel.