The proximal point algorithm in metric spaces

Abstract

The proximal point algorithm, which is a well-known tool for finding minima of convex functions, is generalized from the classical Hilbert space framework into a nonlinear setting, namely, geodesic metric spaces of nonpositive curvature. We prove that the sequence generated by the proximal point algorithm weakly converges to a minimizer, and also discuss a related question: convergence of the gradient flow.