Karush-Kuhn-Tucker conditions
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In mathematics, the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker conditions (also known as the Kuhn-Tucker or the KKT conditions) are necessary for a solution in nonlinear programming to be optimal. It is a generalization of the method of Lagrange multipliers.
Let us consider the following nonlinear optimization problem:
where f(x) is the function to be minimized,
are the nonequality constraints and
are the equality constraints, and m and l are the number of nonequality and equality constraints, respectively.
The necessary conditions for inequality constrained problem were first published in the Masters thesis of William Karush[1], although they became renowned after a seminal conference paper by Harold W. Kuhn and Albert W. Tucker.[2]
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Suppose that the objective function, i.e., the function to be minimized, is
and the constraint functions are
and
. Further, suppose they are continuously differentiable at a point x * . If x * is a local minimum, then there exist constants
and
such that
In the necessary condition above, the dual multiplier λ may be zero. Such cases are referred to as degenerate or abnormal. The necessary condition then does not take into account the properties of the function, but only the geometry of constraints.
A number of regularity conditions exist which ensure that the solution is non-degenerate (i.e.
). These include:
- Linear independence constraint qualification (LICQ): the gradients of the active inequality constraints and the gradients of the equality constraints are linearly independent at x * .
- Mangasarian-Fromowitz constraint qualification (MFCQ): the gradients of the active inequality constraints and the gradients of the equality constraints are positive-linearly independent at x * .
- Constant rank constraint qualification (CRCQ): for each subset of the gradients of the active inequality constraints and the gradients of the equality constraints the rank at a vicinity of x * is constant.
- Constant positive linear dependence constraint qualification (CPLD): for each subset of the gradients of the active inequality constraints and the gradients of the equality constraints, if it is positive-linear dependent at x * then it is positive-linear dependent at a vicinity of x * . (
is positive-linear dependent if there exists
not all zero such that
) - Slater condition: for a problem with inequality constraints only, there exists a point x such that gi(x) < 0 for all

It can be shown that LICQ=>MFCQ=>CPLD, LICQ=>CRCQ=>CPLD, although MFCQ is not equivalent to CRCQ. In practice weaker constraint qualifications are preferred since they provide stronger optimality conditions.
Let the objective function
and the constraint functions
be convex functions and
be affine functions, and let there be a feasible point x * . If there exist constants
and
such that
then the point x * is a global minimum.
If we reconsider the optimization problem as a maximization problem with constant inequality constraints,
The value function is defined as:
(So the domain of V is
)
Given this definition, each coefficient, λi, is the rate at which the value function increases as ai increases. Thus if each ai is interpreted as a resource constraint, the coefficients tell you how much increasing a resource will increase the optimum value of our function f. This interpretation is especially important in economics and is used, for instance, in utility maximization problems.
- ^ W. Karush (1939). "Minima of Functions of Several Variables with Inequalities as Side Constraints". M.Sc. Dissertation. Dept. of Mathematics, Univ. of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois. . Available from http://wwwlib.umi.com/dxweb/details?doc_no=7371591 (for a fee)
- ^ Kuhn, H. W.; Tucker, A. W. (1951). "Nonlinear programming". Proceedings of 2nd Berkeley Symposium: 481-492, Berkeley: University of California Press.
- Avriel, Mordecai (2003). Nonlinear Programming: Analysis and Methods. Dover Publishing. ISBN 0-486-43227-0.
- R. Andreani, J. M. Martínez, M. L. Schuverdt, On the relation between constant positive linear dependence condition and quasinormality constraint qualification. Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, vol. 125, no2, pp. 473-485 (2005).
- Jalaluddin Abdullah, Optimization by the Fixed-Point Method, Version 1.97, Optimization Online[1], and Vuze/Azureus (under Science and Technology)[2], August 2007. Note: To obtain from Vuze you need a bittorrent client.














