A large literature specifies conditions under which the information complexity for a sequence of numerical problems defined for dimensions 1 , 2 , … grows at a moderate rate, i.e., the sequence of problems is tractable . Here, we focus on the situation where the space of available information consists of all linear functionals, and the problems are defined as linear operator mappings between Hilbert spaces . We unify the proofs of known tractability results and generalize a number of existing results. These generalizations are expressed as five theorems that provide equivalent conditions for (strong) tractability in terms of sums of functions of the singular values of the solution operators.

We consider linear problems in the worst case setting. That is, given a linear operator and a pool of admissible linear measurements, we want to approximate the values of the operator uniformly on a convex and balanced set by means of algorithms that use at most n such measurements. It is known that, in general, linear algorithms do not yield an optimal approximation. However, as we show in this paper, an optimal approximation can always be obtained with a homogeneous algorithm. This is of interest to us for two reasons. First, the homogeneity allows us to extend any error bound on the unit ball to the full input space. Second, homogeneous algorithms are better suited to tackle problems on cones, a scenario that is far less understood than the classical situation of balls. We use the optimality of homogeneous algorithms to prove solvability for a family of problems defined on cones. We illustrate our results by several examples.

We give an overview of certain aspects of tractability analysis of multivariate problems. This paper is not intended to give a complete account of the subject, but provides an insight into how the theory works for particular types of problems. We mainly focus on linear problems on Hilbert spaces , and mostly allow arbitrary linear information. In such cases, tractability analysis is closely linked to an analysis of the singular values of the operator under consideration. We also highlight the more recent developments regarding exponential and generalized tractability. The theoretical results are illustrated by several examples throughout the article.

Lattice rules are among the most prominently studied quasi-Monte Carlo methods to approximate multivariate integrals. A rank-1 lattice rule for an s-dimensional integral is specified by its generating vector z∈Zs and its number of points N. While there are many results on the existence of “good” rank-1 lattice rules, there are no explicit constructions of good generating vectors for dimensions s≥3. Therefore one resorts to computer search algorithms. In a recent paper by Ebert et al. in the Journal of Complexity, we showed a component-by-component digit-by-digit (CBC-DBD) construction for good generating vectors for integration of functions in weighted Korobov classes equipped with product weights. Here, we generalize this result to arbitrary positive weights, answering an open question from the paper of Ebert et al. We include a section on how the algorithm can be implemented in the case of POD weights, implying that the CBC-DBD construction is competitive with the classical CBC construction.

We study the approximation of compact linear operators defined over certain weighted tensor product Hilbert spaces. The information complexity is defined as the minimal number of arbitrary linear functionals needed to obtain an ε-approximation for the d-variate problem which is fully determined in terms of the weights and univariate singular values. Exponential tractability means that the information complexity is bounded by a certain function that depends polynomially on d and logarithmically on ε−1. The corresponding unweighted problem was studied in Hickernell et al. (2020) with many negative results for exponential tractability. The product weights studied in the present paper change the situation. Depending on the form of polynomial dependence on d and logarithmic dependence on ε−1, we study exponential strong polynomial, exponential polynomial, exponential quasi-polynomial, and exponential (s,t)-weak tractability with max(s,t)≥1. For all these notions of exponential tractability, we establish necessary and sufficient conditions on weights and univariate singular values for which it is indeed possible to achieve the corresponding notion of exponential tractability. The case of exponential (s,t)-weak tractability with max(s,t)<1 is left for future study. The paper uses some general results obtained in Hickernell et al. (2020) and Kritzer and Woźniakowski (2019).