A New Trust-Region Algorithm for Equality Constrained Optimization

We present a new trust region algorithm for solving nonlinear equality constrained optimization problems. At each iterate a change of variables is performed to improve the ability of the algorithm to follow the constraint level sets. The algorithm employs L 2 penalty functions for obtaining global convergence. Under certain assumptions we prove that this algorithm globally converges to a point satisfying the second order necessary optimality conditions; the local convergence rate is quadratic. Results of preliminary numerical experiments are presented.