Among first order optimization methods, Polyak's heavy ball method has long been known to guarantee the asymptotic rate of convergence matching Nesterov's lower bound for functions defined in an infinite-dimensional space. In this paper, we use results on the robust gain margin of linear uncertain feedback control systems to show that the heavy ball method is provably worst-case asymptotically optimal when applied to quadratic functions in a finite dimensional space.

Accepted for publication in Automatica