On the convergence of Newton's method for a class of nonsmooth operators

We provide an analog of the Newton-Kantorovich theorem for a certain class of nonsmooth operators. This class includes smooth operators as well as nonsmooth reformulations of variational inequalities. It turns out that under weaker hypotheses we can provide under the same computational cost over earlier works [S.M. Robinson, Newton's method for a class of nonsmooth functions, Set-Valued Anal. 2 (1994) 291-305] a semilocal convergence analysis with the following advantages: finer error bounds on the distances involved and a more precise information on the location of the solution. In the local case not examined in [S.M. Robinson, Newton's method for a class of nonsmooth functions, Set-Valued Anal. 2 (1994) 291-305] we can show how to enlarge the radius of convergence and also obtain finer error estimates. Numerical examples are also provided to show that in the semilocal case our results can apply where others [S.M. Robinson, Newton's method for a class of nonsmooth functions, Set-Valued Anal. 2 (1994) 291-305] fail, whereas in the local case we can obtain a larger radius of convergence than before [S.M. Robinson, Newton's method for a class of nonsmooth functions, Set-Valued Anal. 2 (1994) 291-305]. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.