Numerous applications in machine learning and data analytics can be formulated as equilibrium computation over Riemannian manifolds. Despite the extensive investigation of their Euclidean counterparts, the performance of Riemannian gradient-based algorithms remain opaque and poorly understood. We revisit the original scheme of Riemannian gradient descent (RGD) and analyze it under a geodesic monotonicity assumption, which includes the well-studied geodesically convex-concave min-max optimization problem as a special case. Our main contribution is to show that, despite the phenomenon of distance distortion, the RGD scheme, with a step size that is agnostic to the manifold's curvature, achieves a curvature-independent and linear last-iterate convergence rate in the geodesically strongly monotone setting. To the best of our knowledge, the possibility of curvature-independent rates and/or last-iterate convergence in the Riemannian setting has not been considered before.
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