English

An inequality for relative entropy and logarithmic Sobolev inequalities in Euclidean spaces

Functional Analysis 2012-06-22 v1

Abstract

Let q(x)q(x) and p(x)p(x) denote density functions on the nn-dimensional Euclidean space, and let pi(y1,...,yi1,yi+1,...,yn)p_i(\cdot|y_1,..., y_{i-1},y_{i+1},..., y_n) and Qi(x1,...,xi1,xi+1,...,xn)Q_i(\cdot|x_1,..., x_{i-1},x_{i+1},..., x_n) denote their local specifications. For a class of density functions qq we prove an inequality between the relative entropy D(pq)D(p||q) and a weighted sum of the conditional relative entropies D(pi(Y1,...,Yi1,Yi+1,...,Yn)Qi(Y1,...,Yi1,Yi+1,...,Yn))D(p_i(\cdot|Y_1,..., Y_{i-1},Y_{i+1},..., Y_n) ||Q_i(\cdot|Y_1,..., Y_{i-1},Y_{i+1},..., Y_n)) that holds for any pp. The weights are proportional to the logarithmic Sobolev constants of the local specifications of qq. Thereby we derive a logarithmic Sobolev inequality for a weighted Gibbs sampler governed by the local specifications of qq. Moreover, this inequality implies a classical logarithmic Sobolev inequality for qq, as defined for Gaussian distribution by L. Gross. This strengthens a result by F. Otto and M. Reznikoff. The proof is based on ideas developed by F. Otto and C. Villani in their paper on the connection between Talagrand's transportation-cost inequality and logarithmic Sobolev inequality.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1206.4868,
  title  = {An inequality for relative entropy and logarithmic Sobolev inequalities in Euclidean spaces},
  author = {Katalin Marton},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1206.4868},
  year   = {2012}
}

Comments

29 pages (in PDF format) Submitted to Journal of Functional Analysis. This paper tackles the same problem as arXiv:0907.4491, but gives a more satisfactory result, and makes arXiv:0907.4491 superfluous