English

Mixing Time Bounds for the Gibbs Sampler under Isoperimetry

Statistics Theory 2026-04-28 v2 Probability Statistics Theory

Abstract

We establish bounds on the conductance for the systematic-scan and random-scan Gibbs samplers when the target distribution satisfies a Poincar\'e or log-Sobolev inequality and possesses sufficiently regular conditional distributions. These bounds lead to mixing time guarantees that extend beyond the log-concave setting, offering new insights into the convergence behavior of Gibbs sampling in broader regimes. Moreover, we demonstrate that our results remain valid for log-Lipschitz and log-smooth target distributions. Our approach relies on novel isoperimetric inequalities and a sequential coupling argument for the Gibbs sampler.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2506.22258,
  title  = {Mixing Time Bounds for the Gibbs Sampler under Isoperimetry},
  author = {Alexander Goyal and George Deligiannidis and Nikolas Kantas},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.22258},
  year   = {2026}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T03:36:36.189Z