English

Operator-Level Quantum Acceleration of Non-Logconcave Sampling

Quantum Physics 2026-02-24 v2 Machine Learning Optimization and Control

Abstract

Sampling from probability distributions of the form σeβV\sigma \propto e^{-\beta V}, where VV is a continuous potential, is a fundamental task across physics, chemistry, biology, computer science, and statistics. However, when VV is non-convex, the resulting distribution becomes non-logconcave, and classical methods such as Langevin dynamics often exhibit poor performance. We introduce the first quantum algorithm that provably accelerates a broad class of continuous-time sampling dynamics. For Langevin dynamics, our method encodes the target Gibbs measure into the amplitudes of a quantum state, identified as the kernel of a block matrix derived from a factorization of the Witten Laplacian operator. This connection enables Gibbs sampling via singular value thresholding and yields up to a quartic quantum speedup over best-known classical Langevin-based methods in the non-logconcave setting. Building on this framework, we further develop the first quantum algorithm that accelerates replica exchange Langevin diffusion, a widely used method for sampling from complex, rugged energy landscapes.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2505.05301,
  title  = {Operator-Level Quantum Acceleration of Non-Logconcave Sampling},
  author = {Jiaqi Leng and Zhiyan Ding and Zherui Chen and Lin Lin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.05301},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

48 pages, 8 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-28T23:25:52.321Z