Walk on spheres and Array-RQMC
Abstract
We use Array-RQMC sampling in a walk on spheres (WOS) algorithm for Dirichlet boundary value problems. On a collection of problems, we find that Array-RQMC-WOS reduces the Monte Carlo variance by factors ranging from -fold to -fold at trajectories. The variance is known to be but attains empirical rates between and in our examples. A simpler RQMC-WOS algorithm studied in Ho and Owen (2026) has more theoretical support but only reduced variance by 1.8 to 10.7-fold on the same set of examples. In order to explain this improvement, we introduce a column-wise mean dimension of the RQMC error based on Sobol' indices. It matches the usual mean dimension for Monte Carlo and the mean dimension of a dual lattice error for randomized lattices. We find for a gasket example from Crane et al.\ (2025) that the mean dimension of Array-RQMC-WOS errors is much higher than an analogous Array-MC-WOS algorithm has.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2605.12844,
title = {Walk on spheres and Array-RQMC},
author = {Valerie N. P. Ho and Art B. Owen},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.12844},
year = {2026}
}