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Most existing approximate Thompson Sampling (TS) algorithms for multi-armed bandits use Stochastic Gradient Langevin Dynamics (SGLD) or its variants in each round to sample from the posterior, relaxing the need for conjugacy assumptions…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-07 Weixin Wang , Haoyang Zheng , Guang Lin , Wei Deng , Pan Xu

We study the mixing time of Metropolis-Adjusted Langevin algorithm (MALA) for sampling a target density on $\mathbb{R}^d$. We assume that the target density satisfies $\psi_\mu$-isoperimetry and that the operator norm and trace of its…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-06-09 Yuansi Chen , Khashayar Gatmiry

We discuss the design of an invariant measure-preserving transformed dynamics for the numerical treatment of Langevin dynamics based on rescaling of time, with the goal of sampling from an invariant measure. Given an appropriate monitor…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2024-08-30 Alix Leroy , Benedict Leimkuhler , Jonas Latz , Desmond J. Higham

We propose an adaptively weighted stochastic gradient Langevin dynamics algorithm (SGLD), so-called contour stochastic gradient Langevin dynamics (CSGLD), for Bayesian learning in big data statistics. The proposed algorithm is essentially a…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-05-24 Wei Deng , Guang Lin , Faming Liang

Normalizing flows (NF) use a continuous generator to map a simple latent (e.g. Gaussian) distribution, towards an empirical target distribution associated with a training data set. Once trained by minimizing a variational objective, the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-05-23 Florentin Coeurdoux , Nicolas Dobigeon , Pierre Chainais

This article overviews how gradient flows, and discretizations thereof, are useful to design and analyze optimization and sampling algorithms. The interplay between optimization, sampling, and gradient flows is an active research area; our…

Computation · Statistics 2023-02-23 N. Garcia Trillos , B. Hosseini , D. Sanz-Alonso

In this paper, we propose an interior-point method for linearly constrained optimization problems (possibly nonconvex). The method - which we call the Hessian barrier algorithm (HBA) - combines a forward Euler discretization of Hessian…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-09-14 Immanuel M. Bomze , Panayotis Mertikopoulos , Werner Schachinger , Mathias Staudigl

Sampling the parameter space of artificial neural networks according to a Boltzmann distribution provides insight into the geometry of low-loss solutions and offers an alternative to conventional loss minimization for training. However,…

Disordered Systems and Neural Networks · Physics 2026-03-17 Alessandro Zambon , Francesca Caruso , Riccardo Zecchina , Guido Tiana

Stochastic thermostats based on the Langevin equation, in which a system is coupled to an external heat bath, are popular methods for temperature control in molecular dynamics simulations due to their ergodicity and their ease of…

Chemical Physics · Physics 2018-05-23 Mahdi Hijazi , David M. Wilkins , Michele Ceriotti

We propose an adaptive biasing algorithm aimed at enhancing the sampling of multimodal measures by Langevin dynamics. The underlying idea consists in generalizing the standard adaptive biasing force method commonly used in conjunction with…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2010-08-23 Chris Chipot , Tony Lelièvre

While gradient-based discrete samplers are effective in sampling from complex distributions, they are susceptible to getting trapped in local minima, particularly in high-dimensional, multimodal discrete distributions, owing to the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-05-21 Luxu Liang , Yuhang Jia , Feng Zhou

We study sampling from posterior distributions with nonsmooth composite potentials, a setting in which proximal-based Langevin methods are theoretically appealing but in practice limited to simple functions with closed-form proximal…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-19 Susan Ghaderi , Alireza Kabgani , Yves Moreau , Masoud Ahookhosh

We consider the problem of sampling from constrained distributions, which has posed significant challenges to both non-asymptotic analysis and algorithmic design. We propose a unified framework, which is inspired by the classical mirror…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-01-01 Ya-Ping Hsieh , Ali Kavis , Paul Rolland , Volkan Cevher

We study the problem of non-convex optimization using Stochastic Gradient Langevin Dynamics (SGLD). SGLD is a natural and popular variation of stochastic gradient descent where at each step, appropriately scaled Gaussian noise is added. To…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-07-08 August Y. Chen , Ayush Sekhari , Karthik Sridharan

For sampling from a log-concave density, we study implicit integrators resulting from $\theta$-method discretization of the overdamped Langevin diffusion stochastic differential equation. Theoretical and algorithmic properties of the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-07-13 Liam Hodgkinson , Robert Salomone , Fred Roosta

We propose a localized consensus-based method for sampling from non-Gaussian distributions. This method arises from an alternative derivation of consensus-based sampling (CBS). Starting from ensemble-preconditioned Langevin dynamics, we…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2025-11-14 Arne Bouillon , Alexander Bodard , Panagiotis Patrinos , Dirk Nuyens , Giovanni Samaey

Constrained sampling is an important and challenging task in computational statistics, concerned with generating samples from a distribution under certain constraints. There are numerous types of algorithm aimed at this task, ranging from…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-04-01 Neil K. Chada , Lu Yu

We study the design and implementation of numerical methods to solve the generalized Langevin equation (GLE) focusing on canonical sampling properties of numerical integrators. For this purpose, we cast the GLE in an extended phase space…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2020-12-09 Benedict Leimkuhler , Matthias Sachs

Deep learning applications require global optimization of non-convex objective functions, which have multiple local minima. The same problem is often found in physical simulations and may be resolved by the methods of Langevin dynamics with…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-05-24 Oleksandr Borysenko , Maksym Byshkin

This paper presents a new accelerated proximal Markov chain Monte Carlo methodology to perform Bayesian inference in imaging inverse problems with an underlying convex geometry. The proposed strategy takes the form of a stochastic relaxed…