Related papers: Global Non-convex Optimization with Discretized Di…
Langevin diffusion is a powerful method for nonconvex optimization, which enables the escape from local minima by injecting noise into the gradient. In particular, the temperature parameter controlling the noise level gives rise to a…
We study the quantitative convergence of drift-diffusion PDEs that arise as Wasserstein gradient flows of linearly convex functions over the space of probability measures on ${\mathbb R}^d$. In this setting, the objective is in general not…
Diffusion models have demonstrated empirical successes in various applications and can be adapted to task-specific needs via guidance. This paper studies a form of gradient guidance for adapting a pre-trained diffusion model towards…
Consider a set of discounted optimal stopping problems for a one-parameter family of objective functions and a fixed diffusion process, started at a fixed point. A standard problem in stochastic control/optimal stopping is to solve for the…
Langevin dynamics (LD) has been proven to be a powerful technique for optimizing a non-convex objective as an efficient algorithm to find local minima while eventually visiting a global minimum on longer time-scales. LD is based on the…
We study distributed non-convex optimization on a time-varying multi-agent network. Each node has access to its own smooth local cost function, and the collective goal is to minimize the sum of these functions. We generalize the results…
Part I of this work [2] developed the exact diffusion algorithm to remove the bias that is characteristic of distributed solutions for deterministic optimization problems. The algorithm was shown to be applicable to a larger set of…
In this paper, we provide new insights on the Unadjusted Langevin Algorithm. We show that this method can be formulated as a first order optimization algorithm of an objective functional defined on the Wasserstein space of order $2$. Using…
Techniques involving factorization are found in a wide range of applications and have enjoyed significant empirical success in many fields. However, common to a vast majority of these problems is the significant disadvantage that the…
We study global optimization of non-convex functions through optimal control theory. Our main result establishes that (quasi-)optimal trajectories of a discounted control problem converge globally and practically asymptotically to the set…
We obtain non asymptotic bounds for the Monte Carlo algorithm associated to the Euler discretization of some diffusion processes. The key tool is the Gaussian concentration satisfied by the density of the discretization scheme. This…
We describe a new MCMC method optimized for the sampling of probability measures on Hilbert space which have a density with respect to a Gaussian; such measures arise in the Bayesian approach to inverse problems, and in conditioned…
We propose a new discretization of the mirror-Langevin diffusion and give a crisp proof of its convergence. Our analysis uses relative convexity/smoothness and self-concordance, ideas which originated in convex optimization, together with a…
Sampling from discrete distributions is a ubiquitous task in machine learning, recently revisited by the emergence of discrete diffusion models. While Langevin algorithms constitute the state of the art for continuous spaces, discrete…
We study the temperature control problem for Langevin diffusions in the context of non-convex optimization. The classical optimal control of such a problem is of the bang-bang type, which is overly sensitive to errors. A remedy is to allow…
Overdamped Langevin dynamics are reversible stochastic differential equations which are commonly used to sample probability measures in high-dimensional spaces, such as the ones appearing in computational statistical physics and Bayesian…
Distributed optimization utilizes local computation and communication to realize a global aim of optimizing the sum of local objective functions. This article addresses a class of constrained distributed nonconvex optimization problems…
The discrete moment problem is a foundational problem in distribution-free robust optimization, where the goal is to find a worst-case distribution that satisfies a given set of moments. This paper studies the discrete moment problems with…
This paper is devoted to distributed continuous-time and discrete-time optimization problems with nonuniform convex constraint sets and nonuniform stepsizes for general differentiable convex objective functions. The communication graphs are…
In this work, we study the task of distributed optimization over a network of learners in which each learner possesses a convex cost function, a set of affine equality constraints, and a set of convex inequality constraints. We propose a…