Related papers: Strong Self-Concordance and Sampling

We consider the problem of sampling from a $d$-dimensional log-concave distribution $\pi(\theta) \propto \exp(-f(\theta))$ for $L$-Lipschitz $f$, constrained to a convex body with an efficiently computable self-concordant barrier function,…

Interior-point methods offer a highly versatile framework for convex optimization that is effective in theory and practice. A key notion in their theory is that of a self-concordant barrier. We give a suitable generalization of…

The connections between (convex) optimization and (logconcave) sampling have been considerably enriched in the past decade with many conceptual and mathematical analogies. For instance, the Langevin algorithm can be viewed as a sampling…

We study the mixing time of the Dikin walk in a polytope - a random walk based on the log-barrier from the interior point method literature. This walk, and a close variant, were studied by Narayanan (2016) and Kannan-Narayanan (2012).…

We study the problem of drawing samples from a logconcave distribution truncated on a polytope, motivated by computational challenges in Bayesian statistical models with indicator variables, such as probit regression. Building on interior…

For any convex body $K \subseteq \mathbb R^n$, S. Bubeck and R. Eldan introduced the entropic barrier on $K$ and showed that it is a $(1+o(1)) \, n$-self-concordant barrier. In this note, we observe that the optimal bound of $n$ on the…

We outline basic properties of a symmetric random walk in one dimension, in which the length of the nth step equals lambda^n, with lambda<1. As the number of steps N-->oo, the probability that the endpoint is at x, P_{lambda}(x;N),…

We introduce the geodesic walk for sampling Riemannian manifolds and apply it to the problem of generating uniform random points from polytopes in R^n specified by m inequalities. The walk is a discrete-time simulation of a stochastic…

We revisit strong approximation theory from a new perspective, culminating in a proof of the Koml\'os-Major-Tusn\'ady embedding theorem for the simple random walk. The proof is almost entirely based on a series of soft arguments and easy…

Using the mechanism of spontaneous symmetry breaking of scale invariance obtained from the dynamics of maximal rank field strengths, it is possible to spontaneously generate confining behavior. Introducing a dilaton field, the study of non…

Running a random walk in a convex body $K\subseteq\mathbb{R}^n$ is a standard approach to sample approximately uniformly from the body. The requirement is that from a suitable initial distribution, the distribution of the walk comes close…

We develop a short-step interior point method to optimize a linear function over a convex body assuming that one only knows a membership oracle for this body. The approach is based on Abernethy and Hazan's sketch of a universal interior…

Let $G = (V,E)$ be a graph on $n$ vertices and let $m^*(G)$ denote the size of a maximum matching in $G$. We show that for any $\delta > 0$ and for any $1 \leq k \leq (1-\delta)m^*(G)$, the down-up walk on matchings of size $k$ in $G$ mixes…

The solvability of the three-dimensional O($N$) scalar field theory in the large $N$ limit makes it an ideal toy model exhibiting "walking" behavior, expected in some SU($N$) gauge theories with a large number of fermion flavors. We study…

This paper shows that the self-concordance parameter of the universal barrier on any $n$-dimensional proper convex domain is upper bounded by $n$. This bound is tight and improves the previous $O(n)$ bound by Nesterov and Nemirovski. The…

We study two fundamental optimization problems: (1) scaling a symmetric positive definite matrix by a positive diagonal matrix so that the resulting matrix has row and column sums equal to 1; and (2) minimizing a quadratic function subject…

We consider families of non-colliding random walks above a hard wall, which are subject to a self-potential of tilted area type. We view such ensembles as effective models for the level lines of a class of $2+1$-dimensional discrete-height…

We show a connection between sampling and optimization on discrete domains. For a family of distributions $\mu$ defined on size $k$ subsets of a ground set of elements that is closed under external fields, we show that rapid mixing of…

We consider random walks on ``balanced multislices'' of any ``grid'' that respects the ``symmetries'' of the grid, and show that a broad class of such walks are good spectral expanders. (A grid is a set of points of the form $\mathcal{S}^n$…

We prove strong invariance principle between a transient Bessel process and a certain nearest neighbor (NN) random walk that is constructed from the former by using stopping times. It is also shown that their local times are close enough to…