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Langevin diffusion processes and their discretizations are often used for sampling from a target density. The most convenient framework for assessing the quality of such a sampling scheme corresponds to smooth and strongly log-concave…

Probability · Mathematics 2018-12-27 Arnak S. Dalalyan , Lionel Riou-Durand

The Metropolis-adjusted Langevin algorithm (MALA) is a Metropolis-Hastings method for approximate sampling from continuous distributions. We derive upper bounds for the contraction rate in Kantorovich-Rubinstein-Wasserstein distance of the…

Probability · Mathematics 2014-01-17 Andreas Eberle

In this paper, we propose two new algorithms, namely, aHOLA and aHOLLA, to sample from high-dimensional target distributions with possibly super-linearly growing potentials. We establish non-asymptotic convergence bounds for aHOLA in…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2025-08-11 Ariel Neufeld , Ying Zhang

We study and develop multilevel methods for the numerical approximation of a log-concave probability $\pi$ on $\mathbb{R}^d$, based on (over-damped) Langevin diffusion. In the continuity of \cite{art:egeapanloup2021multilevel} concentrated…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2023-01-24 Maxime Egéa

In this paper, we analyse a proximal method based on the idea of forward-backward splitting for sampling from distributions with densities that are not necessarily smooth. In particular, we study the non-asymptotic properties of the…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2022-01-25 Armin Eftekhari , Luis Vargas , Konstantinos Zygalakis

Acceleration is a celebrated cornerstone of convex optimization, enabling gradient-based algorithms to converge sublinearly in the condition number. A major open question is whether an analogous acceleration phenomenon is possible for…

Probability · Mathematics 2026-04-01 Jason M. Altschuler , Sinho Chewi , Matthew S. Zhang

Langevin algorithms are gradient descent methods with additive noise. They have been used for decades in Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling, optimization, and learning. Their convergence properties for unconstrained non-convex…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-23 Andrew Lamperski

In this paper, we study a method to sample from a target distribution $\pi$ over $\mathbb{R}^d$ having a positive density with respect to the Lebesgue measure, known up to a normalisation factor. This method is based on the Euler…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2016-12-20 Alain Durmus , Eric Moulines

We study the problem of sampling from a distribution $p^*(x) \propto \exp\left(-U(x)\right)$, where the function $U$ is $L$-smooth everywhere and $m$-strongly convex outside a ball of radius $R$, but potentially nonconvex inside this ball.…

It is of significant interest in many applications to sample from a high-dimensional target distribution $\pi$ with the density $\pi(\text{d} x) \propto e^{-U(x)} (\text{d} x) $, based on the temporal discretization of the Langevin…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2025-01-30 Chenxu Pang , Xiaojie Wang , Yue Wu

This work explores a novel perspective on solving nonconvex and nonsmooth optimization problems by leveraging sampling based methods. Instead of treating the objective function purely through traditional (often deterministic) optimization…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-05-21 Nahom Seyoum , Haoxiang You

We analyze a recently proposed class of algorithms for the problem of sampling from probability distributions $\mu^\ast$ in $\mathbb{R}^d$ with a Lebesgue density of the form $\mu^\ast(x) \propto \exp(-f(Kx)-g(x))$, where $K$ is a linear…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-11-06 Martin Burger , Matthias J. Ehrhardt , Lorenz Kuger , Lukas Weigand

We study the problem of sampling from a probability distribution $\pi$ on $\rset^d$ which has a density \wrt\ the Lebesgue measure known up to a normalization factor $x \mapsto \rme^{-U(x)} / \int_{\rset^d} \rme^{-U(y)} \rmd y$. We analyze…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2019-09-17 M. Barkhagen , N. H. Chau , É. Moulines , M. Rásonyi , S. Sabanis , Y. Zhang

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…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2021-10-26 Kwangjun Ahn , Sinho Chewi

We present a novel method for drawing samples from Gibbs distributions with densities of the form $\pi(x) \propto \exp(-U(x))$. The method accelerates the unadjusted Langevin algorithm by introducing an inertia term similar to Polyak's…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2025-10-09 Alexander Falk , Andreas Habring , Christoph Griesbacher , Thomas Pock

Discretized Langevin diffusions are efficient Monte Carlo methods for sampling from high dimensional target densities that are log-Lipschitz-smooth and (strongly) log-concave. In particular, the Euclidean Langevin Monte Carlo sampling…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2020-02-12 Kelvin Shuangjian Zhang , Gabriel Peyré , Jalal Fadili , Marcelo Pereyra

Sampling from a high-dimensional distribution is a fundamental task in statistics, engineering, and the sciences. A canonical approach is the Langevin Algorithm, i.e., the Markov chain for the discretized Langevin Diffusion. This is the…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2022-11-01 Jason M. Altschuler , Kunal Talwar

Langevin diffusion is a commonly used tool for sampling from a given distribution. In this work, we establish that when the target density $p^*$ is such that $\log p^*$ is $L$ smooth and $m$ strongly convex, discrete Langevin diffusion…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2017-11-02 Xiang Cheng , Peter Bartlett

Priors with non-smooth log-densities, such as the l1-prior, are widely used in Bayesian inverse problems for their sparsity-inducing properties. Existing Langevin-based sampling methods typically rely on proximal mappings or smooth…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2026-05-05 Ivan Cheltsov , Federico Cornalba , Clarice Poon , Tony Shardlow

Many practical samplers rely on time-dependent drifts -- often induced by annealing or tempering schedules -- to improve exploration and stability. This motivates a unified non-asymptotic analysis of the corresponding Langevin diffusions…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2026-05-12 Andreas Habring , Martin Zach