Related papers: Global Optimization via Schr{\"o}dinger-F{\"o}llme…
We present an early investigation into the use of neural diffusion processes for global optimisation, focusing on Zhang et al.'s Path Integral Sampler. One can use the Boltzmann distribution to formulate optimization as solving a…
Sampling from probability distributions is an important problem in statistics and machine learning, specially in Bayesian inference when integration with respect to posterior distribution is intractable and sampling from the posterior is…
We present an optimization algorithm that can identify a global minimum of a potentially nonconvex smooth function with high probability, assuming the Gibbs measure of the potential satisfies a logarithmic Sobolev inequality. Our…
An Euler discretization of the Langevin diffusion is known to converge to the global minimizers of certain convex and non-convex optimization problems. We show that this property holds for any suitably smooth diffusion and that different…
Generating samples from complex and high-dimensional distributions is ubiquitous in various scientific fields of statistical physics, Bayesian inference, scientific computing and machine learning. Very recently, Huang et al. (IEEE Trans.…
Langevin Dynamics has been extensively employed in global non-convex optimization due to the concentration of its stationary distribution around the global minimum of the potential function at low temperatures. In this paper, we propose to…
We consider the global minimization of smooth functions based solely on function evaluations. Algorithms that achieve the optimal number of function evaluations for a given precision level typically rely on explicitly constructing an…
Schr\"{o}dinger-F\"{o}llmer sampler (SFS) is a novel and efficient approach for sampling from possibly unnormalized distributions without ergodicity. SFS is based on the Euler-Maruyama discretization of Schr\"{o}dinger-F\"{o}llmer diffusion…
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…
This paper considers the distributed smooth optimization problem in which the objective is to minimize a global cost function formed by a sum of local smooth cost functions, by using local information exchange. The standard assumption for…
Score-based diffusion models have become a foundational paradigm for modern generative modeling, demonstrating exceptional capability in generating samples from complex high-dimensional distributions. Despite the dominant adoption of…
In this paper we consider a distributed stochastic optimization problem without the gradient/subgradient information for the local objective functions, subject to local convex constraints. The objective functions may be non-smooth and…
We consider the weak convergence of the Euler-Maruyama approximation for Schr\"odinger-F\"ollmer diffusions, which are solutions of Schr\"odinger bridge problems and can be used for sampling from given distributions. We show that the…
We propose a Langevin diffusion-based algorithm for non-convex optimization and sampling on a product manifold of spheres. Under a logarithmic Sobolev inequality, we establish a guarantee for finite iteration convergence to the Gibbs…
This paper presents a practical global optimization algorithm for the K-center clustering problem, which aims to select K samples as the cluster centers to minimize the maximum within-cluster distance. This algorithm is based on a…
In this paper, we present a flow-based method for global optimization of continuous Sobolev functions, called Stein Boltzmann Sampling (SBS). SBS initializes uniformly a number of particles representing candidate solutions, then uses the…
Discretization of continuous-time diffusion processes is a widely recognized method for sampling. However, it seems to be a considerable restriction when the potentials are often required to be smooth (gradient Lipschitz). This paper…
In this paper we provide a rigorous convergence analysis for the renowned particle swarm optimization method by using tools from stochastic calculus and the analysis of partial differential equations. Based on a time-continuous formulation…
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…
Variational inference methods for latent variable statistical models have gained popularity because they are relatively fast, can handle large data sets, and have deterministic convergence guarantees. However, in practice it is unclear…