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Efficient sampling from complex and high dimensional target distributions turns out to be a fundamental task in diverse disciplines such as scientific computing, statistics and machine learning. In this paper, we propose a new kind of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-04-24 Xiaojie Wang , Bin Yang

We consider the task of MCMC sampling from a distribution defined on a discrete space. Building on recent insights provided in [Zan19], we devise a class of efficient continuous-time, non-reversible algorithms which make active use of the…

Computation · Statistics 2019-12-19 Samuel Power , Jacob Vorstrup Goldman

Standard MCMC methods can scale poorly to big data settings due to the need to evaluate the likelihood at each iteration. There have been a number of approximate MCMC algorithms that use sub-sampling ideas to reduce this computational…

Computation · Statistics 2020-09-29 Joris Bierkens , Paul Fearnhead , Gareth Roberts

We introduce a novel framework for efficient sampling from complex, unnormalised target distributions by exploiting multiscale dynamics. Traditional score-based sampling methods either rely on learned approximations of the score function or…

Computation · Statistics 2025-11-04 Paula Cordero-Encinar , Andrew B. Duncan , Sebastian Reich , O. Deniz Akyildiz

In this work, we examine sampling problems with non-smooth potentials. We propose a novel Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm for sampling from non-smooth potentials. We provide a non-asymptotical analysis of our algorithm and establish a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-11 Jiaming Liang , Yongxin Chen

The fixed node diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC) method has attracted interest in recent years as a way to calculate properties of solid materials with high accuracy. However, the framework for the calculation of properties such as total…

Materials Science · Physics 2016-01-20 Jaehyung Yu , Lucas K. Wagner , Elif Ertekin

We study the underdamped Langevin diffusion when the log of the target distribution is smooth and strongly concave. We present a MCMC algorithm based on its discretization and show that it achieves $\varepsilon$ error (in 2-Wasserstein…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-01-30 Xiang Cheng , Niladri S. Chatterji , Peter L. Bartlett , Michael I. Jordan

Diffusion quantum Monte Carlo (DMC) and coupled cluster theory [CCSD(T)] are widely-employed benchmark methods for noncovalent interactions (NCIs). However, recent studies have reported notable discrepancies across several hydrogen-bonded…

Chemical Physics · Physics 2026-04-07 Kousuke Nakano , Benjamin X. Shi , Dario Alfè , Andrea Zen

Fixed node diffusion quantum Monte Carlo (FN-DMC) is an increasingly used computational approach for investigating the electronic structure of molecules, solids, and surfaces with controllable accuracy. It stands out among equally accurate…

Computational Physics · Physics 2019-10-03 Andrea Zen , Jan Gerit Brandenburg , Angelos Michaelides , Dario Alfè

In this paper, we consider a distributed stochastic non-convex optimization problem, which is about minimizing a sum of $n$ local cost functions over a network with only zeroth-order information. A novel single-loop Decentralized…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-10-31 Hongxu Chen , Jinchi Chen , Ke Wei

We propose improved versions of the standard diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC) and the lattice regularized diffusion Monte Carlo (LRDMC) algorithms. For the DMC method, we refine a scheme recently devised to treat non-local pseudopotential in a…

Other Condensed Matter · Physics 2015-05-18 Michele Casula , Saverio Moroni , Sandro Sorella , Claudia Filippi

Underdamped Langevin Monte Carlo (ULMC) is an algorithm used to sample from unnormalized densities by leveraging the momentum of a particle moving in a potential well. We provide a novel analysis of ULMC, motivated by two central questions:…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2023-02-17 Matthew Zhang , Sinho Chewi , Mufan Bill Li , Krishnakumar Balasubramanian , Murat A. Erdogdu

Finding effective ways to exploit parallel computing to accelerate Markov chain Monte Carlo methods is an important problem in Bayesian computation and related disciplines. In this paper, we consider the zeroth-order setting where the…

Computation · Statistics 2026-01-28 Francesco Pozza , Giacomo Zanella

We describe an MCMC method for sampling distributions with soft constraints, which are constraints that are almost but not exactly satisfied. We sample a total distribution that is a convex combination of the target soft distribution with…

Computation · Statistics 2022-10-24 Ildebrando Magnani

A simple and stable method for computing accurate expectation values of observable with Variational Monte Carlo (VMC) or Diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC) algorithms is presented. The basic idea consists in replacing the usual ``bare'' estimator…

Chemical Physics · Physics 2009-11-10 Roland Assaraf , Michel Caffarel

We study the problem of sampling from a $d$-dimensional distribution with density $p(x)\propto e^{-f(x)}$, which does not necessarily satisfy good isoperimetric conditions. Specifically, we show that for any $L,M$ satisfying $LM\ge d\ge 5$,…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-06-04 Yuchen He , Chihao Zhang

While Diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC) is in principle an exact stochastic method for \textit{ab initio} electronic structure calculations, in practice the fermionic sign problem necessitates the use of the fixed-node approximation and trial…

In this paper, we study the problem of sampling from log-concave distributions supported on convex, compact sets, with a particular focus on the randomized midpoint discretization of both vanilla and kinetic Langevin diffusions in this…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-05-27 Yifeng Yu , Lu Yu

We address the challenge of training diffusion models to sample from unnormalized energy distributions in the absence of data, the so-called diffusion samplers. Although these approaches have shown promise, they struggle to scale in more…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-07 Minkyu Kim , Kiyoung Seong , Dongyeop Woo , Sungsoo Ahn , Minsu Kim

We propose a modification, based on the RESTART (repetitive simulation trials after reaching thresholds) and DPR (dynamics probability redistribution) rare event simulation algorithms, of the standard diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC) algorithm.…

Probability · Mathematics 2014-04-10 Martin Hairer , Jonathan Weare