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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

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…

Computation · Statistics 2022-02-23 Dao Nguyen

A well-known first-order method for sampling from log-concave probability distributions is the Unadjusted Langevin Algorithm (ULA). This work proposes a new annealing step-size schedule for ULA, which allows to prove new convergence…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2020-07-03 Paul Rolland , Armin Eftekhari , Ali Kavis , Volkan Cevher

Log-concave sampling has witnessed remarkable algorithmic advances in recent years, but the corresponding problem of proving lower bounds for this task has remained elusive, with lower bounds previously known only in dimension one. In this…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2023-10-31 Sinho Chewi , Jaume de Dios Pont , Jerry Li , Chen Lu , Shyam Narayanan

We propose a new algorithm---Stochastic Proximal Langevin Algorithm (SPLA)---for sampling from a log concave distribution. Our method is a generalization of the Langevin algorithm to potentials expressed as the sum of one stochastic smooth…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-06-17 Adil Salim , Dmitry Kovalev , Peter Richtárik

We study the problem of sampling from a probability distribution on $\mathbb R^p$ defined via a convex and smooth potential function. We consider a continuous-time diffusion-type process, termed Penalized Langevin dynamics (PLD), the drift…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2020-06-26 Avetik Karagulyan , Arnak S. Dalalyan

We introduce a theoretical framework for sampling from unnormalized densities based on a smoothing scheme that uses an isotropic Gaussian kernel with a single fixed noise scale. We prove one can decompose sampling from a density (minimal…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-10-02 Saeed Saremi , Ji Won Park , Francis Bach

We analyze the global and local behavior of gradient-like flows under stochastic errors towards the aim of solving convex optimization problems with noisy gradient input. We first study the unconstrained differentiable convex case, using a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-03-12 Rodrigo Maulen-Soto , Jalal Fadili , Hedy Attouch

We study in this paper a weak approximation to stochastic variance reduced gradient Langevin dynamics by stochastic delay differential equations in Wasserstein-1 distance, and obtain a uniform error bound. Our approach is via a refined…

Probability · Mathematics 2021-12-21 Peng Chen , Jianya Lu , Lihu Xu

We study hypercontractivity for the underdamped Langevin dynamics with a convex confining potential. Unlike in the overdamped case, the noise acts only on the velocity variable, so the usual argument based on the logarithmic Sobolev…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2026-05-26 Bowen Li , Jianfeng Lu

We provide a framework to analyze the convergence of discretized kinetic Langevin dynamics for $M$-$\nabla$Lipschitz, $m$-convex potentials. Our approach gives convergence rates of $\mathcal{O}(m/M)$, with explicit stepsize restrictions,…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2024-05-24 Benedict Leimkuhler , Daniel Paulin , Peter A. Whalley

We prove non asymptotic polynomial bounds on the convergence of the Langevin Monte Carlo algorithm in the case where the potential is a convex function which is globally Lipschitz on its domain, typically the maximum of a finite number of…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2022-01-10 Joseph Lehec

This article is concerned with sampling from Gibbs distributions $\pi(x)\propto e^{-U(x)}$ using Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. In particular, we investigate Langevin dynamics in the continuous- and the discrete-time setting for such…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2026-05-25 Lorenz Fruehwirth , Andreas Habring

We extend the Langevin Monte Carlo (LMC) algorithm to compactly supported measures via a projection step, akin to projected Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD). We show that (projected) LMC allows to sample in polynomial time from a…

Probability · Mathematics 2016-08-08 Sébastien Bubeck , Ronen Eldan , Joseph Lehec

For a $d$-dimensional log-concave distribution $\pi(\theta) \propto e^{-f(\theta)}$ constrained to a convex body $K$, the problem of outputting samples from a distribution $\nu$ which is $\varepsilon$-close in infinity-distance…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2022-11-14 Oren Mangoubi , Nisheeth K. Vishnoi

Explicit, momentum-based dynamics for optimizing functions defined on Lie groups was recently constructed, based on techniques such as variational optimization and left trivialization. We appropriately add tractable noise to the…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2024-06-19 Lingkai Kong , Molei Tao

We study the problem of sampling from a target probability density function in frameworks where parallel evaluations of the log-density gradient are feasible. Focusing on smooth and strongly log-concave densities, we revisit the…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2025-01-09 Lu Yu , Arnak Dalalyan

We examine the Langevin diffusion confined to a closed, convex domain $D\subset\mathbb{R}^d$, represented as a reflected stochastic differential equation. We introduce a sequence of penalized stochastic differential equations and prove that…

Probability · Mathematics 2026-01-22 Tarika Mane , Amine Boukardagha

Sampling is a fundamental and arguably very important task with numerous applications in Machine Learning. One approach to sample from a high dimensional distribution $e^{-f}$ for some function $f$ is the Langevin Algorithm (LA). Recently,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-08 Xiao Wang , Qi Lei , Ioannis Panageas

A key task in Bayesian statistics is sampling from distributions that are only specified up to a partition function (i.e., constant of proportionality). However, without any assumptions, sampling (even approximately) can be #P-hard, and few…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-12-03 Rong Ge , Holden Lee , Andrej Risteski