Related papers: Gradient Flows as Optimal Controlled Evolutions: F…
Policy gradients methods often achieve better performance when the change in policy is limited to a small Kullback-Leibler divergence. We derive policy gradients where the change in policy is limited to a small Wasserstein distance (or…
We construct a Wasserstein gradient flow of the maximum mean discrepancy (MMD) and study its convergence properties. The MMD is an integral probability metric defined for a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS), and serves as a metric on…
What is the optimal way to approximate a high-dimensional diffusion process by one in which the coordinates are independent? This paper presents a construction, called the \emph{independent projection}, which is optimal for two natural…
We perform a convergence analysis of a discrete-in-time minimization scheme approximating a finite dimensional singularly perturbed gradient flow. We allow for different scalings between the viscosity parameter $\varepsilon$ and the time…
As the complexity of modern control systems increases, it becomes challenging to derive an accurate model of the uncertainty that affects their dynamics. Wasserstein Distributionally Robust Optimization (DRO) provides a powerful framework…
Wasserstein gradient flows (WGFs) describe the evolution of probability distributions in Wasserstein space as steepest descent dynamics for a free energy functional. Computing the full path from an arbitrary initial distribution to…
Stream stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is a simple and efficient method for solving online optimization problems in operations research (OR), where data is generated by parameter-dependent Markov chains. Unlike traditional approaches…
We give a sufficient condition under which the time-marginal law of $\mu$-reversible infinite interacting Brownian motions is characterised as the steepest gradient descent of the relative entropy in the Wasserstein space in the sense of…
This paper presents a new gradient flow dissipation geometry over non-negative and probability measures. This is motivated by a principled construction that combines the unbalanced optimal transport and interaction forces modeled by…
We formulate well-posed continuous-time generative flows for learning distributions that are supported on low-dimensional manifolds through Wasserstein proximal regularizations of $f$-divergences. Wasserstein-1 proximal operators regularize…
We analyze an algorithm to numerically solve the mean-field optimal control problems by approximating the optimal feedback controls using neural networks with problem specific architectures. We approximate the model by an $N$-particle…
In this study, we investigate the performance of two novel first-order optimization algorithms, namely the rescaled-gradient flow (RGF) and the signed-gradient flow (SGF). These algorithms are derived from the forward Euler discretization…
We propose an adaptive optimization algorithm for solving unconstrained scaled gradient flow problems that achieves fast convergence by controlling the optimization trajectory shape and the discretization step sizes. Under a broad class of…
Distributionally-robust optimization is often studied for a fixed set of distributions rather than time-varying distributions that can drift significantly over time (which is, for instance, the case in finance and sociology due to…
This paper studies the optimization of the KL functional on the Wasserstein space of probability measures, and develops a sampling framework based on Wasserstein gradient descent (WGD). We identify two important subclasses of the…
We propose new limiting dynamics for stochastic gradient descent in the small learning rate regime called stochastic modified flows. These SDEs are driven by a cylindrical Brownian motion and improve the so-called stochastic modified…
Modern vision generators transport a base distribution to data through time-indexed measures, implemented as deterministic flows (ODEs) or stochastic diffusions (SDEs). Despite strong empirical performance, standard flow-matching objectives…
Wasserstein distributionally robust control (WDRC) is an effective method for addressing inaccurate distribution information about disturbances in stochastic systems. It provides various salient features, such as an out-of-sample…
We study the global convergence of a Fisher-Rao policy gradient flow for infinite-horizon entropy-regularised Markov decision processes with Polish state and action space. The flow is a continuous-time analogue of a policy mirror descent…
Solving Fredholm equations of the first kind is crucial in many areas of the applied sciences. In this work we adopt a probabilistic and variational point of view by considering a minimization problem in the space of probability measures…