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Related papers: Hamiltonian Monte Carlo for (Physics) Dummies

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Many probabilistic models of interest in scientific computing and machine learning have expensive, black-box likelihoods that prevent the application of standard techniques for Bayesian inference, such as MCMC, which would require access to…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-11-30 Luigi Acerbi

We discuss Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) and event-chain Monte Carlo (ECMC) for the one-dimensional chain of particles with harmonic interactions and benchmark them against local reversible Metropolis algorithms. While HMC achieves…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2024-11-19 Werner Krauth

Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) is the mainstay of applied Bayesian inference for differentiable models. However, HMC still struggles to sample from hierarchical models that induce densities with multiscale geometry: a large step size is…

Computation · Statistics 2026-02-09 Gilad Turok , Chirag Modi , Bob Carpenter

This work introduces a novel and efficient Bayesian federated learning algorithm, namely, the Federated Averaging stochastic Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (FA-HMC), for parameter estimation and uncertainty quantification. We establish rigorous…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-07-10 Jiajun Liang , Qian Zhang , Wei Deng , Qifan Song , Guang Lin

The Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) algorithm is often lauded for its ability to effectively sample from high-dimensional distributions. In this paper we challenge the presumed domination of HMC for the Bayesian analysis of GLMs. By utilizing…

The paper proposes a new Monte-Carlo simulator combining the advantages of Sequential Monte Carlo simulators and Hamiltonian Monte Carlo simulators. The result is a method that is robust to multimodality and complex shapes to use for…

Computation · Statistics 2018-12-20 Remi Daviet

Accurate and efficient estimation of rare events probabilities is of significant importance, since often the occurrences of such events have widespread impacts. The focus in this work is on precisely quantifying these probabilities, often…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-05-23 Konstantinos G. Papakonstantinou , Hamed Nikbakht , Elsayed Eshra

Bayesian inference in the presence of an intractable likelihood function is computationally challenging. When following a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) approach to approximate the posterior distribution in this context, one typically…

Methodology · Statistics 2019-10-03 Johan Alenlöv , Arnaud Doucet , Fredrik Lindsten

Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) is a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm that avoids the random walk behavior and sensitivity to correlated parameters that plague many MCMC methods by taking a series of steps informed by first-order…

Computation · Statistics 2015-03-19 Matthew D. Hoffman , Andrew Gelman

The past decades have seen enormous improvements in computational inference based on statistical models, with continual enhancement in a wide range of computational tools, in competition. In Bayesian inference, first and foremost, MCMC…

Computation · Statistics 2015-05-12 Peter J. Green , Krzysztof Łatuszyński , Marcelo Pereyra , Christian P. Robert

In this paper we propose to evaluate and compare Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods to estimate the parameters in a generalized extreme value model. We employed the Bayesian approach using traditional Metropolis-Hastings methods,…

Computation · Statistics 2016-11-03 Marcelo Hartmann , Ricardo Ehlers

Although Hamiltonian Monte Carlo has proven an empirical success, the lack of a rigorous theoretical understanding of the algorithm has in many ways impeded both principled developments of the method and use of the algorithm in practice. In…

Methodology · Statistics 2014-10-21 M. J. Betancourt , Simon Byrne , Samuel Livingstone , Mark Girolami

HMCF "Hamiltonian Monte Carlo for Fields" is a software add-on for the NIFTy "Numerical Information Field Theory" framework implementing Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) sampling in Python. HMCF as well as NIFTy are designed to address…

Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability · Physics 2018-12-04 Christoph Lienhard , Torsten A. Enßlin

In many problems, complex non-Gaussian and/or nonlinear models are required to accurately describe a physical system of interest. In such cases, Monte Carlo algorithms are remarkably flexible and extremely powerful approaches to solve such…

Computation · Statistics 2015-04-23 Thi Le Thu Nguyen , Francois Septier , Gareth W. Peters , Yves Delignon

Tuning the durations of the Hamiltonian flow in Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (also called Hybrid Monte Carlo) (HMC) involves a tradeoff between computational cost and sampling quality, which is typically challenging to resolve in a satisfactory…

Probability · Mathematics 2017-09-08 Nawaf Bou-Rabee , Jesus Maria Sanz-Serna

Nonlinear non-Gaussian state-space models arise in numerous applications in statistics and signal processing. In this context, one of the most successful and popular approximation techniques is the Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) algorithm,…

Computation · Statistics 2016-04-20 Francois Septier , Gareth W. Peters

By leveraging the natural geometry of a smooth probabilistic system, Hamiltonian Monte Carlo yields computationally efficient Markov Chain Monte Carlo estimation. At least provided that the algorithm is sufficiently well-tuned. In this…

Methodology · Statistics 2016-01-05 Michael Betancourt

We study a family of (multivariate-)Gaussian Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (GHMC) operators and prove that the family of Gaussian distributions and their mixtures are invariant under such operators. Furthermore, each such operator is a…

Probability · Mathematics 2026-03-02 Yingdong Lu , Tomasz Nowicki

We generalize the Hamiltonian Monte Carlo algorithm with a stack of neural network layers and evaluate its ability to sample from different topologies in a two dimensional lattice gauge theory. We demonstrate that our model is able to…

High Energy Physics - Lattice · Physics 2021-05-10 Sam Foreman , Xiao-Yong Jin , James C. Osborn

In this paper, we propose a discontinuous Hamilton Monte Carlo (DHMC) to sample from dimensional varying distributions, and particularly the grand canonical ensemble. The DHMC was proposed in [Biometrika, 107(2)] for discontinuous potential…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2025-05-16 Lei Li , Xiangxian Luo , Yinchen Luo