SearcharxivSearch

arXiv · 2511.22564

Convergence of a Sequential Monte Carlo algorithm towards multimodal distributions on Rd

Abstract

In an earlier joint work, we studied a sequential Monte Carlo algorithm to sample from the Gibbs measure supported on torus with a non-convex energy function at a low temperature, where we proved that the time complexity of the algorithm is polynomial in the inverse temperature. However, the analysis in that torus setting relied crucially on compactness and does not directly extend to unbounded domains. This work introduces a new approach that resolves this issue and establishes a similar result for sampling from Gibbs measures supported on Rd. In particular, our main result shows that for double-well energy with equal well depths, the time complexity scales as seventh power of the inverse temperature, and quadratically in both the inverse allowed absolute error and probability error.

Explore related subjects

Keep this discovery

BibTeXRIS

Ruiyu Han. 2025-11-27. Convergence of a Sequential Monte Carlo algorithm towards multimodal distributions on Rd. https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.22564

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

Estimating Hierarchically Rank Structured Covariance Matrices

We consider the problem of estimating a high-dimensional covariance matrix from a very limited number of samples. This problem is ubiquitous in computational fluid dynamics, where a small number of fluid snapshots must be used to construct a Gramian matrix determining a reduced-order model, as well as in computational geoscience, where a small ensemble of Earth system forecasts must be used to estimate the covariance matrix associated with the forecast uncertainty. It is common practice to regularize the small-sample covariance by imposing a "localization" structure that enforces a physically realistic correlation length scale, imposing a sparsity constraint, "shrinking" towards a prescribed target, or attenuating small correlations. We propose an alternate technique that regularizes the small-sample covariance by imposing hierarchical rank structure. Compared to regularization methods that assume sparsity such as spatial localization, hierarchical rank structure accommodates a wider range of covariance matrices, roughly corresponding to situations where long-range correlations vary more smoothly than short-range ones. It also results in a data-sparse matrix format that permits highly efficient matrix-vector products. We present theory and algorithms which show how to efficiently estimate a high-dimensional, hierarchically rank structured covariance matrix from limited samples. Through an error analysis and numerical experiments with a variety of model problems, we demonstrate that these techniques are effective at reducing sampling errors, and that in many cases they achieve smaller estimation error than conventional techniques.

stat.CO

Optimal Slice-Adaptive Tuning of Hybrid Slice Sampling

Slice sampling is a Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm that draws its next state uniformly from a "slice"---a super-level set of the target density function---at each iteration, thereby providing automatic local adaptivity to the scale of the target. In practice the exact slice is not known, so general-purpose implementations use an approximate slice that is grown from a starting interval of length $w>0$, with a computational cost that depends on $w$. This work presents an analysis of the average per-iteration number of target density evaluations, as a function of $w$, of hybrid slice sampling with various slice-finding schemes for targets with contiguous slices. The paper uses the results of the analysis to develop automated, slice-adaptive tuning schemes along with suboptimality bounds and asymptotic convergence guarantees. Simulations demonstrate that the tuning schemes reliably yield near-optimal slice-adaptive tuning with essentially no dependence on the initial setting of $w$.

stat.CO