ArXiv

A proximal gradient algorithm for composite log-concave sampling

Authors
Linghai Liu, Sinho Chewi
Categories
math.ST, cs.DS, cs.LG, stat.ML
arXiv
https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.12461v1
PDF
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2605.12461v1

Brief

The paper introduces a proximal-gradient Monte Carlo sampler for composite log-concave densities π ∝ e^{-f-g}, combining gradient steps on smooth f with a restricted Gaussian-oracle (RGO) proximal sampler for g. Under α-strong convexity of f+g and β-smoothness of f it achieves ε total-variation error in ~O(κ·sqrt(d)·log^4(1/ε)) iterations (κ=β/α), and the authors extend guarantees to Poincaré/LSI targets and to Lipschitz non-smooth f.

Why it matters

Presents a proximal-gradient sampler for composite log-concave targets π ∝ e^{-f-g}; when f+g is α-strongly convex and f is β-smooth, it attains ε total-variation error in ~O(κ·sqrt(d)·log^4(1/ε)) iterations, where κ = β/α, matching prior state-of-the-art for the g=0 case.

Key details

  • Algorithm requires gradient access to f and a restricted Gaussian oracle (RGO) for g (able to sample from density ∝ exp(-g(x) - (1/(2h))||y-x||^2)); results are extended to non-log-concave targets satisfying a Poincaré or log-Sobolev inequality and to Lipschitz, non-smooth f.
Source evidence

Abstract

We propose an algorithm to sample from composite log-concave distributions over $\mathbb{R}^d$, i.e., densities of the form $π\propto e^{-f-g}$, assuming access to gradient evaluations of $f$ and a restricted Gaussian oracle (RGO) for $g$. The latter requirement means that we can easily sample from the density $\text{RGO}_{g,h,y}(x) \propto \exp(-g(x) -\frac{1}{2h}||y-x||^2)$, which is the sampling analogue of the proximal operator for $g$. If $f + g$ is $α$-strongly convex and $f$ is $β$-smooth, our sampler achieves $\varepsilon$ error in total variation distance in $\widetilde{\mathcal O}(κ\sqrt d \log^4(1/\varepsilon))$ iterations where $κ:= β/α$, which matches prior state-of-the-art results for the case $g=0$. We further extend our results to cases where (1) $π$ is non-log-concave but satisfies a Poincaré or log-Sobolev inequality, and (2) $f$ is non-smooth but Lipschitz.