arXiv AI

Microcanonical Hamiltonian Monte Carlo and the Helmholtz Theorem

The paper investigates the Microcanonical Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (MHMC) algorithm from a thermodynamic perspective, deriving its state variables and potentials to show that it represents a microcanonical thermodynamic ensemble. It demonstrates analytically and numerically that MHMC satisfies the Helmholtz theorem, an alternative form of the first law of thermodynamics, and introduces a new sampling algorithm tailored for lower-dimensional inference problems. The authors conclude that canonical Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods are more natural than MHMC when evaluated through thermodynamic and information-theoretic lenses.

arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 15

Quenched Ensemble Sampling

arXiv:2609.15894v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Some of the sharpest challenges in sampling from the energy functions of physical systems arise at phase transitions, where the density of states cha...

By David Yallup
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Jul 8

Gradient-free Riemannian Langevin Sampler

We address the problem of efficiently sampling multimodal probability distributions, where standard Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods often suffer from poor mixing and mode trapping. To mitigate these issues, we propose Gradient-free Riemannian Langevin Sampler (GRiLS), a novel proposal that improves exploration without requiring gradient evaluations of the target density.

arXiv Statistics ML
Aug 26

A Non-asymptotic Analysis for Learning and Applying a Preconditioner in MCMC

The paper presents a non‑asymptotic analysis of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms that learn and apply a preconditioner based on either the target covariance or the expected Hessian of the target potential. It compares the finite‑time computational costs of these preconditioned schemes with unpreconditioned counterparts, providing guarantees for algorithms such as the Unadjusted Langevin Algorithm (ULA) and the proximal sampler. The analysis relies on a contraction assumption in the Wasserstein‑2 distance to formalize approximate independence and bridge modern MCMC theory with classical effective sample size heuristics.

By Max Hird, Florian Maire, Jeffrey Negrea