arXiv AI By Weixin Wang, Haoyang Zheng, Guang Lin, Wei Deng, Pan Xu

Rethinking Langevin Thompson Sampling from A Stochastic Approximation Perspective

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The paper introduces TS-SA, a variant of Langevin-based Thompson Sampling that integrates stochastic approximation into the bandit framework. TS-SA performs a single Langevin step per new reward and updates a persistent Markov chain for each arm, avoiding repeated sampling of past data. This approach yields a near‑optimal worst‑case regret bound of ≥O(√{KT}) under log‑concavity and smoothness, and empirical results show strong performance against standard baselines.

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