cs.LGMay 21, 2026

Regret-Based (ε,δ)(ε,δ)-optimal Stopping Criteria for Bayesian Optimization

Authors: Haowei WangJingyi WangQiyu Wei

Organizations: National University of Singapore, Singapore · Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, CA, USA · The University of Manchester, UK

Abstract

Bayesian optimization (BO) is a widely used iterative black-box optimization method that utilizes Gaussian process (GP) surrogate models. In practice, BO is typically terminated after a fixed evaluation budget is exhausted, which can incur unnecessary cost and provides no optimality guarantee on solution quality. Recent research in developing a practical stopping criterion has made empirical progress, yet a theoretically sound stopping criterion remains a work in progress. In this work, we present provably tighter instantaneous regret bounds for GP upper confidence bound (GP-UCB) at any given iteration. Then, we propose stopping criteria for GP-UCB based on this tighter bound that ensures an εε-optimal solution with high probability 1δ1-δ upon termination. Numerical experiments are performed to validate and demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our stopping criteria.

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