Windowed thinning and query complexity for the bouncy particle and Zigzag samplers
Authors: Jianfeng Lu, Yinchen Luo
Abstract
Let μ(dx)∝e−U(x)dx on Rd, where U is m-strongly convex and L-smooth, and denote by κ=L/m the condition number. We consider windowed thinning, an exact simulation method for the bouncy particle sampler and the coordinate Zigzag process. The method divides a trajectory into deterministic windows and uses a gradient evaluation at the beginning of each window to construct a tractable local envelope for the event rate. Combining this construction with quantitative mixing estimates and finite-time bounds on the expected numbers of bounces and flips yields query complexity guarantees from a Gaussian cold start. For total-variation error ε, the expected query counts are O(κ1/2d(dlogκ+logε1)) gradient queries for the bouncy particle sampler and O(κd1/4(dlogκ+logε1)) full-gradient equivalents for Zigzag, where d coordinate-partial queries count as one equivalent.