math.STSep 14, 2026

Tight Sampling Complexity with stochastic gradient oracles in Fixed Dimensions

Authors: Weiming OuXiao Wang

Abstract

We investigate the stochastic-gradient query complexity of sampling smooth strongly log-concave distributions in any fixed Euclidean dimension. The potential is μ\mu-strongly convex and LL-smooth, with an unknown mode in the ball of radius μ1/2\mu^{-1/2} about the origin. We have access to unbiased stochastic oracles with the variance at most σ2\sigma^2. For every σ20\sigma^2\ge0 and total variation (TV) accuracy 0<ε1/100<\varepsilon\le1/10, we prove that the tight complexity of sampling a distribution within ϵ\epsilon-TV distance from the target distribution is

NTV=Θ ⁣(log(1+κ)+σ2μϵ),N^\star_{\text{TV}}=\Theta\!\left(\log(1+\kappa)+ \frac{\sigma^2}{\mu\epsilon}\right),

where κ:=Lμ\kappa:=\frac L\mu is the condition number. Note that this complexity bound is simultaneously tight for the condition number κ\kappa and accuracy ϵ\epsilon. Besides, our tight complexity bound is adaptive to noiseless setting σ=0\sigma=0, which is NTV=Θ ⁣(log(1+κ)) N^\star_{\text{TV}}=\Theta\!\left(\log(1+\kappa)\right).

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