stat.MLSep 21, 2026

Penalized Nonreversible Langevin for Constrained Sampling

Authors: Pervez AliWeihao DongXiaoyu Wang

Abstract

We propose penalized nonreversible Langevin algorithms for sampling from π(x)ef(x)1C(x)π(x)\propto e^{-f(x)}\mathbf 1_{\mathcal C}(x), where CRd\mathcal C\subset\mathbb R^d is a compact convex set. The algorithms combine a squared distance penalty with constant or compatible state dependent skew symmetric perturbations that preserve the penalized Gibbs distribution. For smooth, possibly nonconvex ff, we derive nonasymptotic total variation bounds for the full gradient algorithm under a log Sobolev inequality. When unbiased stochastic gradients are available, we establish 22-Wasserstein bounds under global contraction and Lipschitz conditions on the full drift in an adapted quadratic metric. For a fixed penalty parameter, the error relative to the penalized Gibbs distribution decays exponentially to an O(η)\mathcal{O}(\sqrtη) neighborhood, where ηη is the stepsize. We also bound the discrepancy between the penalized Gibbs distribution and the constrained target. In a two dimensional quadratic model, we establish nonreversible acceleration by tuning the skew perturbation to the curvature imbalance induced by penalization. With the target accuracy and smaller curvature fixed and initial Wasserstein distances uniformly bounded, tuning the skew perturbation improves the sufficient Euler iteration bound from linear to logarithmic in the curvature ratio. Numerical experiments evaluate the algorithms on constrained Bayesian regression, classification, neural networks, and truncated sampling, and examine the acceleration mechanism in a stochastic quadratic model.

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