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Main Authors: Bertazzi, Andrea, Vasdekis, Giorgos
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.15155
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author Bertazzi, Andrea
Vasdekis, Giorgos
author_facet Bertazzi, Andrea
Vasdekis, Giorgos
contents We study time-changed Markov processes to speed up the convergence of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms. The time-changed process is defined by adjusting the speed of time of a base process via a user-chosen, state-dependent function. We explore the properties of such transformations and apply this idea to several Markov processes from the MCMC literature, such as Langevin diffusions and piecewise deterministic Markov processes, obtaining novel modifications of classical algorithms and also re-discovering known MCMC algorithms. We prove theoretical properties of the time-changed process under suitable conditions on the base process, focusing on connecting the stationary distributions and qualitative convergence properties such as geometric and uniform ergodicity, as well as a functional central limit theorem. We also provide a comparison with the framework of space transformations, clarifying the similarities between the approaches. Throughout the paper we give various visualisations and numerical simulations on simple tasks to gain intuition on the method and its performance. Finally, we provide numerical simulations to gain intuition on the method and its performance on benchmark problems. Our results indicate a performance improvement in the context of multimodal distributions and rare event simulation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_15155
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Sampling with time-changed Markov processes
Bertazzi, Andrea
Vasdekis, Giorgos
Computation
Probability
We study time-changed Markov processes to speed up the convergence of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms. The time-changed process is defined by adjusting the speed of time of a base process via a user-chosen, state-dependent function. We explore the properties of such transformations and apply this idea to several Markov processes from the MCMC literature, such as Langevin diffusions and piecewise deterministic Markov processes, obtaining novel modifications of classical algorithms and also re-discovering known MCMC algorithms. We prove theoretical properties of the time-changed process under suitable conditions on the base process, focusing on connecting the stationary distributions and qualitative convergence properties such as geometric and uniform ergodicity, as well as a functional central limit theorem. We also provide a comparison with the framework of space transformations, clarifying the similarities between the approaches. Throughout the paper we give various visualisations and numerical simulations on simple tasks to gain intuition on the method and its performance. Finally, we provide numerical simulations to gain intuition on the method and its performance on benchmark problems. Our results indicate a performance improvement in the context of multimodal distributions and rare event simulation.
title Sampling with time-changed Markov processes
topic Computation
Probability
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.15155