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Main Authors: Beh, Jason, Morio, Jérôme, Simatos, Florian, Weissmann, Simon
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.20185
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author Beh, Jason
Morio, Jérôme
Simatos, Florian
Weissmann, Simon
author_facet Beh, Jason
Morio, Jérôme
Simatos, Florian
Weissmann, Simon
contents This work considers the framework of Markov chain importance sampling~(MCIS), in which one employs a Markov chain Monte Carlo~(MCMC) scheme to sample particles approaching the optimal distribution for importance sampling, prior to estimating the quantity of interest through importance sampling. In rare event estimation, the optimal distribution admits a non-differentiable log-density, thus gradient-based MCMC can only target a smooth approximation of the optimal density. We propose a new gradient-based MCIS scheme for rare event estimation, called affine invariant interacting Langevin dynamics for importance sampling~(ALDI-IS), in which the affine invariant interacting Langevin dynamics~(ALDI) is used to sample particles according to the smoothed zero-variance density. We establish a non-asymptotic error bound when importance sampling is used in conjunction with samples independently and identically distributed according to the smoothed optiaml density to estimate a rare event probability, and an error bound on the sampling bias when a simplified version of ALDI, the unadjusted Langevin algorithm, is used to sample from the smoothed optimal density. We show that the smoothing parameter of the optimal density has a strong influence and exhibits a trade-off between a low importance sampling error and the ease of sampling using ALDI. We perform a numerical study of ALDI-IS and illustrate this trade-off phenomenon on standard rare event estimation test cases.
format Preprint
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institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Affine invariant interacting Langevin dynamics in Markov chain importance sampling for rare event estimation
Beh, Jason
Morio, Jérôme
Simatos, Florian
Weissmann, Simon
Statistics Theory
This work considers the framework of Markov chain importance sampling~(MCIS), in which one employs a Markov chain Monte Carlo~(MCMC) scheme to sample particles approaching the optimal distribution for importance sampling, prior to estimating the quantity of interest through importance sampling. In rare event estimation, the optimal distribution admits a non-differentiable log-density, thus gradient-based MCMC can only target a smooth approximation of the optimal density. We propose a new gradient-based MCIS scheme for rare event estimation, called affine invariant interacting Langevin dynamics for importance sampling~(ALDI-IS), in which the affine invariant interacting Langevin dynamics~(ALDI) is used to sample particles according to the smoothed zero-variance density. We establish a non-asymptotic error bound when importance sampling is used in conjunction with samples independently and identically distributed according to the smoothed optiaml density to estimate a rare event probability, and an error bound on the sampling bias when a simplified version of ALDI, the unadjusted Langevin algorithm, is used to sample from the smoothed optimal density. We show that the smoothing parameter of the optimal density has a strong influence and exhibits a trade-off between a low importance sampling error and the ease of sampling using ALDI. We perform a numerical study of ALDI-IS and illustrate this trade-off phenomenon on standard rare event estimation test cases.
title Affine invariant interacting Langevin dynamics in Markov chain importance sampling for rare event estimation
topic Statistics Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.20185