Proximal Hamiltonian Monte Carlo

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Shukla, Apratim, Vats, Dootika, Chi, Eric C.
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Shukla, Apratim
Vats, Dootika
Chi, Eric C.
author_facet Shukla, Apratim
Vats, Dootika
Chi, Eric C.
contents Bayesian formulation of modern day signal processing problems has called for improved Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling algorithms for inference. The need for efficient sampling techniques has become indispensable for high dimensional distributions that often characterize many core signal processing problems, e.g., image denoising, sparse signal recovery, etc. A major issue in building effective sampling strategies, however, is the non-differentiability of the underlying posterior density. Such posteriors are popular in models designed to recover sparse signals. As a result, the use of efficient gradient-based MCMC sampling techniques becomes difficult. We circumvent this problem by proposing a Proximal Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (p-HMC) algorithm, which leverages elements from convex optimization like proximal mappings and Moreau-Yosida (MY) envelopes within Hamiltonian dynamics. Our method improves upon the current state of the art non-smooth Hamiltonian Monte Carlo as it achieves a relatively sharper approximation of the gradient of log posterior density and a computational burden of at most the current state-of-the-art. A chief contribution of this work is the theoretical analysis of p-HMC. We provide conditions for geometric ergodicity of the underlying HMC chain. On the practical front, we propose guidance on choosing the key p-HMC hyperparameter -- the regularization parameter in the MY-envelope. We demonstrate p-HMC's efficiency over other MCMC algorithms on benchmark problems of logistic regression and low-rank matrix estimation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_22252
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Proximal Hamiltonian Monte Carlo
Shukla, Apratim
Vats, Dootika
Chi, Eric C.
Computation
Bayesian formulation of modern day signal processing problems has called for improved Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling algorithms for inference. The need for efficient sampling techniques has become indispensable for high dimensional distributions that often characterize many core signal processing problems, e.g., image denoising, sparse signal recovery, etc. A major issue in building effective sampling strategies, however, is the non-differentiability of the underlying posterior density. Such posteriors are popular in models designed to recover sparse signals. As a result, the use of efficient gradient-based MCMC sampling techniques becomes difficult. We circumvent this problem by proposing a Proximal Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (p-HMC) algorithm, which leverages elements from convex optimization like proximal mappings and Moreau-Yosida (MY) envelopes within Hamiltonian dynamics. Our method improves upon the current state of the art non-smooth Hamiltonian Monte Carlo as it achieves a relatively sharper approximation of the gradient of log posterior density and a computational burden of at most the current state-of-the-art. A chief contribution of this work is the theoretical analysis of p-HMC. We provide conditions for geometric ergodicity of the underlying HMC chain. On the practical front, we propose guidance on choosing the key p-HMC hyperparameter -- the regularization parameter in the MY-envelope. We demonstrate p-HMC's efficiency over other MCMC algorithms on benchmark problems of logistic regression and low-rank matrix estimation.
title Proximal Hamiltonian Monte Carlo
topic Computation
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.22252