Loading [MathJax]/jax/output/HTML-CSS/config.js
Online First
A Sharp Uniform-in-Time Error Estimate for Stochastic Gradient Langevin Dynamics
Lei Li and Yuliang Wang

CSIAM Trans. Appl. Math. DOI: 10.4208/csiam-am.SO-2024-0039

Publication Date : 2025-06-12

  • Abstract

We establish a sharp uniform-in-time error estimate for the stochastic gradient Langevin dynamics (SGLD), which is a widely-used sampling algorithm. Under mild assumptions, we obtain a uniform-in-time $\mathcal{O}(η^2)$ bound for the Kullback-Leibler divergence between the SGLD iteration and the Langevin diffusion, where $η$ is the step size (or learning rate). Our analysis is also valid for varying step sizes. Consequently, we are able to derive an $\mathcal{O}(η)$ bound for the distance between the invariant measures of the SGLD iteration and the Langevin diffusion, in terms of Wasserstein or total variation distances. Our result can be viewed as a significant improvement compared with existing analysis for SGLD in related literature.

  • Copyright

COPYRIGHT: © Global Science Press