Convergence of adaptive biasing potential methods for diffusions

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Publication:2630183



Abstract: We prove the consistency of an adaptive importance sampling strategy based on biasing the potential energy function V of a diffusion process dXt0=−ablaV(Xt0)dt+dWt; for the sake of simplicity, periodic boundary conditions are assumed, so that Xt0 lives on the flat d-dimensional torus. The goal is to sample its invariant distribution . The bias Vt−V, where Vt is the new (random and time-dependent) potential function, acts only on some coordinates of the system, and is designed to flatten the corresponding empirical occupation measure of the diffusion X in the large time regime. The diffusion process writes dXt=−ablaVt(Xt)dt+dWt, where the bias Vt−V is function of the key quantity overlinemut: a probability occupation measure which depends on the past of the process, {it i.e.} on (Xs)sin[0,t]. We are thus dealing with a self-interacting diffusion. In this note, we prove that when t goes to infinity, overlinemut almost surely converges to mu. Moreover, the approach is justified by the convergence of the bias to a limit which has an intepretation in terms of a free energy. The main argument is a change of variables, which formally validates the consistency of the approach. The convergence is then rigorously proven adapting the ODE method from stochastic approximation.












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