Exact targeting of Gibbs distributions using velocity-jump processes

Abstract: This work introduces and studies a new family of velocity jump Markov processes directly amenable to exact simulation with the following two properties: i) trajectories converge in law when a time-step parameter vanishes towards a given Langevin or Hamil-tonian dynamics; ii) the stationary distribution of the process is always exactly given by the product of a Gaussian (for velocities) by any target log-density whose gradient is pointwise computabe together with some additional explicit appropriate upper bound. The process does not exhibit any velocity reflections (jump sizes can be controlled) and is suitable for the 'factorization method'. We provide a rigorous mathematical proof of: i) the small time-step convergence towards Hamiltonian/Langevin dynamics, as well as ii) the exponentially fast convergence towards the target distribution when suitable noise on velocity is present. Numerical implementation is detailed and illustrated.