Appropriate State-Dependent Friction Coefficient Accelerates Kinetic Langevin Dynamics

Abstract: We consider the convergence of kinetic Langevin dynamics to its ergodic invariant measure, which is Gibbs distribution. Instead of the standard setup where the friction coefficient is a constant scalar, we investigate position-dependent friction coefficient and the possible accelerated convergence it enables. We show that by choosing this coefficient matrix to be $2\sqrt{\text{Hess}V}$, convergence is accelerated in the sense that no constant scalar friction coefficient can lead to faster convergence for a large subset of (nonlinear) strongly-convex potential $V$'s. The speed of convergence is quantified in terms of chi-square divergence from the target distribution, and proved using a Lyapunov approach, based on viewing sampling as optimization in the infinite dimensional space of probability distributions.