Convergence of Langevin-simulated annealing algorithms with multiplicative noise

We study the convergence of Langevin-Simulated Annealing type algorithms with multiplicative noise, i.e. for V : R d → R V : \mathbb {R}^d \to \mathbb {R} a potential function to minimize, we consider the stochastic differential equation d Y t = − σ σ ⊤ ∇ V ( Y t ) dY_t = - \sigma \sigma ^\top \nabla V(Y_t) d t + a ( t ) σ ( Y t ) d W t + a ( t ) 2 Υ ( Y t ) d t dt + a(t)\sigma (Y_t)dW_t + a(t)^2\Upsilon (Y_t)dt , where ( W t ) (W_t) is a Brownian motion, where σ : R d → M d ( R ) \sigma : \mathbb {R}^d \to \mathcal {M}_d(\mathbb {R}) is an adaptive (multiplicative) noise, where a : R + → R + a : \mathbb {R}^+ \to \mathbb {R}^+ is a function decreasing to 0 0 and where Υ \Upsilon is a correction term. This setting can be applied to optimization problems arising in Machine Learning; allowing σ \sigma to depend on the position brings faster convergence in comparison with the classical Langevin equation d Y t = − ∇ V ( Y t ) d t + σ d W t dY_t = -\nabla V(Y_t)dt + \sigma dW_t . The case where σ \sigma is a constant matrix has been extensively studied; however little attention has been paid to the general case. We prove the convergence for the L 1 L^1 -Wasserstein distance of Y t Y_t and of the associated Euler scheme Y ¯ t \bar {Y}_t to some measure ν ⋆ \nu ^\star which is supported by argmin ⁡ ( V ) \operatorname {argmin}(V) and give rates of convergence to the instantaneous Gibbs measure ν a ( t ) \nu _{a(t)} of density ∝ exp ⁡ ( − 2 V ( x ) / a ( t ) 2 ) \propto \exp (-2V(x)/a(t)^2) . To do so, we first consider the case where a a is a piecewise constant function. We find again the classical schedule a ( t ) = A log − 1 / 2 ⁡ ( t ) a(t) = A\log ^{-1/2}(t) . We then prove the convergence for the general case by giving bounds for the Wasserstein distance to the stepwise constant case using ergodicity properties.