Logarithmic Sobolev inequalities in discrete product spaces

Abstract The aim of this paper is to prove an inequality between relative entropy and the sum of average conditional relative entropies of the following form: for a fixed probability measure q on , ( is a finite set), and any probability measure on , (*) $$D(p||q){\rm{\le}}C \cdot \sum\limits_{i = 1}^n {{\rm{\mathbb{E}}}_p D(p_i ( \cdot |Y_1 ,{\rm{ }}...,{\rm{ }}Y_{i - 1} ,{\rm{ }}Y_{i + 1} ,...,{\rm{ }}Y_n )||q_i ( \cdot |Y_1 ,{\rm{ }}...,{\rm{ }}Y_{i - 1} ,{\rm{ }}Y_{i + 1} ,{\rm{ }}...,{\rm{ }}Y_n )),} $$ where pi(· |y1, …, yi−1, yi+1, …, yn) and qi(· |x1, …, xi−1, xi+1, …, xn) denote the local specifications for p resp. q, that is, the conditional distributions of the ith coordinate, given the other coordinates. The constant C depends on (the local specifications of) q. The inequality (*) ismeaningful in product spaces, in both the discrete and the continuous case, and can be used to prove a logarithmic Sobolev inequality for q, provided uniform logarithmic Sobolev inequalities are available for qi(· |x1, …, xi−1, xi+1, …, xn), for all fixed i and fixed (x1, …, xi−1, xi+1, …, xn). Inequality (*) directly implies that the Gibbs sampler associated with q is a contraction for relative entropy. In this paper we derive inequality (*), and thereby a logarithmic Sobolev inequality, in discrete product spaces, by proving inequalities for an appropriate Wasserstein-like distance.