Note on Interacting Langevin Diffusions: Gradient Structure and Ensemble Kalman Sampler by Garbuno-Inigo, Hoffmann, Li and Stuart (1908.10890v1)

Abstract: An interacting system of Langevin dynamics driven particles has been proposed for sampling from a given posterior density by Garbuno-Inigo, Hoffmann, Li and Stuart in Interacting Langevin Diffusions: Gradient Structure and Ensemble Kalman Sampler (arXiv:1903:08866v2). The proposed formulation is primarily studied from a formal mean-field limit perspective, while the theoretical behaviour under a finite particle size is left as an open problem. In this note we demonstrate that the particle-based covariance interaction term requires a non-trivial correction. We also show that the corrected dynamics samples exactly from the desired posterior provided that the empirical covariance matrix of the particle system remains non-singular and the posterior log-density satisfies the standard Bakry-Emery criterion.