Preservation of Log-Concavity and Convergence of Wasserstein-Fisher-Rao Gradient Flows

arXiv:2609.18118 · stat.ML, cs.LG, math.PR · Submitted 2026-09-16 · Read on arXiv

stat.ML, cs.LG, math.PR

Submitted: 2026-09-16

Updated: 2026-09-16

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The gist: We study the convergence of Wasserstein-Fisher-Rao (WFR) gradient flows for sampling from probability distributions known up to a normalisation constant.

Terminology

Abstract

We study the convergence of Wasserstein-Fisher-Rao (WFR) gradient flows for sampling from probability distributions known up to a normalisation constant. By combining Wasserstein transport with Fisher-Rao birth-death dynamics, WFR flows balance exploration and selection. These flows have been recognised as a promising mechanism to accelerate convergence beyond Langevin dynamics. We show that for a class of strongly log-concave target distributions satisfying additional curvature conditions, WFR flows preserve strong log-concavity, in contrast to Wasserstein flows which enjoy this property only in the Gaussian setting. Exploiting this result, we derive explicit non-asymptotic convergence rates for the symmetrised Kullback-Leibler divergence, without requiring a warm-start as required in current estimates. In particular, we show that the convergence rate decomposes additively into Wasserstein and Fisher-Rao contributions, thereby confirming a recent conjecture within this setting. These results provide refined convergence guarantees and further develop the theoretical foundations of WFR gradient flows for sampling and Bayesian inference.

Sources

Related papers