Geometric ergodicity of the Bouncy Particle Sampler

Abstract

The Bouncy Particle Sampler (BPS) is a Monte Carlo Markov chain algorithm to sample from a target density known up to a multiplicative constant. This method is based on a kinetic piecewise deterministic Markov process for which the target measure is invariant. This paper deals with theoretical properties of BPS. First, we establish geometric ergodicity of the associated semi-group under weaker conditions than in (Ann. Statist. 47 (2019) 1268–1287) both on the target distribution and the velocity probability distribution. This result is based on a new coupling of the process which gives a quantitative minorization condition and yields more insights on the convergence. In addition, we study on a toy model the dependency of the convergence rates on the dimension of the state space. Finally, we apply our results to the analysis of simulated annealing algorithms based on BPS.