The forward–backward envelope for sampling with the overdamped Langevin algorithm

Abstract

In this paper, we analyse a proximal method based on the idea of forward–backward splitting for sampling from distributions with densities that are not necessarily smooth. In particular, we study the non-asymptotic properties of the Euler–Maruyama discretization of the Langevin equation, where the forward–backward envelope is used to deal with the non-smooth part of the dynamics. An advantage of this envelope, when compared to widely-used Moreu–Yoshida one and the MYULA algorithm, is that it maintains the MAP estimator of the original non-smooth distribution. We also study a number of numerical experiments that support our theoretical findings.