Sampling from the Continuous Random Energy Model in Total Variation Distance

• Main Authors: Lee, Holden, Wu, Qiang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 30.06.2024
• Subjects: Computer Science - Data Structures and Algorithms; Mathematics - Mathematical Physics; Mathematics - Probability; Physics - Disordered Systems and Neural Networks; Physics - Mathematical Physics
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2407.00868

The continuous random energy model (CREM) is a toy model of spin glasses on $\{0,1\}^N$ that, in the limit, exhibits an infinitely hierarchical correlation structure. We give two polynomial-time algorithms to approximately sample from the Gibbs distribution of the CREM in the high-temperature regime, based on a Markov chain and a sequential sampler. The running time depends algebraically on the desired TV distance and failure probability and exponentially in $(1/g')^{O(1)}$, where $g'$ is the gap to a certain inverse temperature threshold; this contrasts with previous results which only attain $o(N)$ accuracy in KL divergence. If the covariance function $A$ of the CREM is concave, the algorithms work up to the critical threshold $\beta_c$, which is the static phase transition point; moreover, for certain $A$, the algorithms work up to the known algorithmic threshold $\beta_G$ proposed in Addario-Berry and Maillard (2020) for non-trivial sampling guarantees. Our result depends on quantitative bounds for the fluctuation of the partition function and a new contiguity result of the ``tilted" CREM obtained from sampling, which is of independent interest. We also show that the spectral gap is exponentially small with high probability, suggesting that the algebraic dependence is unavoidable with a Markov chain approach.