This paper derives exponential concentration inequalities and polynomial moment inequalities for the spectral norm of a random matrix. The analysis requires a matrix extension of the scalar concentration theory developed by Sourav Chatterjee using Stein's method of exchangeable pairs. When applied to a sum of independent random matrices, this approach yields matrix generalizations of the classical inequalities due to Hoeffding, Bernstein, Khintchine and Rosenthal. The same technique delivers bounds for sums of dependent random matrices and more general matrix-valued functions of dependent random variables.
The aim of this paper is to prove an improved version of the bounded differences inequality for matrix valued functions, by developing the methods of Mackey et al.: "Matrix Concentration Inequalities via the Method of Exchangeable Pairs". Along the way, we prove new trace inequalities for the matrix exponential.
Let $(\mathbf{W,W'})$ be an exchangeable pair of vectors in $\mathbb{R}^k$. Suppose this pair satisfies \beas E(\mathbf{W}'|\mathbf{W})=(I_k-Λ)\mathbf{W}+\mathbf{R(W)}. \enas If $||\mathbf{W-W'}||_2\le K$ and $\mathbf{R(W)}=0$, then concentration of measure results of following form is proved for all $\mathbf{w}\succeq 0$ when the moment generating function of $\mathbf{W}$ is finite. \beas P(\mathbf{W}\succeq\mathbf{w}),P(\mathbf{W}\preceq -\mathbf{w})\le \exp(-\frac{||\mathbf{w}||_2^2}{2K^2ν_1}), \enas for an explicit constant $ν_1$, where $\succeq$ stands for coordinate wise $\ge$ ordering. …
An exchangeable random matrix is a random matrix with distribution invariant under any permutation of the entries. For such random matrices, we show, as the dimension tends to infinity, that the empirical spectral distribution tends to the uniform law on the unit disc. This is an instance of the universality phenomenon known as the circular law, for a model of random matrices with dependent entries, rows, and columns. It is also a non-Hermitian counterpart of a result of Chatterjee on the semi-circular law for random Hermitian matrices with exchangeable entries. The proof relies in particular …
The purpose of this dissertation is to introduce a version of Stein's method of exchangeable pairs to solve problems in measure concentration. We specifically target systems of dependent random variables, since that is where the power of Stein's method is fully realized. Because the theory is quite abstract, we have tried to put in as many examples as possible. Some of the highlighted applications are as follows: (a) We shall find an easily verifiable condition under which a popular heuristic technique originating from physics, known as the "mean field equations" method, is valid. No such cond…
We derive concentration inequalities for empirical means $\frac{1}{t} \int_0^t f(X_s) ds$ where $X_s$ is an irreducible Markov jump process on a finite state space and $f$ some observable. Using a Feynman-Kac semigroup we first derive a general concentration inequality. Then, based on this inequality we derive further concentration inequalities. Hereby we use three different methods; perturbation theory, Poincaré inequalities and information inequalities. We also obtain a Bernstein type concentration inequality.
This paper establishes new concentration inequalities for random matrices constructed from independent random variables. These results are analogous with the generalized Efron-Stein inequalities developed by Boucheron et al. The proofs rely on the method of exchangeable pairs.
We establish concentration inequalities in the class of ultra log-concave distributions. In particular, we show that ultra log-concave distributions satisfy Poisson concentration bounds. As an application, we derive concentration bounds for the intrinsic volumes of a convex body, which generalizes and improves a result of Lotz, McCoy, Nourdin, Peccati, and Tropp (2019).
We consider a random variable $X$ that takes values in a (possibly infinite-dimensional) topological vector space $\mathcal{X}$. We show that, with respect to an appropriate "normal distance" on $\mathcal{X}$, concentration inequalities for linear and non-linear functions of $X$ are equivalent. This normal distance corresponds naturally to the concentration rate in classical concentration results such as Gaussian concentration and concentration on the Euclidean and Hamming cubes. Under suitable assumptions on the roundness of the sets of interest, the concentration inequalities so obtained are…
This paper explores the connection between a generalized Riesz electric energy and norms on the set of probability measures defined in terms of duality. We derive functional inequalities linking these two notions, recovering and generalizing existing Coulomb transport inequalities. We then use them to prove concentration of measure around the equilibrium and thermal equilibrium measures. Finally, we leverage these concentration inequalities to obtain Moser-Trudinger-type inequalities, which may also be interpreted as bounds on the Laplace transform of fluctuations.
This paper studies concentration inequalities for functions of locally dependent random variables. We show that the usual definition of local dependence does not imply concentration for general Hamming Lipschitz functions. We define hypergraph dependence, which is a special case of local dependence, and show that it implies concentration if the maximal neighborhood size is small. We prove concentration in Hamming distance, Talagrand distance, and for self-bounding functions of a particular type under this dependence structure.
Let $\mathbf{W}=(W_1,W_2,...,W_k)$ be a random vector with nonnegative coordinates having nonzero and finite variances. We prove concentration inequalities for $\mathbf{W}$ using size biased couplings that generalize the previous univariate results. Two applications on local dependence and counting patterns are provided.
We propose new concentration inequalities for self-normalized martingales. The main idea is to introduce a suitable weighted sum of the predictable quadratic variation and the total quadratic variation of the martingale. It offers much more flexibility and allows us to improve previous concentration inequalities. Statistical applications on autoregressive process, internal diffusion-limited aggregation process, and online statistical learning are also provided.
In this work we derive multi-level concentration inequalities for polynomial functions in independent random variables with a $α$-sub-exponential tail decay. A particularly interesting case is given by quadratic forms $f(X_1, \ldots, X_n) = \langle X,A X \rangle$, for which we prove Hanson-Wright-type inequalities with explicit dependence on various norms of the matrix $A$. A consequence of these inequalities is a two-level concentration inequality for quadratic forms in $α$-sub-exponential random variables, such as quadratic Poisson chaos. We provide various applications of these inequalities…
We consider a Boolean model $Z$ driven by a Poisson particle process $η$ on a metric space $\mathbb{Y}$. We study the random variable $ρ(Z)$, where $ρ$ is a (deterministic) measure on $\mathbb{Y}$. Due to the interaction of overlapping particles, the distribution of $ρ(Z)$ cannot be described explicitly. In this note we derive concentration inequalities for $ρ(Z)$. To this end we first prove two concentration inequalities for functions of a Poisson process on a general phase space.
Non-Gaussian concentration estimates are obtained for invariant probability measures of reversible Markov processes. We show that the functional inequalities approach combined with a suitable Lyapunov condition allows us to circumvent the classical Lipschitz assumption of the observables. Our method is general and covers diffusions as well as pure-jump Markov processes on unbounded spaces.
We show that any probability measure satisfying a Matrix Poincaré inequality with respect to some reversible Markov generator satisfies an exponential matrix concentration inequality depending on the associated matrix carré du champ operator. This extends to the matrix setting a classical phenomenon in the scalar case. Moreover, the proof gives rise to new matrix trace inequalities which could be of independent interest. We then apply this general fact by establishing matrix Poincaré inequalities to derive matrix concentration inequalities for Gaussian measures, product measures and for Strong…
We use a generalization of Hoeffding's inequality to show concentration results for the free energy of disordered pinning models, assuming only that the disorder has a finite exponential moment. We also prove some concentration inequalities for directed polymers in random environment, which we use to establish a large deviations results for the end position of the polymer under the polymer measure.
We provide a new exponential concentration inequality for First Passage Percolation valid for a wide class of edge times distributions. This improves and extends a result by Benjamini, Kalai and Schramm which gave a variance bound for Bernoulli edge times. Our approach is based on some functional inequalities extending the work of Rossignol and Falik and Samorodnitsky.
We prove that an irreducible aperiodic Markov chain is geometrically ergodic if and only if any separately bounded functional of the stationary chain satisfies an appropriate subgaussian deviation inequality from its mean.
Using the method of transportation-information inequality introduced in \cite{GLWY}, we establish Bernstein type's concentration inequalities for empirical means $\frac 1t \int_0^t g(X_s)ds$ where $g$ is a unbounded observable of the symmetric Markov process $(X_t)$. Three approaches are proposed : functional inequalities approach ; Lyapunov function method ; and an approach through the Lipschitzian norm of the solution to the Poisson equation. Several applications and examples are studied.
One way to define the concentration of measure phenomenon is via Talagrand inequalities, also called transportation-information inequalities. That is, a comparison of the Wasserstein distance from the given measure to any other absolutely continuous measure with finite relative entropy. Such transportation-information inequalities were recently established for some stochastic differential equations. Here, we develop a similar theory for some stochastic partial differential equations.
This work shows how exponential concentration inequalities for additive functionals of stochastic processes over a finite time interval can be derived from concentration inequalities for martingales. The approach is entirely probabilistic and naturally includes time-inhomogeneous and non-stationary processes as well as initial laws concentrated on a single point. The class of processes studied includes martingales, Markov processes and general square integrable processes. The general approach is complemented by a simple and direct method for martingales, diffusions and discrete-time Markov pro…
Concentration properties of functionals of general Poisson processes are studied. Using a modified $Φ$-Sobolev inequality a recursion scheme for moments is established, which is of independent interest. This is applied to derive moment and concentration inequalities for functionals on abstract Poisson spaces. Applications of the general results in stochastic geometry, namely Poisson cylinder models and Poisson random polytopes, are presented as well.
We obtain moderate deviations theorems and exponential (Bernstein type) concentration inequalities for "nonconventional" sums of the form $S_N=\sum_{n=1}^N (F(ξ_{q_1(n)},ξ_{q_2(n)},...,ξ_{q_\ell(n)})-\bar F)$.
For a stochastic process with state space some Polish space, this paper gives sufficient conditions on the initial and conditional distributions for the joint law to satisfy Gaussian concentration inequalities, transportation inequalities and also logarithmic Sobolev inequalities in the case of the Euclidean space. In several cases, the obtained constants are of optimal order of growth with respect to the number of variables, or are independent of this number. These results extend results known for mutually independent variables to weakly dependent variables under Dobrushin-Shlosman type condi…
We prove logarithmic Sobolev inequalities and concentration results for convex functions and a class of product random vectors. The results are used to derive tail and moment inequalities for chaos variables (in spirit of Talagrand and Arcones, Gine). We also show that the same proof may be used for chaoses generated by log-concave random variables, recovering results by Lochowski and present an application to exponential integrability of Rademacher chaos.
This paper deduces exponential matrix concentration from a Poincaré inequality via a short, conceptual argument. Among other examples, this theory applies to matrix-valued functions of a uniformly log-concave random vector. The proof relies on the subadditivity of Poincaré inequalities and a chain rule inequality for the trace of the matrix Dirichlet form. It also uses a symmetrization technique to avoid difficulties associated with a direct extension of the classic scalar argument.
We show sharpened forms of the concentration of measure phenomenon centered at first order stochastic expansions. The bound are based on second order difference operators and second order derivatives. Applications to functions on the discrete cube and stochastic Hoeffding type expansions in mathematical statistics are studied as well as linear eigenvalue statistics in random matrix theory.
We investigate the transportation cost-information inequalities for bifurcating Markov chains which are a class of processes indexed by binary tree. These processes provide models for cell growth when each individual in one generation gives birth to two offsprings in the next one. Transportation cost inequalities provide useful concentra-tion inequalities. We also study deviation inequalities for the empiri-cal means under relaxed assumptions on the Wasserstein contraction of the Markov kernels. Applications to bifurcating non linear autore-gressive processes are considered: deviation inequali…
In this paper, we establish concentration inequalities both for functionals of the whole solution on an interval [0, T ] of an additive SDE driven by a fractional Brownian motion with Hurst parameter H $\in$ (0, 1) and for functionals of discrete-time observations of this process. Then, we apply this general result to specific functionals related to discrete and continuous-time occupation measures of the process.
We study Talagrand concentration and Poincaré type inequalities for unbounded pure jump Markov processes. In particular we focus on processes with degenerate jumps that depend on the past of the whole system, based on the model introduced by Galves and Löcherbach in \cite{G-L}, in order to describe the activity of a biological neural network. As a result we obtain exponential rates of convergence to equilibrium.
We show sharpened forms of the concentration of measure phenomenon typically centered at stochastic expansions of order $d-1$ for any $d \in \mathbb{N}$. Here we focus on differentiable functions on the Euclidean space in presence of a Poincaré-type inequality. The bounds are based on $d$-th order derivatives.
Stein's method for concentration inequalities was introduced to prove concentration of measure in problems involving complex dependencies such as random permutations and Gibbs measures. In this paper, we provide some extensions of the theory and three applications: (1) We obtain a concentration inequality for the magnetization in the Curie--Weiss model at critical temperature (where it obeys a nonstandard normalization and super-Gaussian concentration). (2) We derive exact large deviation asymptotics for the number of triangles in the Erdős--Rényi random graph $G(n,p)$ when $p\ge0.31$. Similar…
Using the renewal approach we prove exponential inequalities for additive functionals and empirical processes of ergodic Markov chains, thus obtaining counterparts of inequalities for sums of independent random variables. The inequalities do not require functions of the chain to be bounded and moreover all the involved constants are given by explicit formulas whenever the usual drift condition holds, which may be of interest in practical applications e.g. to MCMC algorithms.
We establish some quantitative concentration estimates for the empirical measure of many independent variables, in transportation distances. As an application, we provide some error bounds for particle simulations in a model mean field problem. The tools include coupling arguments, as well as regularity and moments estimates for solutions of certain diffusive partial differential equations.
We derive two upper bounds for the probability of deviation of a vector-valued Lipschitz function of a collection of random variables from its expected value. The resulting upper bounds can be tighter than bounds obtained by a direct application of a classical theorem due to Bobkov and Götze.
In a companion article we have introduced a notion of multiscale functional inequalities for functions $X(A)$ of an ergodic stationary random field $A$ on the ambient space $\mathbb R^d$. These inequalities are multiscale weighted versions of standard Poincaré, covariance, and logarithmic Sobolev inequalities. They hold for all the examples of fields $A$ arising in the modelling of heterogeneous materials in the applied sciences whereas their standard versions are much more restrictive. In this contribution we first investigate the link between multiscale functional inequalities and more stand…
We consider a generic modified logarithmic Sobolev inequality (mLSI) of the form $\mathrm{Ent}_μ(e^f) \le \tfracρ{2} \mathbb{E}_μe^f Γ(f)^2$ for some difference operator $Γ$, and show how it implies two-level concentration inequalities akin to the Hanson--Wright or Bernstein inequality. This can be applied to the continuous (e.\,g. the sphere or bounded perturbations of product measures) as well as discrete setting (the symmetric group, finite measures satisfying an approximate tensorization property, \ldots). Moreover, we use modified logarithmic Sobolev inequalities on the symmetric group $S…
We present concentration inequalities on the multislice which are based on (modified) log-Sobolev inequalities. This includes bounds for convex functions and multilinear polynomials. As an application we show concentration results for the triangle count in the $G(n,M)$ Erdős--Rényi model resembling known bounds in the $G(n,p)$ case. Moreover, we give a proof of Talagrand's convex distance inequality for the multislice. Interpreting the multislice in a sampling without replacement context, we furthermore present concentration results for $n$ out of $N$ sampling without replacement. Based on a b…
We consider a system of particles experiencing diffusion and mean field interaction, and study its behaviour when the number of particles goes to infinity. We derive non-asymptotic large deviation bounds measuring the concentration of the empirical measure of the paths of the particles around its limit. The method is based on a coupling argument, strong integrability estimates on the paths in Holder norm, and some general concentration result for the empirical measure of identically distributed independent paths.
We derive explicit central moment inequalities for random variables that admit a Stein coupling, such as exchangeable pairs, size--bias couplings or local dependence, among others. The bounds are in terms of moments (not necessarily central) of variables in the Stein coupling, which are typically local in some sense, and therefore easier to bound. In cases where the Stein couplings have the kind of behaviour leading to good normal approximation, the central moments are closely bounded by those of a normal. We show how the bounds can be used to produce concentration inequalities, and compare th…
In this paper we prove multilevel concentration inequalities for bounded functionals $f = f(X_1, \ldots, X_n)$ of random variables $X_1, \ldots, X_n$ that are either independent or satisfy certain logarithmic Sobolev inequalities. The constants in the tail estimates depend on the operator norms of $k$-tensors of higher order differences of $f$. We provide applications in both dependent and independent random variables. This includes deviation inequalities for empirical processes $f(X) = \sup_{g \in \mathcal{F}} \lvert g(X) \rvert$ and suprema of homogeneous chaos in bounded random variables in…
We prove extensions of classical concentration inequalities for random variables which have $α$-subexponential tail decay for any $α\in (0,2]$. This includes Hanson--Wright type and convex concentration inequalities. We also provide some applications of these results. This includes uniform Hanson--Wright inequalities and concentration results for simple random tensors in the spirit of previous work by Klochkov--Zhivotovskiy and Vershynin.
We introduce a symmetrization technique that allows us to translate a problem of controlling the deviation of some functionals on a product space from their mean into a problem of controlling the deviation between two independent copies of the functional. As an application we give a new easy proof of Talagrand's concentration inequality for empirical processes, where besides symmetrization we use only Talagrand's concentration inequality on the discrete cube {-1,+1}^n. As another application of this technique we prove new Vapnik-Chervonenkis type inequalities. For example, for VC-classes of fu…
Inequalities between transportation costs and Fisher information are known to characterize certain concentration properties of Markov processes around their invariant measures. This note provides a new characterization of the quadratic transportation-information inequality $W_2I$ in terms of a dimension-free concentration property for i.i.d. (conditionally on the initial positions) copies of the underlying Markov process. This parallels Gozlan's characterization of the quadratic transportation-entropy inequality $W_2H$. The proof is based on a new Laplace-type principle for the operator norms …
We investigate concentration properties of functions of random vectors with values in the discrete cube, satisfying the stochastic covering property (SCP) or the strong Rayleigh property (SRP). Our result for SCP measures include subgaussian inequalities of bounded-difference type extending classical results by Pemantle and Peres and their counterparts for matrix-valued setting strengthening recent estimates by Aoun, Banna and Youssef. Under a stronger assumption of the SRP we obtain Bernstein-type inequalities for matrix-valued functions, generalizing recent bounds for linear combinations of …
Let $Y_v, v\in V,$ be $[0,1]$-valued random variables having a dependency graph $G=(V,E)$. We show that \[ \mathbb{E}\left[\prod_{v\in V} Y_{v} \right] \leq \prod_{v\in V} \left\{ \mathbb{E}\left[Y_v^{\frac{χ_b}{b}}\right] \right\}^{\frac{b}{χ_b}}, \] where $χ_b$ is the $b$-fold chromatic number of $G$. This inequality may be seen as a dependency-graph analogue of a generalised Hölder inequality, due to Helmut Finner. Additionally, we provide applications of Hölder-type inequalities to concentration and correlation bounds for sums of weakly dependent random variables.
This article is concerned with the fluctuations and the concentration properties of a general class of discrete generation and mean field particle interpretations of nonlinear measure valued processes. We combine an original stochastic perturbation analysis with a concentration analysis for triangular arrays of conditionally independent random sequences, which may be of independent interest. Under some additional stability properties of the limiting measure valued processes, uniform concentration properties, with respect to the time parameter, are also derived. The concentration inequalities p…
