Martin Hairer

Nawaf Bou-Rabee, Martin Hairer, Eric Vanden-Eijnden

The Metropolis-Adjusted Langevin Algorithm (MALA), originally introduced to sample exactly the invariant measure of certain stochastic differential equations (SDE) on infinitely long time intervals, can also be used to approximate pathwise the solution of these SDEs on finite time intervals. However, when applied to an SDE with a nonglobally Lipschitz drift coefficient, the algorithm may not have a spectral gap even when the SDE does. This paper reconciles MALA's lack of a spectral gap with its ergodicity to the invariant measure of the SDE and finite time accuracy. In particular, the paper shows that its convergence to equilibrium happens at exponential rate up to terms exponentially small in time-stepsize. This quantification relies on MALA's ability to exactly preserve the SDE's invariant measure and accurately represent the SDE's transition probability on finite time intervals.

Martin Hairer, Jochen Voss

This article is devoted to the numerical study of various finite difference approximations to the stochastic Burgers equation. Of particular interest in the one-dimensional case is the situation where the driving noise is white both in space and in time. We demonstrate that in this case, different finite difference schemes converge to different limiting processes as the mesh size tends to zero. A theoretical explanation of this phenomenon is given and we formulate a number of conjectures for more general classes of equations, supported by numerical evidence.

Martin Hairer, Jan Maas, Hendrik Weber

We study approximations to a class of vector-valued equations of Burgers type driven by a multiplicative space-time white noise. A solution theory for this class of equations has been developed recently in [Hairer, Weber, Probab. Theory Related Fields, to appear]. The key idea was to use the theory of controlled rough paths to give definitions of weak / mild solutions and to set up a Picard iteration argument. In this article the limiting behaviour of a rather large class of (spatial) approximations to these equations is studied. These approximations are shown to converge and convergence rates are given, but the limit may depend on the particular choice of approximation. This effect is a spatial analogue to the Itô-Stratonovich correction in the theory of stochastic ordinary differential equations, where it is well known that different approximation schemes may converge to different solutions.

Charles-Edouard Bréhier, Martin Hairer, Andrew M. Stuart

We consider stochastic semi-linear evolution equations which are driven by additive, spatially correlated, Wiener noise, and in particular consider problems of heat equation (analytic semigroup) and damped-driven wave equations (bounded semigroup) type. We discretize these equations by means of a spectral Galerkin projection, and we study the approximation of the probability distribution of the trajectories: test functions are regular, but depend on the values of the process on the interval $[0,T]$. We introduce a new approach in the context of quantative weak error analysis for discretization of SPDEs. The weak error is formulated using a deterministic function (Itô map) of the stochastic convolution found when the nonlinear term is dropped. The regularity properties of the Itô map are exploited, and in particular second-order Taylor expansions employed, to transfer the error from spectral approximation of the stochastic convolution into the weak error of interest. We prove that the weak rate of convergence is twice the strong rate of convergence in two situations. First, we assume that the covariance operator commutes with the generator of the semigroup: the first order term in the weak error expansion cancels out thanks to an independence property. Second, we remove the commuting assumption, and extend the previous result, thanks to the analysis of a new error term depending on a commutator.

Martin Hairer, Jonathan Weare

We propose a modification, based on the RESTART (repetitive simulation trials after reaching thresholds) and DPR (dynamics probability redistribution) rare event simulation algorithms, of the standard diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC) algorithm. The new algorithm has a lower variance per workload, regardless of the regime considered. In particular, it makes it feasible to use DMC in situations where the "naïve" generalisation of the standard algorithm would be impractical, due to an exponential explosion of its variance. We numerically demonstrate the effectiveness of the new algorithm on a standard rare event simulation problem (probability of an unlikely transition in a Lennard-Jones cluster), as well as a high-frequency data assimilation problem.

Martin Hairer, Konstantin Matetski

Recently, a solution theory for one-dimensional stochastic PDEs of Burgers type driven by space-time white noise was developed. In particular, it was shown that natural numerical approximations of these equations converge and that their convergence rate in the uniform topology is arbitrarily close to $\frac{1}{6}$. In the present article we improve this result in the case of additive noise by proving that the optimal rate of convergence is arbitrarily close to $\frac{1}{2}$.

Mohammed Abouzaid, Andrew J. Blumberg, Martin Hairer et al.

To assess the ability of current AI systems to correctly answer research-level mathematics questions, we share a set of ten math questions which have arisen naturally in the research process of the authors. The questions had not been shared publicly until now; the answers are known to the authors of the questions but will remain encrypted for a short time.

Martin Hairer, Konstantin Matetski

We develop a general framework for spatial discretisations of parabolic stochastic PDEs whose solutions are provided in the framework of the theory of regularity structures and which are functions in time. As an application, we show that the dynamical $Φ^4_3$ model on the dyadic grid converges after renormalisation to its continuous counterpart. This result in particular implies that, as expected, the $Φ^4_3$ measure with a sufficiently small coupling constant is invariant for this equation and that the lifetime of its solutions is almost surely infinite for almost every initial condition.