Xiaolu Tan

Pierre Henry-Labordere, Nadia Oudjane, Xiaolu Tan et al.

We provide a representation result of parabolic semi-linear PD-Es, with polynomial nonlinearity, by branching diffusion processes. We extend the classical representation for KPP equations, introduced by Skorokhod (1964), Watanabe (1965) and McKean (1975), by allowing for polynomial nonlinearity in the pair $(u, Du)$, where $u$ is the solution of the PDE with space gradient $Du$. Similar to the previous literature, our result requires a non-explosion condition which restrict to "small maturity" or "small nonlinearity" of the PDE. Our main ingredient is the automatic differentiation technique as in Henry Labordere, Tan and Touzi (2015), based on the Malliavin integration by parts, which allows to account for the nonlinearities in the gradient. As a consequence, the particles of our branching diffusion are marked by the nature of the nonlinearity. This new representation has very important numerical implications as it is suitable for Monte Carlo simulation. Indeed, this provides the first numerical method for high dimensional nonlinear PDEs with error estimate induced by the dimension-free Central limit theorem. The complexity is also easily seen to be of the order of the squared dimension. The final section of this paper illustrates the efficiency of the algorithm by some high dimensional numerical experiments.

Pierre Henry-Labordere, Xiaolu Tan, Nizar Touzi

We propose an unbiased Monte-Carlo estimator for $\mathbb{E}[g(X_{t_1}, \cdots, X_{t_n})]$, where $X$ is a diffusion process defined by a multi-dimensional stochastic differential equation (SDE). The main idea is to start instead from a well-chosen simulatable SDE whose coefficients are updated at independent exponential times. Such a simulatable process can be viewed as a regime-switching SDE, or as a branching diffusion process with one single living particle at all times. In order to compensate for the change of the coefficients of the SDE, our main representation result relies on the automatic differentiation technique induced by Bismu-Elworthy-Li formula from Malliavin calculus, as exploited by Fournié et al.(1999) for the simulation of the Greeks in financial applications. In particular, this algorithm can be considered as a variation of the (infinite variance) estimator obtained in Bally and Kohatsu-Higa [Section 6.1](2014) as an application of the parametrix method.

Anna Kazeykina, Zhenjie Ren, Xiaolu Tan et al.

We study the long time behavior of an underdamped mean-field Langevin (MFL) equation, and provide a general convergence as well as an exponential convergence rate result under different conditions. The results on the MFL equation can be applied to study the convergence of the Hamiltonian gradient descent algorithm for the overparametrized optimization. We then provide a numerical example of the algorithm to train a generative adversarial networks (GAN).

Bruno Bouchard, Xiaolu Tan, Xavier Warin et al.

We propose a new numerical scheme for Backward Stochastic Differential Equations based on branching processes. We approximate an arbitrary (Lipschitz) driver by local polynomials and then use a Picard iteration scheme. Each step of the Picard iteration can be solved by using a representation in terms of branching diffusion systems, thus avoiding the need for a fine time discretization. In contrast to the previous literature on the numerical resolution of BSDEs based on branching processes, we prove the convergence of our numerical scheme without limitation on the time horizon. Numerical simulations are provided to illustrate the performance of the algorithm.

Dylan Possamaï, Xiaolu Tan

We study the weak approximation of the second-order backward SDEs (2BSDEs), when the continuous driving martingales are approximated by discrete time martingales. We establish a convergence result for a class of 2BSDEs, using both robustness properties of BSDEs, as proved in Briand, Delyon and Mémin [Stochastic Process. Appl. 97 (2002) 229-253], and tightness of solutions to discrete time BSDEs. In particular, when the approximating martingales are given by some particular controlled Markov chains, we obtain several concrete numerical schemes for 2BSDEs, which we illustrate on specific examples.

Pierre Henry-Labordere, Xiaolu Tan, Nizar Touzi

We generalize the algorithm for semi-linear parabolic PDEs in Henry-Labordère (2012) to the non-Markovian case for a class of Backward SDEs (BSDEs). By simulating the branching process, the algorithm does not need any backward regression. To prove that the numerical algorithm converges to the solution of BSDEs, we use the notion of viscosity solution of path dependent PDEs introduced by Ekren, Keller, Touzi and Zhang (2012) and extended in Ekren, Touzi and Zhang (2013).