The Riemannian Langevin equation and conic programs

Abstract

Diffusion limits provide a framework for the asymptotic analysis of stochastic gradient descent (SGD) schemes used in machine learning. We consider an alternative framework, the Riemannian Langevin equation (RLE), that generalizes the classical paradigm of equilibration in R^n to a Riemannian manifold (M^n, g). The most subtle part of this equation is the description of Brownian motion on (M^n, g). Explicit formulas are presented for some fundamental cones.