High-dimensional scaling limits of piecewise deterministic sampling algorithms

Piecewise deterministic Markov processes are an important new tool in the design of Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms. Two examples of fundamental importance are the bouncy particle sampler (BPS) and the zig–zag process (ZZ). In this paper scaling limits for both algorithms are determined. Here the dimensionality of the space tends towards infinity and the target distribution is the multivariate standard normal distribution. For several quantities of interest (angular momentum, first coordinate and negative log-density) the scaling limits show qualitatively very different and rich behaviour. Based on these scaling limits the performance of the two algorithms in high dimensions can be compared. Although for angular momentum both processes require only a computational effort of O(d) to obtain approximately independent samples, the computational effort for negative log-density and first coordinate differ: for these BPS requires O(d²) computational effort whereas ZZ requires O(d). Finally we provide a criterion for the choice of the refreshment rate of BPS.