Variational Formulation of the Particle Flow Particle Filter
arXiv:2505.04007v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: This paper provides a formulation of the particle flow particle filter from the perspective of variational inference. We show that the transient density used to derive the particle flow particle filter follows a time-scaled trajectory of the Fisher-Rao gradient flow in the space of probability densities. The Fisher-Rao gradient flow is obtained as a continuous-time algorithm for variational inference, minimizing the Kullback-Leibler divergence between a variational density and the true posterior density.
Abstract: This paper provides a formulation of the particle flow particle filter from the perspective of variational inference. We show that the transient density used to derive the particle flow particle filter follows a time-scaled trajectory of the Fisher-Rao gradient flow in the space of probability densities. The Fisher-Rao gradient flow is obtained as a continuous-time algorithm for variational inference, minimizing the Kullback-Leibler divergence between a variational density and the true posterior density.
Yinzhuang Yi, Jorge Cort’es, Nikolay Atanasov
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