Sharp Stationary Gaussian Approximation for Constant-Stepsize SGD
cs.LG, math.OC
Submitted: 2026-09-30
Updated: 2026-10-01
Comments: To be presented at 2026 NeurIPS workshop on "Optimization for Machine Learning" (OPT2026)
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The gist: We prove a sharp Gaussian approximation for the invariant law of constant-stepsize SGD with bounded additive noise generated by an exogenous uniformly ergodic Markov chain.
Abstract
We prove a sharp Gaussian approximation for the invariant law of constant-stepsize SGD with bounded additive noise generated by an exogenous uniformly ergodic Markov chain. For a smooth, strongly convex objective with a Lipschitz Hessian and nondegenerate long-run noise covariance, the centered iterate normalized by the square root of the stepsize is O(sqrtα) -close in 1-Wasserstein distance to its limiting Gaussian. The proof combines blockwise Gaussian comparison with long-run contraction. A four-state example gives a matching lower bound although the one-time noise marginal is symmetric and every nonzero-lag autocovariance vanishes. In this example, an adjacent third-order mixed moment produces the leading correction.
Sources
- How Accurately Can a Gaussian Approximate Stochastic Approximation Iterates?
- Finite-Sample Wasserstein Error Bounds and Concentration Inequalities for Nonlinear Stochastic Approximation
- Wasserstein-p Central Limit Theorem Rates: From Local Dependence to Markov Chains
- Gaussian Approximation in Wasserstein-p: Markovian Martingale Differences and Stochastic Approximation
- Steady-State Convergence of Stochastic Approximation
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