Preconditioning the prior to overcome saturation in Bayesian inverse problems

Abstract: We study Bayesian inference in statistical linear inverse problems with Gaussian noise and priors in Hilbert space. We focus our interest on the posterior contraction rate in the small noise limit. Existing results suffer from a certain saturation phenomenon, when the data generating element is too smooth compared to the smoothness inherent in the prior. We show how to overcome this saturation in an empirical Bayesian framework by using a non-centered data-dependent prior. The center is obtained from a preconditioning regularization step, which provides us with additional information to be used in the Bayesian framework. We use general techniques known from regularization theory. To highlight the significance of the findings we provide several examples. In particular, our approach allows to obtain and, using preconditioning improve after saturation, minimax rates of contraction established in previous studies. We also establish minimax contraction rates in cases which have not been considered so far.