Mixing Time Bounds for the Gibbs Sampler under Isoperimetry

Abstract: We establish bounds on the conductance for the systematic-scan and random-scan Gibbs samplers when the target distribution satisfies a Poincare or log-Sobolev inequality and possesses sufficiently regular conditional distributions. These bounds lead to mixing time guarantees that extend beyond the log-concave setting, offering new insights into the convergence behavior of Gibbs sampling in broader regimes. Moreover, we demonstrate that our results remain valid for log-Lipschitz and log-smooth target distributions. Our approach relies on novel three-set isoperimetric inequalities and a sequential coupling argument for the Gibbs sampler.