Error bounds for particle gradient descent, and extensions of the log-Sobolev and Talagrand inequalities

We prove non-asymptotic error bounds for particle gradient descent (PGD, Kuntz et al., 2023), a recently introduced algorithm for maximum likelihood estimation of large latent variable models obtained by discretizing a gradient flow of the free energy. We begin by showing that the flow converges exponentially fast to the free energy's minimizers for models satisfying a condition that generalizes both the log-Sobolev and the Polyak--Lojasiewicz inequalities (LSI and PLI, respectively). We achieve this by extending a result well-known in the optimal transport literature (that the LSI implies the Talagrand inequality) and its counterpart in the optimization literature (that the PLI implies the so-called quadratic growth condition), and applying the extension to our new setting. We also generalize the Bakry--'Emery Theorem and show that the LSI/PLI extension holds for models with strongly concave log-likelihoods. For such models, we further control PGD's discretization error and obtain the non-asymptotic error bounds. While we are motivated by the study of PGD, we believe that the inequalities and results we extend may be of independent interest.