Semi-parametric Bernstein-von Mises Theorem in a Parabolic PDE Problem

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Authors: Adel Magra, van der Meulen, Frank, Aad van der Vaart
Cited by: 0

Abstract

We consider the heat equation with absorption in a bounded domain of $\mathbb{R}^d$, where both the scalar diffusivity and the absorption function are unknown. We investigate a Bayesian approach for recovering the diffusivity from a noisy observation of the solution to the PDE over the domain. Given a Gaussian process prior on the absorption function, we derive a Bernstein-von Mises theorem for the marginal posterior distribution of the diffusivity under assumptions on the prior and on smoothness properties of the absorption.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Numerical methods in inverse problems Gaussian Processes and Bayesian Inference Markov Chains and Monte Carlo Methods

Publication details

Journal / source
arXiv (Cornell University)
Publication date
31 January 2026
Document type
Preprint