A probabilistic reduced basis method for parameter-dependent problems

Probabilistic variants of Model Order Reduction (MOR) methods have recently emerged for improving stability and computational performance of classical approaches. In this paper, we propose a probabilistic Reduced Basis Method (RBM) for the approximation of a family of parameter-dependent functions. It relies on a probabilistic greedy algorithm with an error indicator that can be written as an expectation of some parameter-dependent random variable. Practical algorithms relying on Monte Carlo estimates of this error indicator are discussed. In particular, when using Probably Approximately Correct (PAC) bandit algorithm, the resulting procedure is proven to be a weak greedy algorithm with high probability. Intended applications concern the approximation of a parameter-dependent family of functions for which we only have access to (noisy) pointwise evaluations. As a particular application, we consider the approximation of solution manifolds of linear parameter-dependent partial differential equations with a probabilistic interpretation through the Feynman-Kac formula.