Unbiased Monte Carlo Cluster Updates with Autoregressive Neural Networks

Efficient sampling of complex high-dimensional probability densities is a central task in computational science. Machine Learning techniques based on autoregressive neural networks have been recently shown to provide good approximations of probability distributions of interest in physics. In this work, we propose a systematic way to remove the intrinsic bias associated with these variational approximations, combining it with Markov-chain Monte Carlo in an automatic scheme to efficiently generate cluster updates, which is particularly useful for models for which no efficient cluster update scheme is known. Our approach is based on symmetry-enforced cluster updates building on the neural-network representation of conditional probabilities. We demonstrate that such finite-cluster updates are crucial to circumvent ergodicity problems associated with global neural updates. We test our method for first- and second-order phase transitions in classical spin systems, proving in particular its viability for critical systems, or in the presence of metastable states.