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#1 Sharp Gaussian approximations for Decentralized Federated Learning [PDF3] [Copy] [Kimi2] [REL]

Authors: SOHAM BONNERJEE, Sayar Karmakar, Wei Biao Wu

Federated Learning has gained traction in privacy-sensitive collaborative environments, with local SGD emerging as a key optimization method in decentralized settings. While its convergence properties are well-studied, asymptotic statistical guarantees beyond convergence remain limited. In this paper, we present two generalized Gaussian approximation results for local SGD and explore their implications. First, we prove a Berry-Esseen theorem for the final local SGD iterates, enabling valid multiplier bootstrap procedures. Second, motivated by robustness considerations, we introduce two distinct time-uniform Gaussian approximations for the entire trajectory of local SGD. The time-uniform approximations support Gaussian bootstrap-based tests for detecting adversarial attacks. Extensive simulations are provided to support our theoretical results.

Subject: NeurIPS.2025 - Spotlight