First require a proper target: and . The Metropolis–Hastings algorithm uses the Metropolis–Hastings acceptance probability
Sufficient general conditions are phi-irreducibility, aperiodicity, and a drift-minorisation condition establishing geometric ergodicity of the resulting chain, together with a stationary th moment for the observable being averaged. These imply the central limit theorem for a geometrically ergodic Markov chain. The observable's moment condition must be included: conditions on the sampler alone cannot give the theorem for every arbitrary function.
A concrete stronger condition, directly in terms of the proposal, is
Together with a bounded observable, this is an especially simple sufficient answer. The accepted proposal density is , so it is at least . The kernel satisfies a global minorization condition with the target, hence uniform geometric ergodicity, positive Harris recurrence, and aperiodicity. An independent proposal whose importance weight is uniformly bounded is one example. No claim of these properties follows merely from writing down a positive proposal.
The geometric drift condition requires a measurable , a small set , constants and , and
Smallness means that for some , , and probability measure , for every . With irreducibility and aperiodicity, this drift-minorisation condition implies geometric ergodicity. The function controls the chain away from the small set; inside that set the additive constant allows unrestricted bounded drift.
A Markov kernel with stationary distribution is geometrically ergodic if there are and a finite function such that
for every and almost every starting point , where is total variation distance.
A measurable set is a small set with minorisation constant if some integer and some probability measure satisfy
for every and every measurable .
A standard drift-minorisation condition is that the chain be irreducible and aperiodic, and that there exist a measurable , a small set , constants and such that
These conditions imply geometric ergodicity.