We consider two methods to establish log-Sobolev inequalities for the invariant measure of a diffusion process when its density is not explicit and the curvature is not positive everywhere. In the first approach, based on the Holley-Stroock and Aida-Shigekawa perturbation arguments [16, 1], the control on the (non-explicit) perturbation is obtained by stochastic control methods, following the comparison technique introduced by Conforti [7]. The second method combines the Wasserstein-$2$ contraction method, used in [24] to prove a Poincar\'e inequality in some non-equilibrium cases, with Wang's hypercontractivity results [29].
Comment: 22 pages