arXiv Machine Learning

Decomposing Gradient Suppression in Barren Plateaus: Activity, Sign Organization, and Coupling

The paper introduces a term‑resolved framework that decomposes the second moment of the gradient in quantum circuit training into three components: pre‑cancellation activity, sign organization, and their statistical coupling. Using a conditional random‑sign model as a reference, the authors analyze hardware‑efficient and Hamiltonian variational ansätze on transverse‑field and longitudinal‑field Ising models, finding that activity dominates gradient suppression in the hardware‑efficient ansatz while both activity and organization grow comparably in the Hamiltonian variational ansatz. Microscopic sign‑alignment analysis reveals sector‑structured organization in the latter and only weak residual sign structure in the former, offering a detailed characterization of barren plateau behavior beyond aggregate statistics.

arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 21

From Trainability Diagnostics to Optimization Claims: Boundaries and Controls in Variational Quantum Optimization

The paper investigates the gap between trainability diagnostics and actual optimization performance in variational quantum algorithms. By introducing step‑level diagnostics that treat coefficient‑weighted Hamiltonian‑term gradients as task‑like components, the authors derive an exact relationship between signed termwise organization, directional activity, and first‑order descent. Experiments on transverse‑field Ising models with different ansatzes show that while certain projection techniques can improve diagnostic metrics, they do not consistently translate into better final energies or first‑order predictability once update norm and search budget are controlled.

By Pilsung Kang
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 22

Stochastic Reconfiguration as Statistical Filtering for Overparameterized Neural Quantum States

The paper investigates how stochastic reconfiguration (SR), the standard optimizer for neural quantum states (NQS), functions as a statistical filter in overparameterized regimes where parameters outnumber Monte Carlo samples. By interpreting SR as ridge regression on tangent features, the authors show that the diagonal shift balances useful update directions against variance from fitting finite-sample residuals, leading to a U-shaped validation risk curve. They introduce multi-shift SR (MS‑SR), which averages ridge solutions at data‑adaptive shifts, and demonstrate that it reduces validation risk and update variance compared to fixed‑shift SR in both small and large system experiments.

By Tak Hur
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Aug 10

From Objectives to What Models Learn: A Landau Theory of Invariant Learning

Invariant learning seeks representations that remain predictive across environments, yet the behavior of its objectives along the regularization path is often opaque. We address this objective-behavior gap by viewing representation learning as multimode magnetization and deriving, from concrete invariant-learning objectives, a Landau-type effective free energy whose low-order coefficients form objective signatures and induce distinct regularization phenotypes.

arXiv AI
Oct 22

Graph-Theoretic Formulation of Hamiltonian and Ground-State Sign Structures in Heisenberg Antiferromagnets

The paper presents a graph-theoretic framework for analyzing Heisenberg antiferromagnets, where the Hamiltonian in a fixed-magnetization sector is represented as a constant minus the weighted Laplacian of a Hilbert graph (HG). The ground-state energy is linked to the largest eigenvalue of this Laplacian, equivalent to a spectral relaxation of weighted Max‑Cut on the HG, while the phase-dependent part of the variational energy maps to an antiferromagnetic XY model on the same graph. Restricting to real variational states reduces the problem to an Ising model, and the optimal sign structure of the ground state can be recovered in polynomial time from the HG weights, with the bipartiteness of the HG determining whether a diagonal sign transformation can eliminate all positive off-diagonal elements.

By Mahmud Ashraf Shamim, Md Moshiur Rahman Raj, Mohamed Hibat-Allah, Ruy Fabila-Monroy, Nobuchika Okada, Paulo T. Araujo
arXiv Machine Learning
Oct 22

When Do Gaussian Priors Fail? A Latent Geometry Investigation of RL Fine-Tuning

Latent diffusion models typically use a Gaussian prior in the VAE latent space, which works well for base generation but introduces a structural limitation during reinforcement‑learning fine‑tuning. The standard VAE’s KL term compresses multimodal data into overlapping latent representations, and RL fine‑tuning exacerbates this overlap, causing the model to collapse at a higher beta_c. Experiments on the alanine‑dipeptide Boltzmann distribution show that a Gaussian‑mixture prior can delay collapse by 71×, and the study attributes this improvement to a geometric mediator, d_min/(2σ₀), confirming that non‑Gaussian priors are necessary when latent geometry would otherwise overlap and the task requires coverage.

By Wang Ru
arXiv AI
Jul 20

Learning the Brain's Dynamics as a Port-Hamiltonian System: A GNN-Surrogate Metriplectic Twin for Non-Equilibrium Cortical Dynamics and Closed-Loop Neuromodulation

arXiv:2607. 10439v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: We model human motor cortex, recorded during rest and motor-imagery BCI conditions, as a port-Hamiltonian system: a conservative interconnection (skew-symmetric coupling between band-limited neural phasors) together with a dissipative port whose state-dependent decay is set by a graph-neural-network surrogate.

By Dibakar Sigdel
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 4

Sign-Aware Gated Sparse Autoencoders: Modeling Anticorrelated Features with Bi-Jump-ReLU Activations

arXiv:2605. 28149v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Sparse Autoencoders (SAEs) extract interpretable features from Large Language Model activations, but standard variants enforce non-negative latents, so a bidirectional semantic axis (e.

By Bartosz Wieciech, Zmnako Awrahman, Marcin Czelej, Victor Hugo Jaramillo Velasquez, Wioletta Stobieniecka