arXiv AI

Thermodynamic Cyclic Processes with Markov Samplers in Bayesian Inference

arXiv AI
Sep 10

Microcanonical Hamiltonian Monte Carlo and the Helmholtz Theorem

The paper investigates the Microcanonical Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (MHMC) algorithm from a thermodynamic perspective, deriving its state variables and potentials to show that it represents a microcanonical thermodynamic ensemble. It demonstrates analytically and numerically that MHMC satisfies the Helmholtz theorem, an alternative form of the first law of thermodynamics, and introduces a new sampling algorithm tailored for lower-dimensional inference problems. The authors conclude that canonical Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods are more natural than MHMC when evaluated through thermodynamic and information-theoretic lenses.

By Heinrich von Campe, Bjoern Malte Schaefer
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 4

FrOGS: Discrete Neural Sampler for Independent Alloy Configurations Across Chemical Conditions

FrOGS is a hybrid discrete neural sampler that couples an autoregressive model with a continuous-time Markov chain, trained under a single shared loss to sample alloy configurations across many chemical conditions. It produces independent, unbiased configurations, estimates the partition function, and yields consistent thermodynamic observables on a common absolute free‑energy scale. The method matches exact results for the 2D Ising model and reproduces reference phase diagrams for AgPd and CuAu, avoiding mode collapse and correctly recovering the stability range of the CuAu$_3$ phase.

By Kyucheol Min, Elyssa Hofgard, Tess Smidt
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 16

Training Energy-Based Models with Non-MCMC Samplers and Efficient Temperature Estimation

The paper introduces Langevin simulated bifurcation (LSB), a fast, parallel Boltzmann sampler that matches the accuracy of sequential MCMC methods. It also proposes conditional expectation matching (CEM), an efficient technique for estimating the effective temperature of samples from energy‑based models with conditional independence. Building on these, the authors develop sampler adaptive learning (SAL), which adjusts the model temperature to align with the distribution produced by LSB, enabling efficient training of semi‑restricted Boltzmann machines (SRBMs) and outperforming conventional methods on synthetic spin‑glass datasets.

By Kentaro Kubo, Hayato Goto
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 15

Quenched Ensemble Sampling

arXiv:2609.15894v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Some of the sharpest challenges in sampling from the energy functions of physical systems arise at phase transitions, where the density of states cha...

By David Yallup
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 4

Generative Nested Sampling of Atomistic Thermodynamic Landscapes

The paper introduces NS‑Flows, a flow‑based nested sampling method that replaces Markov‑chain updates with a conditional normalizing flow trained on live sets. By applying this technique to a Lennard‑Jones particle system, the authors achieve over two orders of magnitude fewer energy evaluations and a roughly one‑third reduction in wall‑clock time compared to traditional nested sampling. The study also shows that the flow’s generation efficiency varies non‑monotonically along the annealing trajectory, providing a diagnostic of the system’s internal mode complexity and identifying liquid‑like ensembles as the most challenging for current flow architectures.

By Alessandro Coretti, Nico Unglert, Sebastian Falkner, Georg K. H. Madsen, Christoph Dellago
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 11

Particle GFlowNets: Rethinking Generative Marginalization Models

The paper introduces Particle GFlowNets, showing that Generative Marginalization Models (MaMs) are equivalent to Generative Flow Networks. It extends MaMs to non‑autoregressive sampling and proposes an automatic full‑state rejuvenation criterion based on the Gelman‑Rubin statistic to accelerate learning. Experiments demonstrate significant training speedups in large combinatorial spaces.

By Tiago da Silva, Diego Mesquita, Salem Lahlou