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May 25

Lie Group Decompositions for Equivariant Neural Networks

Invariance and equivariance to geometrical transformations have proven to be very useful inductive biases when training (convolutional) neural network models, especially in the low-data regime. Much work has focused on the case where the symmetry group employed is compact or abelian, or both. Recent work has explored enlarging the class of transformations used to the case of Lie groups, principally through the use of their Lie algebra, as well as the group exponential and logarithm maps. The applicability of such methods to larger transformation groups is limited by the fact that depending on the group of interest G, the exponential map may not be surjective. Further limitations are encountered when G is neither compact nor abelian. Using the structure and geometry of Lie groups and their homogeneous spaces, we present a framework by which it is possible to work with such groups primarily focusing on the Lie groups G = GL^{+}(n, R) and G = SL(n, R), as well as their representation as affine transformations R^{n} rtimes G. Invariant integration as well as a global parametrization is realized by decomposing the `larger` groups into subgroups and submanifolds which can be handled individually. Under this framework, we show how convolution kernels can be parametrized to build models equivariant with respect to affine transformations. We evaluate the robustness and out-of-distribution generalisation capability of our model on the standard affine-invariant benchmark classification task, where we outperform all previous equivariant models as well as all Capsule Network proposals.

  • 2 authors
·
Oct 17, 2023

Extensions of Schoen--Simon--Yau and Schoen--Simon theorems via iteration à la De Giorgi

We give an alternative proof of the Schoen--Simon--Yau curvature estimates and associated Bernstein-type theorems (1975), and extend the original result by including the case of 6-dimensional (stable minimal) immersions. The key step is an ε-regularity theorem, that assumes smallness of the scale-invariant L^2 norm of the second fundamental form. Further, we obtain a graph description, in the Lipschitz multi-valued sense, for any stable minimal immersion of dimension ngeq 2, that may have a singular set Σ of locally finite H^{n-2}-measure, and that is weakly close to a hyperplane. (In fact, if H^{n-2}(Σ)=0, the conclusion is strengthened to a union of smooth graphs.) This follows directly from an ε-regularity theorem, that assumes smallness of the scale-invariant L^2 tilt-excess (verified when the hypersurface is weakly close to a hyperplane). Specialising the multi-valued decomposition to the case of embeddings, we recover the Schoen--Simon theorem (1981). In both ε-regularity theorems the relevant quantity (respectively, length of the second fundamental form and tilt function) solves a non-linear PDE on the immersed minimal hypersurface. The proof is carried out intrinsically (without linearising the PDE) by implementing an iteration method à la De Giorgi (from the linear De Giorgi--Nash--Moser theory). Stability implies estimates (intrinsic weak Caccioppoli inequalities) that make the iteration effective despite the non-linear framework. (In both ε-regularity theorems the method gives explicit constants that quantify the required smallness.)

  • 1 authors
·
Sep 11, 2025

Adiabatic Solutions of the Haydys-Witten Equations and Symplectic Khovanov Homology

An influential conjecture by Witten states that there is an instanton Floer homology of four-manifolds with corners that in certain situations is isomorphic to Khovanov homology of a given knot K. The Floer chain complex is generated by Nahm pole solutions of the Kapustin-Witten equations on R^3 times R^+_y with an additional monopole-like singular behaviour along the knot K inside the three-dimensional boundary at y=0. The Floer differential is given by counting solutions of the Haydys-Witten equations that interpolate between Kapustin-Witten solutions along an additional flow direction R_s. This article investigates solutions of a decoupled version of the Kapustin-Witten and Haydys-Witten equations on R_s times R^3 times R^+_y, which in contrast to the full equations exhibit a Hermitian Yang-Mills structure and can be viewed as a lift of the extended Bogomolny equations (EBE) from three to five dimensions. Inspired by Gaiotto-Witten's approach of adiabatically braiding EBE-solutions to obtain generators of the Floer homology, we propose that there is an equivalence between adiabatic solutions of the decoupled Haydys-Witten equations and non-vertical paths in the moduli space of EBE-solutions fibered over the space of monopole positions. Moreover, we argue that the Grothendieck-Springer resolution of the Lie algebra of the gauge group provides a finite-dimensional model of this moduli space of monopole solutions. These considerations suggest an intriguing similarity between Haydys-Witten instanton Floer homology and symplectic Khovanov homology and provide a novel approach towards a proof of Witten's gauge-theoretic interpretations of Khovanov homology.

  • 1 authors
·
Jan 2, 2025

More on the Weak Gravity Conjecture via Convexity of Charged Operators

The Weak Gravity Conjecture has recently been re-formulated in terms of a particle with non-negative self-binding energy. Because of the dual conformal field theory (CFT) formulation in the anti-de Sitter space the conformal dimension Delta (Q) of the lowest-dimension operator with charge Q under some global U(1) symmetry must be a convex function of Q. This property has been conjectured to hold for any (unitary) conformal field theory and generalized to larger global symmetry groups. Here we refine and further test the convex charge conjecture via semiclassical computations for fixed charge sectors of different theories in different dimensions. We analyze the convexity properties of the leading and next-to-leading order terms stemming from the semiclassical computation, de facto, extending previous tests beyond the leading perturbative contributions and to arbitrary charges. In particular, the leading contribution is sufficient to test convexity in the semiclassical computations. We also consider intriguing cases in which the models feature a transition from real to complex conformal dimensions either as a function of the charge or number of matter fields. As a relevant example of the first kind, we investigate the O(N) model in 4+epsilon dimensions. As an example of the second type we consider the U(N)times U(M) model in 4-epsilon dimensions. Both models display a rich dynamics where, by changing the number of matter fields and/or charge, one can achieve dramatically different physical regimes. We discover that whenever a complex conformal dimension appears, the real part satisfies the convexity property.

  • 5 authors
·
Sep 10, 2021

Jets of foliations and b^k-algebroids

In this article, we introduce and study singular foliations of b^k-type. These singular foliations formalize the properties of vector fields that are tangent to order k along a submanifold W subset M. Our first result is a classification of these foliations, relating them to geometric structures defined in a formal neighborhood of the submanifold, such as jets of distributions that are involutive up to order k-1. When W is a hypersurface, singular foliations of b^k-type are Lie algebroids. In this particular case, they are generalizations of the b^k-tangent bundles introduced by Scott. Indeed, they are always locally isomorphic to b^k-tangent bundles, but globally such an isomorphism is obstructed by a holonomy invariant. Our second main result is a Riemann-Hilbert-style classification of singular foliations of b^k-type in terms of holonomy representations. In this paper, we study singular foliations of b^k-type from several different perspectives. In particular: (1) We study the problem of extending a k-th-order foliation to a (k+1)-th order foliation and prove that this is obstructed by a characteristic class. (2) When W is a hypersurface, we give a detailed study of algebroid differential forms and extend Scott's calculation of the cohomology. (3) We study algebroid symplectic forms in terms of the geometric structures induced on W. In particular, we find that there is a close relationship between the above obstruction class for extensions and the symplectic variation of the symplectic foliation induced on W.

  • 3 authors
·
Nov 28, 2023

Fisher Curvature Scaling at Critical Points: An Exact Information-Geometric Exponent from Periodic Boundary Conditions

We study the scalar curvature of the Fisher information metric on the microscopic coupling-parameter manifold of lattice spin models at criticality. For a d-dimensional lattice with periodic boundary conditions and n = L^d sites, the Fisher manifold has m = d cdot n dimensions (one per bond), and we find |R(J_c)| sim n^{d_R} with d_R = (dν+ 2η)/(dν+ η), where ν and η are the correlation-length and anomalous-dimension critical exponents. For 2D Ising (ν= 1, η= 1/4), this predicts d_R = 10/9, confirmed by exact transfer-matrix computations (L = 6--9: d_R = 1.1115 pm 0.0002) and multi-seed MCMC through L = 24. For 3D Ising (ν= 0.630, η= 0.0363), the prediction d_R = 1.019 is consistent with MCMC on L^3 tori up to L = 10 (power-law fit: d_R = 1.040). For 2D Potts q = 3 (predicted 33/29 approx 1.138), FFT-MCMC through L = 40 shows d_eff oscillating non-monotonically around sim 1.20, consistent with O(1/(ln L)^2) logarithmic corrections. For q = 4 (predicted 22/19), effective exponents oscillate with strong logarithmic corrections. The Ricci decomposition identity R_3 = -R_1/2, R_4 = -R_2/2 holds to 5--6 digits for all models. This exponent is distinct from Ruppeiner thermodynamic curvature and reflects the collective geometry of the growing Fisher manifold. We provide falsification criteria and predictions for additional universality classes.

  • 1 authors
·
Mar 8

General teleparallel geometric theory of defects

We revisit the geometric theory of defects. In the differential-geometric models of defects that have been adopted since the 1950s, dislocations have been associated with torsion, disclinations with the full curvature, and point defects with the first kind trace of non-metricity. The mainstream formulation exhibits several conceptual and technical shortcomings, most notably a hierarchy inconsistency, the non-exictence of a genuine metric formulation, and the potential emergence of Ostrogradsky-type instabilities. These issues have motivated us to develop a new framework, namely a generalized teleparallel geometric theory of defects. In our model, dislocations are identified with the trace of torsion, disclinations with the second kind trace of the non-metricity, and point defects with the first kind trace of the non-metricity. In addition, we retain the scalar part torsion as a free parameter for describing some possible unknown degrees of freedom in the theory of defects. The proposed geometric theory of defects is free from all of the aforementioned drawbacks and is therefore worthy of further investigation. To ensure the coherence and completeness of the discussion, we begin our analysis with elastic deformations, then summarize the existing metric-affine geometric theory of defects, and finally proceed to our original contribution, namely the new theory introduced here. We formulate the entire theory in Eulerian coordinates. Naturally, all results can be reformulated in Lagrangian coordinates as well. All analyses and formulae are expressed in the language of exterior algebra and are carried out in coordinate-independent orthonormal frames.

  • 3 authors
·
Feb 1

Unsupervised Manifold Linearizing and Clustering

We consider the problem of simultaneously clustering and learning a linear representation of data lying close to a union of low-dimensional manifolds, a fundamental task in machine learning and computer vision. When the manifolds are assumed to be linear subspaces, this reduces to the classical problem of subspace clustering, which has been studied extensively over the past two decades. Unfortunately, many real-world datasets such as natural images can not be well approximated by linear subspaces. On the other hand, numerous works have attempted to learn an appropriate transformation of the data, such that data is mapped from a union of general non-linear manifolds to a union of linear subspaces (with points from the same manifold being mapped to the same subspace). However, many existing works have limitations such as assuming knowledge of the membership of samples to clusters, requiring high sampling density, or being shown theoretically to learn trivial representations. In this paper, we propose to optimize the Maximal Coding Rate Reduction metric with respect to both the data representation and a novel doubly stochastic cluster membership, inspired by state-of-the-art subspace clustering results. We give a parameterization of such a representation and membership, allowing efficient mini-batching and one-shot initialization. Experiments on CIFAR-10, -20, -100, and TinyImageNet-200 datasets show that the proposed method is much more accurate and scalable than state-of-the-art deep clustering methods, and further learns a latent linear representation of the data.

  • 6 authors
·
Jan 4, 2023

A Framework for Fast and Stable Representations of Multiparameter Persistent Homology Decompositions

Topological data analysis (TDA) is an area of data science that focuses on using invariants from algebraic topology to provide multiscale shape descriptors for geometric data sets such as point clouds. One of the most important such descriptors is {\em persistent homology}, which encodes the change in shape as a filtration parameter changes; a typical parameter is the feature scale. For many data sets, it is useful to simultaneously vary multiple filtration parameters, for example feature scale and density. While the theoretical properties of single parameter persistent homology are well understood, less is known about the multiparameter case. In particular, a central question is the problem of representing multiparameter persistent homology by elements of a vector space for integration with standard machine learning algorithms. Existing approaches to this problem either ignore most of the multiparameter information to reduce to the one-parameter case or are heuristic and potentially unstable in the face of noise. In this article, we introduce a new general representation framework that leverages recent results on {\em decompositions} of multiparameter persistent homology. This framework is rich in information, fast to compute, and encompasses previous approaches. Moreover, we establish theoretical stability guarantees under this framework as well as efficient algorithms for practical computation, making this framework an applicable and versatile tool for analyzing geometric and point cloud data. We validate our stability results and algorithms with numerical experiments that demonstrate statistical convergence, prediction accuracy, and fast running times on several real data sets.

A Topological and Operator Algebraic Framework for Asynchronous Lattice Dynamical Systems

I introduce a novel mathematical framework integrating topological dynamics, operator algebras, and ergodic geometry to study lattices of asynchronous metric dynamical systems. Each node in the lattice carries an internal flow represented by a one-parameter family of operators, evolving on its own time scale. I formalize stratified state spaces capturing multiple levels of synchronized behavior, define an asynchronous evolution metric that quantifies phase-offset distances between subsystems, and characterize emergent coherent topologies arising when subsystems synchronize. Within this framework, I develop formal operators for the evolution of each subsystem and give precise conditions under which phase-aligned synchronization occurs across the lattice. The main results include: (1) the existence and uniqueness of coherent (synchronized) states under a contractive coupling condition, (2) stability of these coherent states and criteria for their emergence as a collective phase transition in a continuous operator topology, and (3) the influence of symmetries, with group-invariant coupling leading to flow-invariant synchrony subspaces and structured cluster dynamics. Proofs are given for each theorem, demonstrating full mathematical rigor. In a final section, I discuss hypothetical applications of this framework to symbolic lattice systems (e.g. subshifts), to invariant group actions on dynamical lattices, and to operator fields over stratified manifolds in the spirit of noncommutative geometry. Throughout, I write in the first person to emphasize the exploratory nature of this work. The paper avoids any reference to cosmology or observers, focusing instead on clean, formal mathematics suitable for a broad array of dynamical systems.

  • 1 authors
·
May 14, 2025

Do Sparse Autoencoders Capture Concept Manifolds?

Sparse autoencoders (SAEs) are widely used to extract interpretable features from neural network representations, often under the implicit assumption that concepts correspond to independent linear directions. However, a growing body of evidence suggests that many concepts are instead organized along low-dimensional manifolds encoding continuous geometric relationships. This raises three basic questions: what does it mean for an SAE to capture a manifold, when do existing SAE architectures do so, and how? We develop a theoretical framework that answers these questions and show that SAEs can capture manifolds in two fundamentally different ways: globally, by allocating a compact group of atoms whose linear span contains the entire manifold, or locally, by distributing it across features that each selectively tile a restricted region of the underlying geometry. Empirically, we find that SAEs suboptimally recover continuous structures, mixing the global subspace and local tiling solutions in a fragmented regime we call dilution. This explains why manifold structure is rarely visible at the level of individual concepts and motivates post-hoc unsupervised discovery methods that search for coherent groups of atoms rather than isolated directions. More broadly, our results suggest that future representation learning methods should treat geometric objects, not just individual directions, as the basic units of interpretability.

  • 12 authors
·
Apr 29

How to Train Your HiPPO: State Space Models with Generalized Orthogonal Basis Projections

Linear time-invariant state space models (SSM) are a classical model from engineering and statistics, that have recently been shown to be very promising in machine learning through the Structured State Space sequence model (S4). A core component of S4 involves initializing the SSM state matrix to a particular matrix called a HiPPO matrix, which was empirically important for S4's ability to handle long sequences. However, the specific matrix that S4 uses was actually derived in previous work for a particular time-varying dynamical system, and the use of this matrix as a time-invariant SSM had no known mathematical interpretation. Consequently, the theoretical mechanism by which S4 models long-range dependencies actually remains unexplained. We derive a more general and intuitive formulation of the HiPPO framework, which provides a simple mathematical interpretation of S4 as a decomposition onto exponentially-warped Legendre polynomials, explaining its ability to capture long dependencies. Our generalization introduces a theoretically rich class of SSMs that also lets us derive more intuitive S4 variants for other bases such as the Fourier basis, and explains other aspects of training S4, such as how to initialize the important timescale parameter. These insights improve S4's performance to 86% on the Long Range Arena benchmark, with 96% on the most difficult Path-X task.

  • 5 authors
·
Jun 23, 2022

Vietoris--Rips Shadow for Euclidean Graph Reconstruction

The shadow of an abstract simplicial complex K with vertices in R^N is a subset of R^N defined as the union of the convex hulls of simplices of K. The Vietoris--Rips complex of a metric space (S,d) at scale β is an abstract simplicial complex whose each k-simplex corresponds to (k+1) points of S within diameter β. In case Ssubsetmathbb R^2 and d(a,b)=|a-b| the standard Euclidean metric, the natural shadow projection of the Vietoris--Rips complex is already proved by Chambers et al. to induce isomorphisms on π_0 and π_1. We extend the result beyond the standard Euclidean distance on Ssubsetmathbb R^N to a family of path-based metrics, d^varepsilon_{S}. From the pairwise Euclidean distances of points in S, we introduce a family (parametrized by varepsilon) of path-based Vietoris--Rips complexes R^varepsilon_β(S) for a scale β>0. If SsubsetR^2 is Hausdorff-close to a planar Euclidean graph G, we provide quantitative bounds on scales β,varepsilon for the shadow projection map of the Vietoris--Rips complex of (S,d^varepsilon_S) at scale β to induce π_1-isomorphism. This paper first studies the homotopy-type recovery of Gsubsetmathbb R^N using the abstract Vietoris--Rips complex of a Hausdorff-close sample S under the d^varepsilon_S metric. Then, our result on the π_1-isomorphism induced by the shadow projection lends itself to providing also a geometrically close embedding for the reconstruction. Based on the length of the shortest loop and large-scale distortion of the embedding of G, we quantify the choice of a suitable sample density varepsilon and a scale β at which the shadow of R^varepsilon_β(S) is homotopy-equivalent and Hausdorff-close to G.

  • 3 authors
·
Jun 2, 2025

The Geometric Price of Discrete Logic: Context-driven Manifold Dynamics of Number Representations

Large language models (LLMs) generalize smoothly across continuous semantic spaces, yet strict logical reasoning demands the formation of discrete decision boundaries. Prevailing theories relying on linear isometric projections fail to resolve this fundamental tension. In this work, we argue that task context operates as a non-isometric dynamical operator that enforces a necessary "topological distortion." By applying Gram-Schmidt decomposition to residual-stream activations , we reveal a dual-modulation mechanism driving this process: a class-agnostic topological preservation that anchors global structure to prevent semantic collapse, and a specific algebraic divergence that directionally tears apart cross-class concepts to forge logical boundaries. We validate this geometric evolution across a gradient of tasks, from simple mapping to complex primality testing. Crucially, targeted specific vector ablation establishes a strict causal binding between this topology and model function: algebraically erasing the divergence component collapses parity classification accuracy from 100% to chance levels (38.57%). Furthermore, we uncover a three-phase layer-wise geometric dynamic and demonstrate that under social pressure prompts, models fail to generate sufficient divergence. This results in a "manifold entanglement" that geometrically explains sycophancy and hallucination. Ultimately, our findings revise the linear-isometric presumption, demonstrating that the emergence of discrete logic in LLMs is purchased at an irreducible cost of topological deformation.

  • 3 authors
·
Mar 23

Clustering of higher order connected correlations in C^* dynamical systems

In the context of C^* dynamical systems, we consider a locally compact group G acting by ^*-automorphisms on a C^* algebra U of observables, and assume a state of U that satisfies the clustering property with respect to a net of group elements of G. That is, the two-point connected correlation function vanishes in the limit on the net, when one observable is translated under the group action. Then we show that all higher order connected correlation functions (Ursell functions, or classical cumulants) and all free correlation functions (free cumulants, from free probability) vanish at the same rate in that limit. Additionally, we show that mean clustering, also called ergodicity, extends to higher order correlations. We then apply those results to equilibrium states of quantum spin lattice models. Under certain assumptions on the range of the interaction, high temperature Gibbs states are known to be exponentially clustering w.r.t. space translations. Combined with the Lieb-Robinson bound, one obtains exponential clustering for space-time translations outside the Lieb-Robinson light-cone. Therefore, by our present results, all the higher order connected and free correlation functions will vanish exponentially under space-time translations outside the Lieb-Robinson light cone, in high temperature Gibbs states. Another consequence is that their long-time averaging over a space-time ray vanishes for almost every ray velocity.

  • 2 authors
·
Aug 1, 2024

Faces of highest weight modules and the universal Weyl polyhedron

Let V be a highest weight module over a Kac-Moody algebra g, and let conv V denote the convex hull of its weights. We determine the combinatorial isomorphism type of conv V, i.e. we completely classify the faces and their inclusions. In the special case where g is semisimple, this brings closure to a question studied by Cellini-Marietti [IMRN 2015] for the adjoint representation, and by Khare [J. Algebra 2016; Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 2017] for most modules. The determination of faces of finite-dimensional modules up to the Weyl group action and some of their inclusions also appears in previous work of Satake [Ann. of Math. 1960], Borel-Tits [IHES Publ. Math. 1965], Vinberg [Izv. Akad. Nauk 1990], and Casselman [Austral. Math. Soc. 1997]. For any subset of the simple roots, we introduce a remarkable convex cone which we call the universal Weyl polyhedron, which controls the convex hulls of all modules parabolically induced from the corresponding Levi factor. Namely, the combinatorial isomorphism type of the cone stores the classification of faces for all such highest weight modules, as well as how faces degenerate as the highest weight gets increasingly singular. To our knowledge, this cone is new in finite and infinite type. We further answer a question of Michel Brion, by showing that the localization of conv V along a face is always the convex hull of the weights of a parabolically induced module. Finally, as we determine the inclusion relations between faces representation-theoretically from the set of weights, without recourse to convexity, we answer a similar question for highest weight modules over symmetrizable quantum groups.

  • 2 authors
·
Oct 31, 2016

Neural 4D Evolution under Large Topological Changes from 2D Images

In the literature, it has been shown that the evolution of the known explicit 3D surface to the target one can be learned from 2D images using the instantaneous flow field, where the known and target 3D surfaces may largely differ in topology. We are interested in capturing 4D shapes whose topology changes largely over time. We encounter that the straightforward extension of the existing 3D-based method to the desired 4D case performs poorly. In this work, we address the challenges in extending 3D neural evolution to 4D under large topological changes by proposing two novel modifications. More precisely, we introduce (i) a new architecture to discretize and encode the deformation and learn the SDF and (ii) a technique to impose the temporal consistency. (iii) Also, we propose a rendering scheme for color prediction based on Gaussian splatting. Furthermore, to facilitate learning directly from 2D images, we propose a learning framework that can disentangle the geometry and appearance from RGB images. This method of disentanglement, while also useful for the 4D evolution problem that we are concentrating on, is also novel and valid for static scenes. Our extensive experiments on various data provide awesome results and, most importantly, open a new approach toward reconstructing challenging scenes with significant topological changes and deformations. Our source code and the dataset are publicly available at https://github.com/insait-institute/N4DE.

  • 5 authors
·
Nov 22, 2024