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A Correspondence Between Random Neural Networks and Statistical Field Theory

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arxiv 1710.06570 v1 pith:TGM3ZL3Z submitted 2017-10-18 stat.ML cond-mat.dis-nncs.LG

classification stat.MLcond-mat.dis-nncs.LG
keywords networksrandomneuraldistributionlatticeapproximatedapproximationbehavior
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A number of recent papers have provided evidence that practical design questions about neural networks may be tackled theoretically by studying the behavior of random networks. However, until now the tools available for analyzing random neural networks have been relatively ad-hoc. In this work, we show that the distribution of pre-activations in random neural networks can be exactly mapped onto lattice models in statistical physics. We argue that several previous investigations of stochastic networks actually studied a particular factorial approximation to the full lattice model. For random linear networks and random rectified linear networks we show that the corresponding lattice models in the wide network limit may be systematically approximated by a Gaussian distribution with covariance between the layers of the network. In each case, the approximate distribution can be diagonalized by Fourier transformation. We show that this approximation accurately describes the results of numerical simulations of wide random neural networks. Finally, we demonstrate that in each case the large scale behavior of the random networks can be approximated by an effective field theory.

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Cited by 5 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. Spontaneous symmetry breaking and Goldstone modes for deep information propagation

    cs.LG 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 6.0 of 10

    Equivariant neural networks support Goldstone-like modes enabling coherent information propagation across depth and recurrent iterations.

  2. Critical Organization of Deep Neural Networks, and p-Adic Statistical Field Theories

    cs.LG 2026-01 reject novelty 6.0 of 10

    A p-adic integral-equation formulation of deep networks is shown to have a unique hidden state under a contraction condition; the claimed thermodynamic limit and infinite-state bifurcation are not proven.

  3. Criticality analysis of nuclear binding energy neural networks

    nucl-th 2025-08 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    On a two-input nuclear binding energy network, the paper validates ANNFT predictions for variance, kurtosis, and an optimal depth-to-width ratio r*=0.034 under SGD, while adaptive optimizers obscure criticality.

  4. Time-multiplexed layer reuse for physical neural networks

    cs.LG 2025-10 conditional novelty 4.0 of 10

    ReLaX-Net cycles a small set of fixed weight matrices to deepen physical neural networks, but controlled experiments show a single repeated large layer is the best use of a fixed parameter budget.

  5. Bulk-boundary decomposition of neural networks

    cs.LG 2025-11 reject novelty 3.0 of 10

    The paper reframes SGD training of deep networks as a local Lagrangian with data confined to the boundaries, but the advertised energy continuity equation is absent from the body.

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