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Auteurs principaux: Lyu, Bochen, Zhang, Xiaojing, Zheng, Fangyi, Wang, He, Wang, Zheng, Zhu, Zhanxing
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
Sujets:
Accès en ligne:https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.14806
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author Lyu, Bochen
Zhang, Xiaojing
Zheng, Fangyi
Wang, He
Wang, Zheng
Zhu, Zhanxing
author_facet Lyu, Bochen
Zhang, Xiaojing
Zheng, Fangyi
Wang, He
Wang, Zheng
Zhu, Zhanxing
contents This paper establishes a continuous time approximation, a piece-wise continuous differential equation, for the discrete Heavy-Ball (HB) momentum method with explicit discretization error. Investigating continuous differential equations has been a promising approach for studying the discrete optimization methods. Despite the crucial role of momentum in gradient-based optimization methods, the gap between the original discrete dynamics and the continuous time approximations due to the discretization error has not been comprehensively bridged yet. In this work, we study the HB momentum method in continuous time while putting more focus on the discretization error to provide additional theoretical tools to this area. In particular, we design a first-order piece-wise continuous differential equation, where we add a number of counter terms to account for the discretization error explicitly. As a result, we provide a continuous time model for the HB momentum method that allows the control of discretization error to arbitrary order of the step size. As an application, we leverage it to find a new implicit regularization of the directional smoothness and investigate the implicit bias of HB for diagonal linear networks, indicating how our results can be used in deep learning. Our theoretical findings are further supported by numerical experiments.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_14806
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Heavy-Ball Momentum Method in Continuous Time and Discretization Error Analysis
Lyu, Bochen
Zhang, Xiaojing
Zheng, Fangyi
Wang, He
Wang, Zheng
Zhu, Zhanxing
Machine Learning
This paper establishes a continuous time approximation, a piece-wise continuous differential equation, for the discrete Heavy-Ball (HB) momentum method with explicit discretization error. Investigating continuous differential equations has been a promising approach for studying the discrete optimization methods. Despite the crucial role of momentum in gradient-based optimization methods, the gap between the original discrete dynamics and the continuous time approximations due to the discretization error has not been comprehensively bridged yet. In this work, we study the HB momentum method in continuous time while putting more focus on the discretization error to provide additional theoretical tools to this area. In particular, we design a first-order piece-wise continuous differential equation, where we add a number of counter terms to account for the discretization error explicitly. As a result, we provide a continuous time model for the HB momentum method that allows the control of discretization error to arbitrary order of the step size. As an application, we leverage it to find a new implicit regularization of the directional smoothness and investigate the implicit bias of HB for diagonal linear networks, indicating how our results can be used in deep learning. Our theoretical findings are further supported by numerical experiments.
title Heavy-Ball Momentum Method in Continuous Time and Discretization Error Analysis
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.14806