Revisiting Orbital Minimization Method for Neural Operator Decomposition

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Ryu, J. Jon, Zhou, Samuel, Wornell, Gregory W.
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Ryu, J. Jon
Zhou, Samuel
Wornell, Gregory W.
author_facet Ryu, J. Jon
Zhou, Samuel
Wornell, Gregory W.
contents Spectral decomposition of linear operators plays a central role in many areas of machine learning and scientific computing. Recent work has explored training neural networks to approximate eigenfunctions of such operators, enabling scalable approaches to representation learning, dynamical systems, and partial differential equations (PDEs). In this paper, we revisit a classical optimization framework from the computational physics literature known as the \emph{orbital minimization method} (OMM), originally proposed in the 1990s for solving eigenvalue problems in computational chemistry. We provide a simple linear-algebraic proof of the consistency of the OMM objective, and reveal connections between this method and several ideas that have appeared independently across different domains. Our primary goal is to justify its broader applicability in modern learning pipelines. We adapt this framework to train neural networks to decompose positive semidefinite operators, and demonstrate its practical advantages across a range of benchmark tasks. Our results highlight how revisiting classical numerical methods through the lens of modern theory and computation can provide not only a principled approach for deploying neural networks in numerical simulation, but also effective and scalable tools for machine learning.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_21952
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Revisiting Orbital Minimization Method for Neural Operator Decomposition
Ryu, J. Jon
Zhou, Samuel
Wornell, Gregory W.
Machine Learning
Numerical Analysis
Spectral decomposition of linear operators plays a central role in many areas of machine learning and scientific computing. Recent work has explored training neural networks to approximate eigenfunctions of such operators, enabling scalable approaches to representation learning, dynamical systems, and partial differential equations (PDEs). In this paper, we revisit a classical optimization framework from the computational physics literature known as the \emph{orbital minimization method} (OMM), originally proposed in the 1990s for solving eigenvalue problems in computational chemistry. We provide a simple linear-algebraic proof of the consistency of the OMM objective, and reveal connections between this method and several ideas that have appeared independently across different domains. Our primary goal is to justify its broader applicability in modern learning pipelines. We adapt this framework to train neural networks to decompose positive semidefinite operators, and demonstrate its practical advantages across a range of benchmark tasks. Our results highlight how revisiting classical numerical methods through the lens of modern theory and computation can provide not only a principled approach for deploying neural networks in numerical simulation, but also effective and scalable tools for machine learning.
title Revisiting Orbital Minimization Method for Neural Operator Decomposition
topic Machine Learning
Numerical Analysis
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.21952