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Main Authors: Carrière, Guillaume, Lhéritier, Alix, Cazals, Frédéric
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.12577
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author Carrière, Guillaume
Lhéritier, Alix
Cazals, Frédéric
author_facet Carrière, Guillaume
Lhéritier, Alix
Cazals, Frédéric
contents Modeling dependencies between random variables independently from their marginals is fundamental in applications ranging from finance to (structural) biology. In this work, we undertake this problem using circula to model data living on the $d$-dimensional flat torus $\mathbb{T}^d$, making two contributions. First, using a low rank covariance structure to define circulae based on a latent variable model, we design the first closed-form normalized distribution on the flat torus $\mathbb{T}^d$--with covariance structure. Second, building on this framework, we propose the first models for joint distributions of torsion angles (backbone and side-chains) for neighboring amino-acids in proteins. In practice, we fit mixtures on flat torii from $\mathbb{T}^{2}$ to $\mathbb{T}^{14}$, and show they are SOTA in terms of likelihood and sparsity. We anticipate that these models will prove fundamental to move from discrete structural studies like in AlphaFold2, to thermodynamics and kinetics, which are the ultimate goals in theoretical biophysics.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_12577
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Circula-based multivariate distributions on the flat torus, with applications in structural biology
Carrière, Guillaume
Lhéritier, Alix
Cazals, Frédéric
Applications
Modeling dependencies between random variables independently from their marginals is fundamental in applications ranging from finance to (structural) biology. In this work, we undertake this problem using circula to model data living on the $d$-dimensional flat torus $\mathbb{T}^d$, making two contributions. First, using a low rank covariance structure to define circulae based on a latent variable model, we design the first closed-form normalized distribution on the flat torus $\mathbb{T}^d$--with covariance structure. Second, building on this framework, we propose the first models for joint distributions of torsion angles (backbone and side-chains) for neighboring amino-acids in proteins. In practice, we fit mixtures on flat torii from $\mathbb{T}^{2}$ to $\mathbb{T}^{14}$, and show they are SOTA in terms of likelihood and sparsity. We anticipate that these models will prove fundamental to move from discrete structural studies like in AlphaFold2, to thermodynamics and kinetics, which are the ultimate goals in theoretical biophysics.
title Circula-based multivariate distributions on the flat torus, with applications in structural biology
topic Applications
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.12577