nonlinear activation function
Demystifying Oversmoothing in Attention-Based Graph Neural Networks
Oversmoothing in Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) refers to the phenomenon where increasing network depth leads to homogeneous node representations. While previous work has established that Graph Convolutional Networks (GCNs) exponentially lose expressive power, it remains controversial whether the graph attention mechanism can mitigate oversmoothing. In this work, we provide a definitive answer to this question through a rigorous mathematical analysis, by viewing attention-based GNNs as nonlinear time-varying dynamical systems and incorporating tools and techniques from the theory of products of inhomogeneous matrices and the joint spectral radius. We establish that, contrary to popular belief, the graph attention mechanism cannot prevent oversmoothing and loses expressive power exponentially. The proposed framework extends the existing results on oversmoothing for symmetric GCNs to a significantly broader class of GNN models, including random walk GCNs, Graph Attention Networks (GATs) and (graph) transformers.
where โ = 1,2,,L is the number of hidden layers (ฯ(1)(ri) = ฯ(ri) and L is the final layer), ReLU is the nonlinear activation function, W (โ) E RN N is the weight matrix in layer โ,and b
These molecular properties were calculated using a hybrid quantum simulation (Gaussian 09) at the B3LYP/6-31G(2df,p) level of theory. In this study, we created a subset of the QM9 dataset with a limited number of atoms, M 14, per molecule, which we refer to as the "QM9under14atoms" dataset in the main text. As the learning/predicting targets, we selected three kinds of energy properties: atomization energy at 0 K, zero point vibrational energy, and enthalpy at 298.15 K. E RN is the bias vector in layer โ. The LCAO considers the normalization for the coefficients in Eq. (6) in the main text. Additionally, the normalization term in Eq. (7) in the main text is calculated as follows: Z(qn,ฮถn)=
Spatially Parallel All-optical Neural Networks
Qin, Jianwei, Liu, Yanbing, Liu, Yan, Liu, Xun, Li, Wei, Ye, Fangwei
All-optical neural networks (AONNs) have emerged as a promising paradigm for ultrafast and energy-efficient computation. These networks typically consist of multiple serially connected layers between input and output layers--a configuration we term spatially series AONNs, with deep neural networks (DNNs) being the most prominent examples. However, such series architectures suffer from progressive signal degradation during information propagation and critically require additional nonlinearity designs to model complex relationships effectively. Here we propose a spatially parallel architecture for all-optical neural networks (SP-AONNs). Unlike series architecture that sequentially processes information through consecutively connected optical layers, SP-AONNs divide the input signal into identical copies fed simultaneously into separate optical layers. Through coherent interference between these parallel linear sub-networks, SP-AONNs inherently enable nonlinear computation without relying on active nonlinear components or iterative updates. We implemented a modular 4F optical system for SP-AONNs and evaluated its performance across multiple image classification benchmarks. Experimental results demonstrate that increasing the number of parallel sub-networks consistently enhances accuracy, improves noise robustness, and expands model expressivity. Our findings highlight spatial parallelism as a practical and scalable strategy for advancing the capabilities of optical neural computing.
Graph Neural Network-Based Distributed Optimal Control for Linear Networked Systems: An Online Distributed Training Approach
Song, Zihao, Welikala, Shirantha, Antsaklis, Panos J., Lin, Hai
In this paper, we consider the distributed optimal control problem for discrete-time linear networked systems. In particular, we are interested in learning distributed optimal controllers using graph recurrent neural networks (GRNNs). Most of the existing approaches result in centralized optimal controllers with offline training processes. However, as the increasing demand of network resilience, the optimal controllers are further expected to be distributed, and are desirable to be trained in an online distributed fashion, which are also the main contributions of our work. To solve this problem, we first propose a GRNN-based distributed optimal control method, and we cast the problem as a self-supervised learning problem. Then, the distributed online training is achieved via distributed gradient computation, and inspired by the (consensus-based) distributed optimization idea, a distributed online training optimizer is designed. Furthermore, the local closed-loop stability of the linear networked system under our proposed GRNN-based controller is provided by assuming that the nonlinear activation function of the GRNN-based controller is both local sector-bounded and slope-restricted. The effectiveness of our proposed method is illustrated by numerical simulations using a specifically developed simulator.
Generative System Dynamics in Recurrent Neural Networks
Casoni, Michele, Guidi, Tommaso, Betti, Alessandro, Melacci, Stefano, Gori, Marco
In this study, we investigate the continuous time dynamics of Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), focusing on systems with nonlinear activation functions. The objective of this work is to identify conditions under which RNNs exhibit perpetual oscillatory behavior, without converging to static fixed points. We establish that skew-symmetric weight matrices are fundamental to enable stable limit cycles in both linear and nonlinear configurations. We further demonstrate that hyperbolic tangent-like activation functions (odd, bounded, and continuous) preserve these oscillatory dynamics by ensuring motion invariants in state space. Numerical simulations showcase how nonlinear activation functions not only maintain limit cycles, but also enhance the numerical stability of the system integration process, mitigating those instabilities that are commonly associated with the forward Euler method. The experimental results of this analysis highlight practical considerations for designing neural architectures capable of capturing complex temporal dependencies, i.e., strategies for enhancing memorization skills in recurrent models.