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01.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-19

DF3DV-1K: A Large-Scale Dataset and Benchmark for Distractor-Free Novel View Synthesis

arXiv:2604.13416v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Advances in radiance fields have enabled photorealistic novel view synthesis. In several domains, large-scale real-world datasets have been developed to support comprehensive benchmarking and to facilitate progress beyond scene-specific reconstruction. However, for distractor-free radiance fields, a large-scale dataset with clean and cluttered images per scene remains lacking, limiting the development. To address this gap, we introduce DF3DV-1K, a large-scale real-world dataset comprising 1,048 scenes, each providing clean and cluttered image sets for benchmarking. In total, the dataset contains 89,924 images captured using consumer cameras to mimic casual capture, spanning 128 distractor types and 161 scene themes across indoor and outdoor environments. A curated subset of 41 scenes, DF3DV-41, is systematically designed to evaluate the robustness of distractor-free radiance field methods under challenging scenarios. Using DF3DV-1K, we benchmark nine recent distractor-free radiance field methods and 3D Gaussian Splatting, identifying the most robust methods and the most challenging scenarios. Beyond benchmarking, we demonstrate an application of DF3DV-1K by fine-tuning a diffusion-based 2D enhancer to improve radiance field methods, achieving average improvements of 0.96 dB PSNR and 0.057 LPIPS on the held-out set (e.g., DF3DV-41) and the On-the-go dataset. We hope DF3DV-1K facilitates the development of distractor-free vision and promotes progress beyond scene-specific approaches. The dataset and leaderboard are available at https://johnnylu305.github.io/df3dv1k_web/.

02.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-16

MemPO: Self-Memory Policy Optimization for Long-Horizon Agents

arXiv:2603.00680v4 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Long-horizon agents face the challenge of growing context size during interaction with environment, which degrades the performance and stability. Existing methods typically introduce the external memory module and look up the relevant information from the stored memory, which prevents the model itself from proactively managing its memory content and aligning with the agent's overarching task objectives. To address these limitations, we propose the self-memory policy optimization algorithm (MemPO), which enables the agent (policy model) to autonomously summarize and manage their memory during interaction with environment. By improving the credit assignment mechanism based on memory effectiveness, the policy model can selectively retain crucial information, significantly reducing token consumption while preserving task performance. Extensive experiments and analyses confirm that MemPO achieves absolute F1 score gains of 25.98 over the base model and 7.1 over the previous SOTA baseline, while reducing token usage by 67.58% and 73.12%. The code is released at https://github.com/TheNewBeeKing/MemPO.

03.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-12

Interference of critical dynamics associated with zero modes

arXiv:2606.13200v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We study the interference of critical dynamics associated with zero modes (ICDZM) in the generalized Creutz ladders using closed quench paths that pass through two critical points successively. By reading out the final zero-mode transfer probability, we find rich ICDZM interference patterns dependent on the quench path. In particular, when the closed path links two topologically nontrivial phases, the ICDZM pattern may either vanish or exhibit period doubling. Within the framework of WKB analysis, this phenomenon is well clarified by the interference phase accumulated in the quench procedure. We also demonstrate that the zero-mode transfer probability can be detected by the deviation of the boundary particle number from its initial fractional value, which arises from the blending of bulk modes in the critical dynamics. As an edge defect, the zero-mode transfer probability captures both the ICDZM oscillation and the known anomalous defect production in a non-closed quench path. These results identify ICDZM and the corresponding edge defect as probes for critical dynamics associated with topological zero modes.

04.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-19

Hybrid VQE-CVQE algorithm using diabatic state preparation

arXiv:2512.04801v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We propose a hybrid variational quantum algorithm that has variational parameters used by both the quantum circuit and the subsequent classical optimization. Similar to the Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE), this algorithm applies a parameterized unitary operator to the qubit register. We generate this operator using diabatic state preparation. The quantum measurement results then inform the classical optimization procedure used by the Cascaded Variational Quantum Eigensolver (CVQE). We demonstrate the algorithm on a system of interacting electrons and show how it can be used on long-term error-corrected as well as short-term intermediate-scale quantum computers. Our simulations performed on IBM Brisbane produced energies well within chemical accuracy.

05.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-12

Rethinking RAG in Long Videos: What to Retrieve and How to Use It?

arXiv:2606.13141v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Retrieval-augmented generation is moving beyond text into long, egocentric video, where systems must select query-relevant chunks across multiple modalities and temporal granularities. Yet progress in VideoRAG is limited by two gaps: existing benchmarks allow queries to be answered without the video, obscuring retrieval errors, and prior methods apply a single modality-granularity configuration per query, ignoring chunk-level variability. We address both by introducing V-RAGBench, a benchmark of $\langle$query, evidence chunk, answer$\rangle$ triplets that enables faithful, decoupled evaluation of retrieval and generation, and CARVE, a simple method that runs parallel retrievers across configurations and employs chunk-adaptive reranking to identify the winning configuration for each chunk. Each chunk then enters the generator under its winning configuration selected during retrieval, yielding an interleaved evidence form where the chunk-level decision propagates across both stages. CARVE outperforms eight recent VideoRAG baselines, with the chunks supplied to the generator interleaving multiple configurations rather than sharing a single one, a behavior unattainable by query-level methods.

06.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-18

Physics in 2-Steps: Locking Motion Priors Before Visual Refinement Erases Them

Image-to-Video diffusion models leverage input images to generate visually stunning content, yet frequently produce motion that violates physical laws. We reveal a surprising finding: a 2-step generation often exhibits better physical consistency than a 50-step output from the same model. Through spectral analysis, we trace this to phase erosion during denoising; the phase degrades significantly (dropping by $\approx 18\%$ from step 2 to step 50), whereas the magnitude remains relatively stable. Building on this insight, we propose PhaseLock, a training-free framework that preserves the valid motion priors from few-step inference throughout the denoising trajectory. Rather than relying on full-step inference for physical consistency, PhaseLock extracts a motion prior from just 2 steps and enforces it onto high-fidelity generation via Latent Delta Guidance. Our approach effectively mitigates phase degradation, improving physical consistency by an average of 6.2 points across diverse models while largely maintaining visual fidelity, with negligible overhead ($1.06\times$ time, $1.02\times$ memory) and reduced reliance on expensive external guidance methods ($\sim5\times$ time). Project Page: https://dnwjddl.github.io/phaselock

07.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-16

Multimodal Evaluator Preference Collapse: Cross-Modal Contagion in Self-Evolving Agents

Authors:

When AI agents use language models to evaluate their own outputs in a feedback loop, systematic biases emerge. We show that Evaluator Preference Collapse (EPC) is dramatically amplified in multimodal settings. Using GPT-4o to evaluate DeepSeek-chat across text and visual tasks, we find that a single strategy (step_by_step) absorbs 48.4% of all weight – 3.2x the collapse observed in text-only self-evaluation – while three visual-domain strategies receive only 9.1% combined weight. We then demonstrate a novel phenomenon we term cross-modal contagion: evaluator preferences acquired on one modality transfer to and corrupt strategy selection on another. Through a four-phase isolation training paradigm, we measure contagion coefficients and document strategy inversion – the optimal strategy for a modality reverses after cross-modal exposure. A Phase 3 statistical validation across four evaluator configurations (N=53 total independent repetitions, 15,592 API calls) reveals a clear hierarchy: cross-model evaluation (GPT-4o, N=8) produces strong but symmetric bidirectional contagion (mean gamma_{T->V}=1.176, gamma_{V->T}=1.089, Delta=-0.088, p=0.575, Cohen's d=0.29); high round counts (DashScope, 50 rounds) cause collapse to single-strategy dominance (70% zero contagion); and self-evaluation provides near-complete immunity – 97% of runs (N=30, DeepSeek-chat) yield exactly zero contagion (mean gamma=0.033, 95% CI [-0.031, 0.010], p=0.642, d=0.07). No evaluator condition shows statistically significant directional asymmetry. We introduce the contagion matrix indexed by evaluator identity, release the MM-EPC experimental framework, and identify cross-model evaluator architecture as the primary risk factor for preference contagion.

08.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-16

Resilient Consensus in Agentic AI

arXiv:2606.15024v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language model (LLM) agents are increasingly deployed in multi-agent systems where they must coordinate and agree on shared decisions. We ask whether classical resilient consensus theory, developed for deterministic agents, transfers to LLM agents that may behave adversarially. Framing LLM agreement as a Byzantine consensus game, we run controlled experiments on complete and general communication graphs. We find that prompted LLM agents fail to reach agreement that is achievable in principle: consensus can fail even in settings where classical theory guarantees that a convergent algorithm exists, and this failure persists across temperatures and horizons. At the same time, wrapping the agents with classical resilient consensus filters improves agreement. The benefit of filtering depends on how much robustness the underlying topology already provides. Our results suggest that classical resilient consensus theory is a useful lens for the safety of agentic AI.

09.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-16

Neural network inverse design of nanophotonic scintillators

arXiv:2606.16309v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Scintillators are materials converting high-energy radiation into optical light, essential in a range of technologies such as medical imaging systems and security scanners. Scintillator development and optimization have remained limited by the complexity of their underlying physics, involving stochastic cascades of electron-electron, electron-phonon, and electron-photon interactions. Such processes are typically modeled by non-differentiable Monte Carlo simulations, limiting the applicability of machine learning for scintillator development. Here we present a physics-informed neural network that learns the scintillation cascade process from the incident high-energy particle to photon emission, substantially accelerating scintillator design and optimization. Combining this neural network with photonic simulations enables end-to-end differentiable optimization of the scintillator geometry. This allows us to optimize for arbitrary figures of merit, such as specific target emission patterns.. We demonstrate the concept and characterize it relative to previous approaches by inverse design of nanophotonic scintillators for X-ray imaging.

10.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-16

Hardy-type self-testing and exposedness of tripartite GHZ correlations

arXiv:2512.16242v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Nonlocality can be witnessed either through Bell-inequality violations or through logical contradictions such as Hardy's paradox. In the bipartite two input two outcome scenario, these two routes have distinct geometric behavior: CHSH-maximal correlations are exposed points of the quantum set, whereas known Hardy-type self-testing correlations on the no-signaling boundary are non-exposed. Here we show that this bipartite intuition fails in the tripartite two input two outcome scenario. We study the tripartite instance of a multipartite Hardy-type paradox and prove that the correlation attaining the maximal Hardy success probability self-tests the Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger state and the associated measurements. Although this correlation lies on the no-signaling boundary, we show that it is an extremal and exposed point of the quantum correlation set. Moreover, it coincides with the correlation attaining the maximal violation of the Mermin inequality. Thus, in the tripartite GHZ scenario, the logical-paradox and Bell-inequality routes to nonlocality select the same exposed quantum boundary point. We also establish a robust version of the self-test, showing that small deviations from the ideal Hardy constraints imply quantitative closeness to the target state and measurements. Our results reveal a qualitative geometric difference between bipartite and tripartite Hardy-type nonlocality and suggest a broader investigation of exposedness for multipartite Hardy correlations in the multiparty setting.

11.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-11

Modelling magnetic material properties with uncertainty-aware neural networks

arXiv:2606.11870v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Machine learning is increasingly applied to accelerate the discovery of novel materials by exploring large compositional and structural design spaces. Yet, the scarcity of high-quality data and the frequent need for out-of-distribution prediction introduce substantial uncertainty, making the assessment of model reliability essential. In this work, we investigate uncertainty quantification as a means to evaluate model confidence in the context of permanent magnet research. In a first study, we benchmark classical and modern machine learning models for predicting intrinsic magnetic properties, focusing on the quality of their uncertainty estimates. We apply Gaussian negative log-likelihood loss and dropout-based Bayesian approximation as practical strategies for estimating predictive uncertainty. In a second study, we transfer these architectural features for uncertainty estimation to a more complex task: predicting coercivity from microstructural information using a graph neural network. Together, these studies demonstrate that uncertainty quantification not only enhances the trustworthiness of predictions but is also transferable across different modeling tasks.

12.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-16

Bayesian Inference and Decision Audits for Public Archives of Frontier AI Evaluations

Authors:

arXiv:2606.17005v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Public AI evaluations are often read as terminal leaderboards, yet the underlying evidence is a selective time series shaped by reporting rules, benchmark revisions, and missingness. Repeated public archives for LiveBench and Open LLM Leaderboard v2 serve as the primary longitudinal record; LMArena provides a preference stress test; and GAIA and tau-bench contribute limited agentic pilots. Together, these archives instantiate a Bayesian inference problem: under a fixed reporting convention, one constructed terminal-only example over $1{,}000$ systems is compatible with two pre-terminal histories, yielding times of $23.03$ or $75.13$ to reach within $0.05$ of the ceiling under the same terminal-tail model. In synthetic posterior comparisons, action-facing diagnostics differ across observation regimes. The candidate selection-aware frontier model fails synthetic recovery, objective-archive prediction, preference transfer, and uncertainty calibration; correspondingly, fixed audit gates reject its stronger claims. An archive-and-adjudication protocol reconstructs public evaluation histories, isolates a verified timing boundary, and falsifies unsupported frontier claims.

13.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-19

Recursive perturbation approach to time-convolutionless master equations: Explicit construction of generalized Lindblad generators for arbitrary open systems

arXiv:2506.04095v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We develop a recursive perturbative expansion for the time-convolutionless (TCL) generator of an open quantum system in a generalized Lindblad form. This formulation provides a systematic approach to derive the generator at arbitrary order while preserving a Lindblad-like structure, without imposing assumptions on the system or environment beyond an initially uncorrelated state. The generator is written, at all orders, in a canonical form, which also corresponds to the minimal dissipation condition, which uniquely specifies the decomposition of the generator into Hamiltonian and dissipative contributions. To validate the method and show its effectiveness in addressing non-Markovian dynamics and strong-coupling effects, we compute the generator explicitly up to fourth order.

14.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-19

CRAX: Fast Safe Reinforcement Learning Benchmarking

arXiv:2606.20376v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Safety is a core concern for deploying reinforcement learning (RL) agents in real-world domains such as robotics and autonomous driving. While benchmarks have been central to progress in RL, existing safety benchmarks with high-fidelity 3D physics remain computationally slow, limiting large-scale experimentation and rapid prototyping. To address this gap, we propose CRAX (Constrained RL Accelerated with JAX). Built on top of the MuJoCo XLA (MJX) physics engine with realistic 3D dynamics, CRAX leverages vectorized operations and hardware acceleration, yielding up to ~100x speedups over comparable CPU-based safety benchmarks. The benchmark features six environment suites and three agent-specific tasks, each spanning three difficulty levels. Evaluating six popular safe RL methods shows that no single approach dominates across all tasks, and reveals the trade-offs between performance and safety. We find that curriculum learning across difficulty levels and safety transfer can improve performance over direct training in harder settings.

15.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-12

ARMOR-MAD: Adaptive Routing for Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Debate in Large Language Model Reasoning

arXiv:2606.13197v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Multi-agent debate (MAD) can improve large language model reasoning, but fixed debate pipelines often waste computation and can amplify correlated errors among similar agents. We propose ARMOR-MAD, a training-free heterogeneous MAD framework that treats debate as conditional computation. ARMOR-MAD combines three components: Pre-debate Agreement Routing (PAR) decides whether independently generated Round-0 answers require debate; Early Agreement Stopping Evaluator (EASE) stops debate after convergence; and Semantic Outlier Detection (SOD) down-weights abnormal final answers during aggregation. Across MATH Level 5, GSM8K, MMLU, and MMLU-Pro, ARMOR-MAD consistently improves over fixed-round heterogeneous debate with the same model pool, reaching 65.5\%, 96.5\%, 90.0\%, and 81.5\% accuracy, respectively. The results suggest that genuine model heterogeneity and agreement-based control are both important for making MAD more accurate and efficient.

16.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-16

HMR-Net: Hierarchical Modular Routing for Cross-Domain Object Detection in Aerial Images

Despite advances in object detection, aerial imagery remains a challenging domain, as models often fail to generalize across variations in spatial resolution, scene composition, and semantic label coverage. Differences in geographic context, sensor characteristics, and object distributions across datasets limit the capacity of conventional models to learn consistent and transferable representations. Shared methods trained on such data tend to impose a unified representation across fundamentally different domains, resulting in poor performance on region-specific content and less flexibility when dealing with novel object categories. To address this, we propose a novel modular learning framework that enables structured specialization in aerial detection. Our method introduces a hierarchical routing mechanism with two levels of modularity: a domain routing layer that uses latent geographic embeddings to assign inputs to domain-specialized expert modules, and a scene routing mechanism that allocates image subregions to scene-specific expert modules. This allows our method to specialize across datasets and within complex scenes. Additionally, the framework contains a conditional expert module that uses external semantic information (e.g., category names or textual descriptions) to enable detection of novel object categories during inference, without the need for retraining or fine-tuning. By moving beyond monolithic representations, our method provides an adaptive framework for remote sensing object detection. Comprehensive evaluations on four datasets highlight improvements in multi-dataset generalization, region-level specialization, and open-category detection.

17.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-11

A Comprehensive Ecosystem for Open-Domain Customized Video Generation

Recent progress in video generation has shown impressive visual synthesis capabilities. However, open-domain customized video generation remains limited by the lack of large-scale, annotated datasets capturing diverse identity-specific attributes. To address this, we introduce PexelsCustom-1M, the first publicly available million-scale dataset for identity-preserving video generation, containing one million curated triplets across 8,000+ categories. Leveraging this, we propose CustoMDiT, a parameter-efficient framework that adapts a pretrained multimodal Diffusion Transformer into a customized video generator with only 8% additional learnable parameters. Our method surpasses prior state-of-the-art. However, benchmarks such as DreamBooth cover only 100 classes, which is insufficient for real-world applications. To overcome this, we construct OpenCustom, a new benchmark with 1,000+ categories, created via cross-dataset knowledge fusion from ImageNet and MS-COCO. Extensive experiments confirm the advantages of both our dataset and model. We will open-source the entire ecosystem–including dataset, pipeline, benchmark, and implementations–to support further research.

18.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-18

Power Partitions and Hayman Functions

arXiv:2602.18575v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We prove, within the probabilistic framework of Khinchin families, that the generating function $P_k$ of partitions into $k$-th powers is strongly Gaussian in the sense of Báez-Duarte, and even further that it is a Hayman function. Thus the Hardy–Ramanujan asymptotic formula for the number $p_k(n)$ of partitions of $n$ into $k$-th powers which reads \[ p_k(n) \sim \frac{\alpha_k}{n^{(3k+1)/(2k+2)}} \exp\!\Big(\beta_k\, n^{1/(k+1)}\Big), \qquad n\to\infty, \] where $\alpha_k$ and~$\beta_k$ are explicit constants depending only on $k$, follows directly from Hayman's asymptotic formula for strongly Gaussian power series. The proof of strong Gaussianity of $P_k$ combines a Gaussianity criterion for Khinchin families with certain bounds of Tenenbaum, Wu and Li on the generating function; the asymptotic formula is recovered by computing asymptotic approximations of the mean and variance of the associated family. Analogous results are presented for the generating function $Q_k$ of partitions into distinct $k$-th powers.

19.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-18

User as Engram: Internalizing Per-User Memory as Local Parametric Edits

Authors:

arXiv:2606.19172v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Personal memory in a language model is two problems: content and reasoning skill. The brain keeps the two apart (a sparse, local engram in the hippocampus for each episode, a slow neocortex for the shared skills that interpret it), so a new fact need not overwrite everything else. Most personalization today keeps a user's facts outside the weights, in a natural-language memory file or a retrieval index. When facts are written into the model instead, the standard recipe is the per-user LoRA adapter, which does the opposite of the brain, folding content and skill into one global weight delta. Writing a user's facts as a LoRA contaminates text unrelated to them; writing the same facts as local Engram rows leaves it mathematically untouched, resulting in a roughly 33,000x smaller memory footprint. We therefore propose User as Engram: store a user's content as surgical edits to the hash-keyed memory table of an Engram model, and carry the reasoning skill in one shared adapter. This layered design matches per-user LoRA's direct recall while delivering 5.6x higher indirect-reasoning accuracy on average, and never makes a single user worse at reasoning than the untouched base. The edit is a glass box: writing a fact switches on its lookup at exactly the trigger, adds the value the answer needs, leaves every other position unchanged to the last bit, and fails if written into the wrong layer. Because different users' facts land in disjoint hash slots, their edits compose: many users live in one shared table at once, stacking additively and losslessly, where a per-user LoRA, a single global weight delta, admits only one. Upon retrieval, a per-user Engram table does not grow with the population the retriever must search, so past ~100 facts it overtakes a retrieval pipeline on a 2.5x larger model.

20.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-18

TRIDENT: Breaking the Hybrid-Safety-Physics Coupling for Provably Safe Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning

arXiv:2606.18308v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Safe coordination in networked cyber-physical systems forces learning algorithms to simultaneously handle hybrid discrete-continuous actions, hard training-time safety constraints, and physics-governed dynamics. We show that these three features form a directed cycle of biases that defeats any naive composition of off-the-shelf modules, and formalize this as a three-way coupling lemma. We then introduce TRIDENT, the first MARL framework whose three components are co-designed to cancel each leak: a Richardson-Romberg gradient correction reducing Gumbel-Softmax bias from O(tau) to O(tau^2), a Lyapunov-constrained sequential trust-region update enforcing per-iterate feasibility, and a physics-informed residual critic that decomposes value rather than reward. We prove an O~(1/sqrt(K)) convergence rate to a constrained Nash equilibrium and an O(sqrt(K)) cumulative-violation bound. On multi-UAV mobile-edge computing, autonomous intersection management, and a hybrid SMAC variant, TRIDENT cuts training-time violations by 95.5% over MADDPG and 76.3% over MACPO, while improving reward by 13.5% over the strongest unconstrained baseline.

21.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-12

Interference Queueing Networks: A Replica Mean-Field Approach in the Symmetric Setting

arXiv:2606.13264v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We propose a model for evaluating the performance of wireless communication networks beyond the ubiquitous full-buffer assumption, under which every transmitter is always active. The network is represented by N interacting queues arranged on a torus, with homogeneous arrival rate and service rates depending on the activity of neighboring interferers. More precisely, each queue is associated with a transmitter-receiver pair, and its service rate is given by the Shannon capacity, which depends on the corresponding Signal-to-Interference-plus-Noise Ratio (SINR). Since interfering transmitters only emit when their queue is non-empty, the SINR and hence the service rate improves when neighboring queues are empty. We derive the stability region of the system, together with approximations of its stationary distribution and its exponential rate of convergence to stationarity. These approximations are obtained via a replica mean-field limit, for which we establish propagation of chaos and long-time behavior results.

22.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-11

From inverse problems to neural operators: prediction, mechanism, and generalization of data-driven models

Authors:

arXiv:2606.08956v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Scientists have historically relied on mathematical models based on differential equations to relate system inputs – forces, fluxes, or heat sources – to outputs, such as displacement, velocity, concentration, and temperature. These models rely on deep domain knowledge to determine the form of the governing differential equation, which is then calibrated with data by solving an inverse problem. In recent years, the field of Scientific Machine Learning has introduced a variety of alternative modeling strategies for physical systems. A method called Sparse Identification of Nonlinear Dynamics learns the governing equation as a sparse linear combination of terms in a user-defined library. Neural Ordinary Differential Equations construct the governing equation by taking in the state and its derivatives at the input layer of a neural network. Entirely foregoing the modeling framework of differential equations, neural operators directly learn a non-linear mapping between the system inputs and outputs. From inverse problems to neural operators, all of these modeling strategies can be conceptualized as data-driven machinery to predict a system's response over a range of inputs. It is then natural to wonder how exactly these various strategies relate to each other, and whether they can be neatly taxonomized. Drawing from the philosophical literature on scientific models, we argue that many model types have a common structure, differing only in the assumed model class of the input-output relation they define. Connecting to philosophical ideas on mechanism, and arguing that data from physical systems arises from solutions to parsimonious differential equations, we propose that only certain models are capable of mechanism discovery, and thus generalization. Our analysis is intended to unite apparently disparate modeling strategies and provide insight into their appropriate use cases.

23.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-16

Let LLMs Judge Each Other: Multi-Agent Peer-Reviewed Reasoning for Medical Question Answering

Objective: To enhance the accuracy, interpretability, and robustness of large language models (LLMs) in medical question answering (MedQA). Method: We designed a multi-agent peer-reviewed reasoning method in which multiple LLM agents independently generate chain-of-thought reasoning with candidate answers, then act as peer reviewers to evaluate each other's reasoning for factual correctness and logical soundness. The highest-rated reasoning chain is selected to produce the final answer. Experiments were conducted with five state-of-the-art LLMs (Llama-3.1-8B, Qwen2.5-7B, Phi-4, DeepSeek-LLM-7B, GPT-oss-20B) on three benchmark datasets: HeadQA, MedQA-USMLE, and PubMedQA. Performance was compared against single-model chain-of-thought reasoning and chain-of-thought-based majority voting. Results: Peer-reviewed reasoning consistently outperformed both baselines. The best model combination achieved an average accuracy of 0.820 across datasets, exceeding the strongest single model (0.777) and majority voting ensembles (up to 0.789). The method also scaled effectively with more participating models, while peer assessments reliably distinguished high- from low-quality reasoning chains. Conclusion: The proposed multi-agent peer-reviewed reasoning method enables LLMs to act as both solvers and evaluators, yielding superior performance in MedQA. By emphasizing reasoning quality rather than answer agreement alone, this approach improves accuracy, interpretability, and robustness, offering a promising direction for trustworthy biomedical AI systems.

24.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-15

Distributional Biases in Post-Training: A Markovian Analysis of Reasoning Trajectories

arXiv:2511.07368v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Foundation models exhibit broad knowledge but limited task-specific reasoning, motivating post-training strategies such as RL with verifiable rewards (RLVR) and test-time scaling (TTS). While recent work highlights the role of exploration in improving pass@K, empirical evidence points to a paradox: RLVR and ORM/PRM typically reinforce existing paths rather than expanding the reasoning scope, raising the question of why exploration helps if no new patterns emerge. To reconcile this paradox, we adopt the perspective of Kim et al. (2025), viewing easy (e.g., simplifying a fraction) versus hard (e.g., discovering the some symmetry) reasoning steps as low versus high probability Markov transitions. In this tractable model, pretraining corresponds to tree-graph discovering, while post-training corresponds to CoT reweighting. We provably show that, both RLVR and ORM/PRM would favor heavily to several high-probability paths, and thereby forget rare-but-crucial CoTs. Building on this, we further prove that exploration strategies such as rejecting easy instances and KL regularization help preserve rare CoTs. Empirical simulations corroborate our theoretical results.

25.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-16

Communication-Efficient Neural Tangent Kernels for Heterogeneous Decentralized Federated Learning

Authors:

arXiv:2512.12737v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Decentralized federated learning (DFL) enables collaborative model training without a central server, but converges slowly under statistical heterogeneity. Recent work has shown that neural tangent kernel (NTK) methods achieve faster convergence than gradient-based updates in DFL, while momentum has proven effective for accelerating gradient-based FL. However, applying momentum to NTK updates can destabilize training under heterogeneous data. We propose SPARK, which addresses this instability with a stage-wise annealed soft-label regularizer evaluated on neighborhood-aggregated data, so that momentum can accelerate NTK updates stably. Under high heterogeneity, SPARK converges about 3$\times$ faster than baselines and lowers the total communication to a target accuracy by up to about 70\%, and it attains higher accuracy across heterogeneity levels. We further study random projection as an optional Jacobian-compression strategy for bandwidth-constrained settings. We validate the approach across multiple datasets, network topologies, and heterogeneity levels.