Invariant polynomials and machine learning

Abstract

We present an application of invariant polynomials in machine learning. Using the methods developed in previous work, we obtain two types of generators of the Lorentz- and permutation-invariant polynomials in particle momenta; minimal algebra generators and Hironaka decompositions. We discuss and prove some approximation theorems to make use of these invariant generators in machine learning algorithms in general and in neural networks specifically. By implementing these generators in neural networks applied to regression tasks, we test the improvements in performance under a wide range of hyperparameter choices and find a reduction of the loss on training data and a significant reduction of the loss on validation data. For a different approach on quantifying the performance of these neural networks, we treat the problem from a Bayesian inference perspective and employ nested sampling techniques to perform model comparison. Beyond a certain network size, we find that networks utilising Hironaka decompositions perform the best.