cs.LGMay 9, 2026

Spherical Boltzmann machines: a solvable theory of learning and generation in energy-based models

Authors: Thomas TulinskiSimona CoccoRémi MonassonJorge Fernandez-De-Cossio-Diaz

Organizations: Laboratoire de Physique de l’École Normale Supérieure, PSL, CNRS UMR8023, Sorbonne Université, 24 rue Lhomond, 75005 Paris, France · Institut de Physique Théorique, Université Paris-Saclay,2026 CNRS UMR3681, CEA, Gif-sur-Yvette, France

Abstract

Energy-based models (EBMs) are flexible generative architectures inspired by statistical physics, but their learning and generative properties remain poorly understood. Here, we analyze a solvable EBM in the high-dimensional limit: the spherical Boltzmann machine (SBM). Combining tools from random matrix theory and dynamical mean-field theory, we: solve exact equations describing the training dynamics of the SBM; compute the Bayesian evidence, which acts as a partition function in parameter space and encodes global properties of the trained model; and uncover cascades of phase transitions that occur both during training and as a function of hyperparameters, related to successive alignment and condensation of the top modes of the coupling matrix to the data. We connect these transitions to sampling-time generative phenomena in a teacher-student scenario, including: sampling temperature tuning, double descent as a function of regularization strength, tempered posterior effects, and out-of-equilibrium effects during training that induce biases in the trained model. We provide numerical evidence demonstrating that all these phenomena appear in standard generative architectures, beyond the SBM.

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