I-BBS: Coordinate-Free Inference of Latent Sub-Manifolds Using Random Distance Matrix Theory

Observable Matrix Dynamics (OMD) is a diagnostic framework that probes the dynamics of high-dimensional internal representations of inputs by a neural network via a fixed-size $N \times N$ distance matrix $M(t)$ on a held set of $N$ inputs. OMD uses methods of random matrix theory and particle dynamics to explore spectral reorganisations that are missed by scalar loss functions, but are informative of the training process. We read $M(t)$ against a perturbative ambient-versus-latent decomposition extending the Bogomolny--Bohigas--Schmit (BBS) theory of random distance matrices, with per-snapshot diagnostics for the top-of-spectrum band structure and ambient noise, trajectory-level observables linking snapshots, and a 3D MDS embedding (bottom-three eigenvectors) rendering training as a moving particle cloud. Across seven experiments, diffusive regimes lack stable top-of-spectrum band structure, while sharp endogenous or externally driven reorganisations produce stable fingerprints: consistent with smooth or product latent geometries in BBS-adjacent cases, and with finite-cluster or Fourier-soliton structures otherwise. OMD thus reads the geometric regime of a representation rather than reporting a single intrinsic dimension.

We study the problem of recovering a globally consistent Euclidean embedding of data, given only a local distance graph and propose a method that optimally represents these distances. The method operates solely on a neighborhood graph weighted by pairwise distances, without requiring any prior vector representation of the data. The embedding is obtained by solving a variational problem that matches local, on-graph distances to the Euclidean metric, induced by the differentials of the embedding functions. The resulting Euler-Lagrange equations are derived in a coordinate-free form, enabling direct evaluation of all operators from the distance graph alone. Though non-linear and missing an explicit expression for their non-linearity, these equations are shown to be resolved as an iteratively updated sparse linear problem. The main contributions of the proposed approach are (a) the derivation of the functional equations governing the optimal Euclidean embedding in the continuum, (b) a representation-free formulation that requires only a neighborhood distance graph and no feature vectors and (c) an estimation procedure based exclusively on local graph operations. We experimentally evaluate the resulting non-parametric algorithm on synthetic manifolds and real datasets, demonstrating consistent preservation of local metric structure and neighboring relations, while approximating the global isometric embedding.

We introduce Intrinsic Green's Learning (IGL), a framework that models a target function on a manifold as the solution to a linear PDE whose source term is learned from data. Rather than approximating the target directly, IGL learns a source and integrates it against a Green's kernel. An encoder discovers a low-dimensional coordinate chart on the manifold where both the source and the kernel decompose as low-rank tensors, collapsing a high-dimensional integral into independent one-dimensional integrals with cost linear in the intrinsic dimension. A two-stage algorithm separates coordinate discovery from source fitting, a near-convex linear solve, preventing the dimensional collapse of joint training. Learnable gates on each coordinate automatically discover the intrinsic dimension of the manifold. We validate IGL on synthetic manifolds and on MNIST, where it simultaneously achieves near-optimal classification and automatic recovery of the intrinsic dimension.