Energy-Based Models

Ask about this topic

Overview

Energy-based models represent how compatible a data point or configuration is with a task: lower energy generally means greater plausibility, without requiring probabilities to be normalized explicitly. They are trained with methods such as contrastive divergence, noise-contrastive estimation, and score or energy matching, then used for inference and generation with Langevin MCMC, tempering, or diffusion and flow-based samplers. Work spans Boltzmann machines and Hopfield networks as well as image and molecule generation, structured prediction, robotics, and scientific modeling. A central challenge is making sampling and training efficient and reliable; in particular, equilibrium guarantees may not reflect finite-time outputs, and lower energy does not always mean better predictions or reasoning.

Latest papers

CardsList

91 papers9 papers in the last four weeks, up 125% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. Energy Generative Modeling: A Lyapunov-based Energy Matching Perspective

    May 7, 2026Yixuan Wang, Wenqian Xue, Warren E. DixonEnergy-Based Models

    Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering University of Florida

  2. Flow Sampling: Learning to Sample from Unnormalized Densities via Denoising Conditional Processes

    May 5, 2026Aaron Havens, Brian Karrer, Neta ShaulSampling from Unnormalized DistributionsDiffusion Sampling

    FAIR at Meta · Weizmann Institute of Science

  3. Learning Multimodal Energy-Based Model with Multimodal Variational Auto-Encoder via MCMC Revision

    May 1, 2026Jiali Cui, Zhiqiang Lao, Heather YuVariational AutoencodersMarkov Chain Monte Carlo

    Basking Ridge, New Jersey, USA Futurewei Technologies Inc · Basking Ridge, New Jersey, USA2026 Futurewei Technologies Inc

  4. Energy-Based Constraint Networks: Learning Structural Coherence Across Modalities

    May 1, 2026Chirag ShindeEnergy-Based ModelsAnomaly Detection

    Independent Researcher

  5. Recovering Hidden Reward in Diffusion-Based Policies

    May 1, 2026Yanbiao Ji, Qiuchang Li, Yuting Hu +7Reinforcement LearningDiffusion Policy

    Shanghai Jiao Tong University · KOKONI 3D

  6. ESIA: An Energy-Based Spatiotemporal Interaction-Aware Framework for Pedestrian Intention Prediction

    Apr 26, 2026Yanping Wu, Meiting Dang, Lin Wu +3Pedestrian Intention PredictionPedestrian Behavior Modeling

    James Watt School of Engineering, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, G12 8QQ, United Kingdom · School of Computing Science, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, G12 8QQ, United Kingdom

  7. Energy-Based Open-Set Active Learning for Object Classification

    Apr 22, 2026Zongyao Lyu, William J. BeksiActive LearningOpen-Set Recognition

    The University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington TX 76019, USA

  8. StrEBM: A Structured Latent Energy-Based Model for Blind Source Separation

    Apr 19, 2026Yuan-Hao WeiDisentangled Representation LearningLatent Variable Models

  9. Energy-based Tissue Manifolds for Longitudinal Multiparametric MRI Analysis

    Apr 8, 2026Kartikay Tehlan, Lukas Förner, Sina Wendrich +5Longitudinal Medical Image AnalysisMagnetic Resonance Imaging

    Dept. of diagnostic and interventional Radiology and Neuroradiology, University Hospital Augsburg, Germany · Digital Medicine, University Hospital Augsburg, Germany · Chair for Computer Aided Medical Procedures and Augmented Reality, Technical University of Munich, Germany +3

  10. Energy-Based Dynamical Models for Neurocomputation, Learning, and Optimization

    Apr 6, 2026Arthur N. Montanari, Francesco Bullo, Dmitry Krotov +1Energy-Based ModelsNeural Network Optimization

    Center for Network Dynamics and the Department of Physics & Astronomy, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA · Center for Control, Dynamical Systems, and Computation and the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California at Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA · Independent Researcher, Cambridge, MA 02141, USA +1

  11. SCALE: Semantic- and Confidence-Aware Conditional Variational Autoencoder for Zero-shot Skeleton-based Action Recognition

    Apr 2, 2026Soroush Oraki, Feng Ding, Jie LiangSkeleton-Based Action RecognitionZero-Shot Action Recognition

    School of Engineering Science, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada · School of Information Science and Technology, Eastern Institute of Technology, Ningbo, China

  12. Hybrid Energy-Based Models for Physical AI: Provably Stable Identification of Port-Hamiltonian Dynamics

    Mar 31, 2026Simone Betteti, Luca LaurentiEnergy-Based ModelsDynamical Systems

    RIAS Lab, The Italian Institute of Artificial Intelligence for Industry, Turin, 10129, IT · Delft Center for Systems and Control, TU Delft, Delft, 2600 AA, The Netherlands

  13. Reasoning as Energy Minimization over Structured Latent Trajectories

    Mar 30, 2026David K. JohanssonLatent-Space PlanningContinuous Latent Reasoning

    Polished Snow Inc.

  14. Graph Energy Matching: Transport-Aligned Energy-Based Modeling for Graph Generation

    Mar 24, 2026Michal Balcerak, Suprosanna Shit, Chinmay Prabhakar +4Generative ModelingEnergy-Based Models

    University of Zurich · Harvard University · Kempner Institute

  15. State Algebra for Probabilistic Logic

    Mar 13, 2026Dmitry Lesnik, Tobias SchäferProbabilistic LogicMarkov Random Fields

    Stratyfy Inc., New York, NY, USA · Department of Mathematics, College of Staten Island, Staten Island, NY, USA & Physics Program, CUNY Graduate Center, NY, USA

  16. EB-RANSAC: Random Sample Consensus based on Energy-Based Model

    Mar 12, 2026Muneki Yasuda, Nao Watanabe, Kaiji SekimotoRobust EstimationRobust Statistics

    Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Yamagata University · TSCSK Corporation

  17. EnergyAction: Unimanual to Bimanual Composition with Energy-Based Models

    Mar 9, 2026Mingchen Song, Xiang Deng, Jie Wei +3Bimanual Robotic ManipulationPolicy Learning

    Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen) · PengCheng Laboratory · Shenzhen Loop Area Institute

  18. Stochastic Attention via Langevin Dynamics on the Modern Hopfield Energy

    Mar 6, 2026Abdulrahman Alswaidan, Jeffrey D. VarnerHopfield NetworksEnergy-Based Models

    R.F. Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14850

  19. Graph Hopfield Networks: Energy-Based Node Classification with Associative Memory

    Mar 3, 2026Abinav Rao, Alex Wa, Rishi AthavaleNode ClassificationHopfield Networks

  20. Thermodynamic Regulation of Finite-Time Gibbs Training in Energy-Based Models: A Restricted Boltzmann Machine Study

    Mar 3, 2026Görkem Can SüleymanoğluRestricted Boltzmann MachinesEnergy-Based Models

    Owner and Software Developer, Kuanka Publishing LLC, Turkey. · Ph.D. Student in Economics, Selçuk University, Institute of Social Sciences, Turkey.

  21. GeoWorld: Geometric World Models

    Feb 26, 2026Zeyu Zhang, Danning Li, Ian Reid +1World Model LearningWorld Models

    ANU · MBZUAI

  22. Kaiwu-PyTorch-Plugin: Bridging Deep Learning and Photonic Quantum Computing for Energy-Based Models and Active Sample Selection

    Feb 22, 2026Hongdong Zhu, Qi Gao, Yin Ma +6Hybrid Quantum-Classical MLQuantum Machine Learning

    Beijing QBoson Quantum Technology Co., Ltd. · Chinese Academy of Sciences

  23. Spilled Energy in Large Language Models

    Feb 21, 2026Adrian Robert Minut, Hazem Dewidar, Iacopo MasiLLM ReliabilityLLM Hallucination Detection

    Sapienza University of Rome, Italy · OmnAI Lab GLADIA

  24. An Energy-Based Mechanism for Compositional Behavior

    Dec 4, 2025Francesca Rossi, Veronica Centorrino, Francesco Bullo +1Energy-Based Models

    Scuola Superiore Meridionale, Italy. · ETH, Zürich. · Center for Control, Dynamical Systems, and Computation, UC Santa Barbara, CA, USA. +1

  25. Training Energy-Based Models with Non-MCMC Samplers and Efficient Temperature Estimation

    Dec 2, 2025Kentaro Kubo, Hayato GotoBoltzmann SamplingEnergy-Based Models

    Corporate Laboratory, Toshiba Corporation, Kawasaki, Kanagawa 212-8582, Japan · RIKEN Center for Quantum Computing (RQC), Wako, Saitama 351-0198, Japan

  26. Learning Latent Energy-Based Models via Interacting Particle Langevin Dynamics

    Oct 14, 2025Joanna Marks, Tim Y. J. Wang, O. Deniz AkyildizParameter EstimationLatent Variable Models

    Department of Mathematics, Imperial College London

  27. Uniform-in-time convergence bounds for Persistent Contrastive Divergence algorithms

    Oct 2, 2025Paul Felix Valsecchi Oliva, O. Deniz Akyildiz, Andrew DuncanParameter EstimationStochastic Approximation

    Department of Mathematics, Imperial College London

  28. CoCre-Sam (Kokkuri-san): Modeling Ouija Board as Collective Langevin Dynamics Sampling from Fused Language Models

    Jul 16, 2025Tadahiro Taniguchi, Masatoshi Nagano, Haruumi Omoto +1Emergent CommunicationLarge Language Model-Based Social Simulation

    Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University, Japan · Ritsumeikan University, Japan · University of Reading, UK

  29. Neural Langevin Machine: a local asymmetric learning rule can be creative

    Jun 30, 2025Zhendong Yu, Weizhong Huang, Haiping HuangNeural Network GeneralizationImage Generation

    PMI Lab, School of Physics, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, People’s Republic of China · Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Magnetoelectric Physics and Devices, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, People’s Republic of China

  30. Score-Based Training for Energy-Based TTS Models

    May 19, 2025Wanli Sun, Anton RagniEnergy-Based ModelsScore Matching

    School of Computer Science, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK