# Potential Field Based Deep Metric Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.18560 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.18560/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 40 of its 70 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 May 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 40)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [Emerging Properties in Self-Supervised Vision Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14294/) (2021)
- [Going Deeper with Convolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.4842/) (2014)
- [Prototypical Networks for Few-shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.05175/) (2017)
- [FaceNet: A Unified Embedding for Face Recognition and Clustering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03832/) (2015)
- [Learning to Compare: Relation Network for Few-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.06025/) (2017)
- [CosFace: Large Margin Cosine Loss for Deep Face Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.09414/) (2018)
- [SphereFace: Deep Hypersphere Embedding for Face Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.08063/) (2017)
- [Deep Metric Learning via Lifted Structured Feature Embedding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.06452/) (2015)
- [Circle Loss: A Unified Perspective of Pair Similarity Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.10857/) (2020)
- [Multi-Similarity Loss with General Pair Weighting for Deep Metric Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.06627/) (2019)
- [A Metric Learning Reality Check](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.08505/) (2020)
- [Sampling Matters in Deep Embedding Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.07567/) (2017)
- [No Fuss Distance Metric Learning using Proxies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.07464/) (2017)
- [Proxy Anchor Loss for Deep Metric Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.13911/) (2020)
- [Joint Detection and Identification Feature Learning for Person Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.01850/) (2016)
- [Beyond triplet loss: a deep quadruplet network for person re-identification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.01719/) (2017)
- [SoftTriple Loss: Deep Metric Learning Without Triplet Sampling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.05235/) (2019)
- [Deep Metric Learning with Hierarchical Triplet Loss](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.06951/) (2018)
- [Hyperbolic Vision Transformers: Combining Improvements in Metric Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.10833/) (2022)
- [ProxyNCA++: Revisiting and Revitalizing Proxy Neighborhood Component Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.01113/) (2020)
- [Revisiting Training Strategies and Generalization Performance in Deep Metric Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.08473/) (2020)
- [Smart Mining for Deep Metric Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.01285/) (2017)
- [Rethinking Zero-shot Video Classification: End-to-end Training for Realistic Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.01455/) (2020)
- [Improved Embeddings with Easy Positive Triplet Mining](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.04370/) (2019)
- [Deep Metric Learning for Open World Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.04562/) (2021)
- [Hard-Aware Deeply Cascaded Embedding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.05720/) (2016)
- [DiVA: Diverse Visual Feature Aggregation for Deep Metric Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.13458/) (2020)
- [Fewer is More: A Deep Graph Metric Learning Perspective Using Fewer Proxies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.13636/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Beyond Seen Bounds: Class-Centric Polarization for Single-Domain Generalized Deep Metric Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.09121/) (2026)
- [BLENDER: Blended Text Embeddings and Diffusion Residuals for Intra-Class Image Synthesis in Deep Metric Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.20246/) (2026)
- [Beyond Scalar Distances: Semantic Attribute Gradients from Frozen MLLMs for Visual Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.15134/) (2026)
- [CouCE: A Unified Causal Framework for Debiased Deep Metric Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.30365/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Deep metric learning (DML) involves training a network to learn a semantically meaningful representation space. Many current approaches mine n-tuples of examples and model interactions within each tuplets. We present a novel, compositional DML model that instead of in tuples, represents the influence of each example (embedding) by a continuous potential field, and superposes the fields to obtain their combined global potential field. We use attractive/repulsive potential fields to represent interactions among embeddings from images of the same/different classes. Contrary to typical learning methods, where mutual influence of samples is proportional to their distance, we enforce reduction in such influence with distance, leading to a decaying field. We show that such decay helps improve performance on real world datasets with large intra-class variations and label noise. Like other proxy-based methods, we also use proxies to succinctly represent sub-populations of examples. We evaluate our method on three standard DML benchmarks- Cars-196, CUB-200-2011, and SOP datasets where it outperforms state-of-the-art baselines.