mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Dynamical Systems Theory Behind a Hierarchical Reasoning Model

arXiv 2603.22871 ↗First posted 24 Mar 2026cs.AI cs.LG math.DScited by 1

On the map: LLM reasoning → Test-time compute and efficient thinking

Abstract (arXiv)

Current large language models (LLMs) primarily rely on linear sequence generation and massive parameter counts, yet they severely struggle with complex algorithmic reasoning. While recent reasoning architectures, such as the Hierarchical Reasoning Model (HRM) and Tiny Recursive Model (TRM), demonstrate that compact recursive networks can tackle these tasks, their training dynamics often lack rigorous mathematical guarantees, leading to instability and representational collapse. We propose the Contraction Mapping Model (CMM), a novel architecture that reformulates discrete recursive reasoning into continuous Neural Ordinary and Stochastic Differential Equations (NODEs/NSDEs). By explicitly enforcing the convergence of the latent phase point to a stable equilibrium state and mitigating feature collapse with a hyperspherical repulsion loss, the CMM provides a mathematically grounded and highly stable reasoning engine. On the Sudoku-Extreme benchmark, a 5M-parameter CMM achieves a state-of-the-art accuracy of 93.7 %, outperforming the 27M-parameter HRM (55.0 %) and 5M-parameter TRM (87.4 %). Remarkably, even when aggressively compressed to an ultra-tiny footprint of just 0.26M parameters, the CMM retains robust predictive power, achieving 85.4 % on Sudoku-Extreme and 82.2 % on the Maze benchmark. These results establish a new frontier for extreme parameter efficiency, proving that mathematically rigorous latent dynamics can effectively replace brute-force scaling in artificial reasoning.

Key facts. Cited by 1 paper in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Test-time compute and efficient thinking, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 20 of its 31 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 24 Mar 2026.

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20 of 31 references.

Closest ancestors · 1

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025Hierarchical Reasoning Model26 Jun

Other references · 19

  1. 2019PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Librarycited by 20,160
  2. 2022Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 12,302
  3. 2018Neural Ordinary Differential Equationscited by 3,733
  4. 2021MLP-Mixer: An all-MLP Architecture for Visioncited by 1,441
  5. 2016Training Deep Nets with Sublinear Memory Costcited by 825
  6. 2017GradNorm: Gradient Normalization for Adaptive Loss Balancing in Deep Multitask Networkscited by 816
  7. 2019Neural SDE: Stabilizing Neural ODE Networks with Stochastic Noisecited by 98
  8. 2016Memory-Efficient Backpropagation Through Timecited by 78
  9. 2021Stabilizing Equilibrium Models by Jacobian Regularizationcited by 71
  10. 2024Scaling Exponents Across Parameterizations and Optimizerscited by 71
  11. 2022A Logic for Expressing Log-Precision Transformerscited by 67
  12. 2022Deep Equilibrium Optical Flow Estimationcited by 63
7 more
  1. 2025Emergent Hierarchical Reasoning in LLMs through Reinforcement Learningcited by 42
  2. 2025Grokking at the Edge of Numerical Stabilitycited by 41
  3. 2021SHINE: SHaring the INverse Estimate from the forward pass for bi-level optimization and implicit modelscited by 26
  4. 2024Transformers in Uniform TC0cited by 25
  5. 2025Hierarchical Reasoning Models: Perspectives and Misconceptionscited by 13
  6. 2025Neural SDEs as a Unified Approach to Continuous-Domain Sequence Modelingcited by 6
  7. 2024Are Two Hidden Layers Still Enough for the Physics-Informed Neural Networks?cited by 3

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Citing papers per year: 2026: 1.

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  1. 2026What Limits Recursive Reasoning Models: Optimization, Architecture and Test-Time Scaling
  2. 2026Form Follows Function: Recursive Stem Model
  3. 2026Generative Recursive Reasoning
  4. 2026Boosting Inference with Guided Reasoning: Stochastic Exploration for Recursive Models
  5. 2025Less is More: Recursive Reasoning with Tiny Networks
  6. 2026Recursive Vision Language Models for General Symbolic Reasoning
  7. 2026Stabilizing Recurrent Dynamics for Test-Time Scalable Latent Reasoning in Looped Language Models
  8. 2025Modeling Hierarchical Thinking in Large Reasoning Models