mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Move on Muon : A Hamiltonian probability gradient flow perspective of Muon optimizer

arXiv 2605.23871 ↗First posted 22 May 2026stat.ML cs.LG math.STcited by 3

Not on the map. Why?

Abstract (arXiv)

We develop a gradient flow on the space of probability measures defined on matrix-valued parameters induced by regularized Muon, an analytically smoothed version of the idealized Muon optimizer. The key observation is that the regularized orthogonalization map is the gradient of a smooth Fenchel-dual smoothing of the nuclear norm. This identifies the (regularized) Muon update as a mirror/prox step in the update variable, with momentum acting as the dual coordinate. We use this structure to lift Muon from a single matrix parameter to finite-particle probability objectives of the form J(ρ)=Rleft(int F d ρright), a setting motivated by mean-field descriptions of neural-network training, and derive the inertial continuous-time limit. Using this structure, we derive the finite-particle continuous-time limit under the inertial scaling of step size and momentum, and then pass to a phase-space mean-field equation over probability laws on parameter-momentum pairs. The resulting flow can be shown to be a damped Hamiltonian probability dynamics whose kinetic energy is induced by the regularized Muon mirror potential. We prove an exact Hamiltonian dissipation identity, showing that the Hamiltonian energy decreases monotonically. While the target objective itself need not be monotone along the inertial Muon dynamics, under additional gradient-dominance, bounded-momentum, and curvature/alignment assumptions, we obtain continuous and discrete-time exponential convergence rates for the objective gap. We also study the well-posedness of the mean-field limit equation and establish propagation of chaos guarantees for the interacting particle system. Finally, we extend the formulation to Hilbert-valued feature maps on product matrix spaces, yielding a blockwise Muon probability flow applicable to smooth transformer mixture-of-experts models.

Key facts. Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). First posted on arXiv 22 May 2026.

Builds on

0 of 0 references.

No references here yet.

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 3.

3 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026Muon2: Boosting Muon via Adaptive Second-Moment Preconditioning
  2. 2026An Isotropy-Preserving Spectral Cap for Muon: Theory and Three Case Studies
  3. 2026Orthogonal Witness Control for Muon Optimization via Sigmoid Spectral Reshaping
  4. 2026How Much Orthogonalization Does Muon Need?
  5. 2026Scaling Muon for Diffusion Transformers
  6. 2025Muon is Scalable for LLM Training
  7. 2026Muon-C: Operator-Aligned Muon for Convolutional Kernels
  8. 2025Muon: Training and Trade-offs with Latent Attention and MoE