Deep learning and the renormalization group

Renormalization group (RG) methods, which model the way in which the effective behavior of a system depends on the scale at which it is observed, are key to modern condensed-matter theory and particle physics. We compare the ideas behind the RG on the one hand and deep machine learning on the other, where depth and scale play a similar role. In order to illustrate this connection, we review a recent numerical method based on the RG---the multiscale entanglement renormalization ansatz (MERA)---and show how it can be converted into a learning algorithm based on a generative hierarchical Bayesian network model. Under the assumption---common in physics---that the distribution to be learned is fully characterized by local correlations, this algorithm involves only explicit evaluation of probabilities, hence doing away with sampling.

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