Deep neural networks on manifold-valued representations have attracted growing interest, but many basic components remain tied to specific manifolds, rely on Euclidean approximations, or require costly and numerically fragile geometric operations. This thesis develops a unified framework for Riemannian deep learning from three complementary perspectives: reusable neural modules, manifold-specific network architectures, and the design of underlying geometries. It generalizes batch normalization from Euclidean spaces and individual manifolds to broad classes of Lie groups and gyrogroups, and extends multinomial logistic regression from Euclidean space to SPD manifolds and then to general Riemannian manifolds. It further develops neural networks for several important geometric representations, including an unconstrained model of hyperbolic space, Busemann-based hyperbolic learning, and full-rank correlation matrices. Finally, it introduces adaptive and computationally efficient Riemannian metrics on SPD manifolds, including learnable Log-Euclidean geometries and fast, stable Cholesky-based geometries. The proposed methods are supported by theoretical analysis and validated through numerical experiments and applications in vision, signal processing, graph learning, and genomics.
Deep learning algorithms have become widely used and successful across a wide range of tasks. A key challenge is determining whether these algorithms truly capture the intrinsic geometry of their training data in order to better understand what they learn from data. In this theoretical work, we explore a new geometric structure defined on the data space by a trained neural network through the Data Information Matrix (DIM), a variation of the Fisher Information Matrix. This new geometric structure is a foliation and the main focus of this work is to explore the non-smooth case of ReLU activation functions, where traditional geometric tools often fail. The foliation is defined through a distribution spanned by the columns of the DIM. We first prove that this distribution is non-smooth in the sense of distributions, rendering the existence of an associated foliation much more complex. To circumvent this issue, we introduce a smoothed version of this distribution that differs from the original only on a set of measure zero. Finally, we prove that this smoothed distribution induces a singular foliation on the data space, which is based on the data the network has been trained with. Our theoretical contributions provide a geometric framework to better understand how neural networks organize their input space in non-smooth settings, bridging differential geometry and deep learning theory.
We study landscapes for complex-parameterized networks. Our approach is motivated with an information-theoretic manifold perspective of the parameter and via classical optimization guarantees although of complex geometric variety such as through Dolbeault asymptotics. The descent path admits a Kähler information metric under a cross-entropy via the Wirtinger Hessian on the log-likelihood potential. We restrict attention to a descent update rule with natural gradient descent via a differentiated loss scaled by the inverse metric, so the descent path remains in the holomorphic tangent bundle. We emphasize Calabi-Yau information manifolds which profane theoretical guarantees via an ill-curvature-conditioned, or lack thereof, landscape. We focus on Calabi-Yau metrics specifically in a non-compact setting with a global potential, so defined geometrically rather than invoking the topological requirements of the Calabi conjecture. In non-compact settings, we can write the metric determinant with respect to a background in terms of a function, pluriharmonic or real. Using Yau's Liouville theorem, we get a partial eigenvalue blow-up effect. In an empirical setting, a Ricci-flat metric will not form, but a blow-up can be a local condition and can hold empirically on open sets even partially in generalized Kähler cases due to lower bounds on the Ricci potential. Moreover, it has been discovered that negative curvature subverts the loss landscape, specifically sectional curvature, so we expand on this and draw interconnections to negative-definite Ricci curvature. Our arguments primarily exist via geometric modality, although we establish roots in deep learning theory such as through asymptotics at initialization and connections through failure modes of neural network guarantees under vanishing and negative Ricci curvature.