Port-Hamiltonian Architectural Bias for Long-Range Propagation in Deep Graph Networks
Published in International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), 2025
The dynamics of information diffusion within graphs is a critical open issue that heavily influences graph representation learning, especially when considering long-range propagation. This calls for principled approaches that control and regulate the degree of propagation and dissipation of information throughout the neural flow. Motivated by this, we introduce port-Hamiltonian Deep Graph Networks, a novel framework that models neural information flow in graphs by building on the laws of conservation of Hamiltonian dynamical systems. We reconcile under a single theoretical and practical framework both non-dissipative long-range propagation and non-conservative behaviors, introducing tools from mechanical systems to gauge the equilibrium between the two components. Our approach can be applied to general message-passing architectures, and it provides theoretical guarantees on information conservation in time. Empirical results prove the effectiveness of our port-Hamiltonian scheme in pushing simple graph convolutional architectures to state-of-the-art performance in long-range benchmarks.
Recommended citation: Heilig S.*, Gravina A.*, Trenta A., Gallicchio C., Bacciu D., (2025). "Port-Hamiltonian Architectural Bias for Long-Range Propagation in Deep Graph Networks." International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR).
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