A Bifurcation Theory Framework for Gradient Descent on the Edge of Stability

Abstract:The Edge of Stability (EoS) phenomenon, where gradient descent operates with sharpness exceeding the classical convergence threshold yet the loss decreases over long timescales, is ubiquitous in modern deep learning but remains poorly understood in realistic settings. Prior rigorous analyses have been largely confined to scalar or low-dimensional losses with specific structural forms. In this work, we develop a bifurcation theory framework for gradient descent on the edge of stability that applies directly to overparameterized neural networks. By decomposing the training dynamics into components normal and tangent to the manifold of minimizers, we show that stable EoS training arises from a flip bifurcation in the normal direction, governed by the sign of the first Lyapunov coefficient, while the tangent dynamics drift toward regions of decreasing sharpness. Under mild spectral and geometric assumptions on the loss landscape, we prove convergence to the minimizing manifold when training at the EoS threshold. As a corollary, we recover and unify prior results: we show that the product-stability condition of Gan (2026) is an instance of our framework.

Machine Learning (cs.LG)

arXiv:2606.15551 [cs.LG]

(or arXiv:2606.15551v1 [cs.LG] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2606.15551 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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