Stochastic Lifting for Generating Trajectories of Stochastic Physical Systems

Jules Berman, Tobias Blickhan, Benjamin Peherstorfer
Proceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Machine Learning, PMLR 306:7657-7682, 2026.

Abstract

Many stochastic physical systems evolve smoothly over time in the sense that the distribution of states changes regularly with time. The precise transition from current to next state is often modeled as the interplay of a smooth map and an explicit source of randomness. Stochastic Lifting leverages this premise by attaching an independent, high-dimensional random label to each state transition in the training data and fitting a transition map from the current state and label to the next state using a standard regression loss. The labels act as auxiliary coordinates that let the model represent multiple plausible outcomes for similar current states, avoiding collapse to a mean prediction in the finite-sample size regime. At inference, drawing fresh labels and rolling the map forward generates diverse trajectories with a single network evaluation per time step, with the smoothness bias of the learned map supporting accurate sampling in practice.

Cite this Paper


BibTeX
@InProceedings{pmlr-v306-berman26b, title = {Stochastic Lifting for Generating Trajectories of Stochastic Physical Systems}, author = {Berman, Jules and Blickhan, Tobias and Peherstorfer, Benjamin}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Machine Learning}, pages = {7657--7682}, year = {2026}, editor = {Zhang, Tong and Dudik, Miroslav and Jaggi, Martin and Agarwal, Alekh and Li, Sharon and Schuurmans, Dale and Zhu, Jerry and Berkenkamp, Felix and Dong, Hanze and Bietti, Alberto}, volume = {306}, series = {Proceedings of Machine Learning Research}, month = {06--11 Jul}, publisher = {PMLR}, pdf = {https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mlresearch/v306/main/assets/berman26b/berman26b.pdf}, url = {https://proceedings.mlr.press/v306/berman26b.html}, abstract = {Many stochastic physical systems evolve smoothly over time in the sense that the distribution of states changes regularly with time. The precise transition from current to next state is often modeled as the interplay of a smooth map and an explicit source of randomness. Stochastic Lifting leverages this premise by attaching an independent, high-dimensional random label to each state transition in the training data and fitting a transition map from the current state and label to the next state using a standard regression loss. The labels act as auxiliary coordinates that let the model represent multiple plausible outcomes for similar current states, avoiding collapse to a mean prediction in the finite-sample size regime. At inference, drawing fresh labels and rolling the map forward generates diverse trajectories with a single network evaluation per time step, with the smoothness bias of the learned map supporting accurate sampling in practice.} }
Endnote
%0 Conference Paper %T Stochastic Lifting for Generating Trajectories of Stochastic Physical Systems %A Jules Berman %A Tobias Blickhan %A Benjamin Peherstorfer %B Proceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Machine Learning %C Proceedings of Machine Learning Research %D 2026 %E Tong Zhang %E Miroslav Dudik %E Martin Jaggi %E Alekh Agarwal %E Sharon Li %E Dale Schuurmans %E Jerry Zhu %E Felix Berkenkamp %E Hanze Dong %E Alberto Bietti %F pmlr-v306-berman26b %I PMLR %P 7657--7682 %U https://proceedings.mlr.press/v306/berman26b.html %V 306 %X Many stochastic physical systems evolve smoothly over time in the sense that the distribution of states changes regularly with time. The precise transition from current to next state is often modeled as the interplay of a smooth map and an explicit source of randomness. Stochastic Lifting leverages this premise by attaching an independent, high-dimensional random label to each state transition in the training data and fitting a transition map from the current state and label to the next state using a standard regression loss. The labels act as auxiliary coordinates that let the model represent multiple plausible outcomes for similar current states, avoiding collapse to a mean prediction in the finite-sample size regime. At inference, drawing fresh labels and rolling the map forward generates diverse trajectories with a single network evaluation per time step, with the smoothness bias of the learned map supporting accurate sampling in practice.
APA
Berman, J., Blickhan, T. & Peherstorfer, B.. (2026). Stochastic Lifting for Generating Trajectories of Stochastic Physical Systems. Proceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Machine Learning, in Proceedings of Machine Learning Research 306:7657-7682 Available from https://proceedings.mlr.press/v306/berman26b.html.

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