Looping back: Circular nodes revisited with novel applications in the radio frequency domain

Nicholas Karris, Luke Durell, Javier Flores, Tegan Emerson
Proceedings of the 1st Conference on Topology, Algebra, and Geometry in Data Science(TAG-DS 2025), PMLR 321:114-125, 2026.

Abstract

It can be shown that Stable Diffusion has a permutation-invariance property with respect to the rows of Contrastive Language-Image Pretraining (CLIP) embedding matrices. This inspired the novel observation that these embeddings can naturally be interpreted as point clouds in a Wasserstein space rather than as matrices in a Euclidean space. This perspective opens up new possibilities for understanding the geometry of embedding space. For example, when interpolating between embeddings of two distinct prompts, we propose reframing the interpolation problem as an optimal transport problem. By solving this optimal transport problem, we compute a shortest path (or geodesic) between embeddings that captures a more natural and geometrically smooth transition through the embedding space. This results in smoother and more coherent intermediate (interpolated) images when rendered by the Stable Diffusion generative model. We conduct experiments to investigate this effect, comparing the quality of interpolated images produced using optimal transport to those generated by other standard interpolation methods. The novel optimal transport–based approach presented indeed gives smoother image interpolations, suggesting that viewing the embeddings as point clouds (rather than as matrices) better reflects and leverages the geometry of the embedding space.

Cite this Paper


BibTeX
@InProceedings{pmlr-v321-karris26a, title = {Looping back: {C}ircular nodes revisited with novel applications in the radio frequency domain}, author = {Karris, Nicholas and Durell, Luke and Flores, Javier and Emerson, Tegan}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 1st Conference on Topology, Algebra, and Geometry in Data Science(TAG-DS 2025)}, pages = {114--125}, year = {2026}, editor = {Bernardez Gil, Guillermo and Black, Mitchell and Cloninger, Alexander and Doster, Timothy and Emerson, Tegan and Garcı́a-Rodondo, Ińes and Holtz, Chester and Kotak, Mit and Kvinge, Henry and Mishne, Gal and Papillon, Mathilde and Pouplin, Alison and Rainey, Katie and Rieck, Bastian and Telyatnikov, Lev and Yeats, Eric and Wang, Qingsong and Wang, Yusu and Wayland, Jeremy}, volume = {321}, series = {Proceedings of Machine Learning Research}, month = {01--02 Dec}, publisher = {PMLR}, pdf = {https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mlresearch/v321/main/assets/karris26a/karris26a.pdf}, url = {https://proceedings.mlr.press/v321/karris26a.html}, abstract = { It can be shown that Stable Diffusion has a permutation-invariance property with respect to the rows of Contrastive Language-Image Pretraining (CLIP) embedding matrices. This inspired the novel observation that these embeddings can naturally be interpreted as point clouds in a Wasserstein space rather than as matrices in a Euclidean space. This perspective opens up new possibilities for understanding the geometry of embedding space. For example, when interpolating between embeddings of two distinct prompts, we propose reframing the interpolation problem as an optimal transport problem. By solving this optimal transport problem, we compute a shortest path (or geodesic) between embeddings that captures a more natural and geometrically smooth transition through the embedding space. This results in smoother and more coherent intermediate (interpolated) images when rendered by the Stable Diffusion generative model. We conduct experiments to investigate this effect, comparing the quality of interpolated images produced using optimal transport to those generated by other standard interpolation methods. The novel optimal transport–based approach presented indeed gives smoother image interpolations, suggesting that viewing the embeddings as point clouds (rather than as matrices) better reflects and leverages the geometry of the embedding space.} }
Endnote
%0 Conference Paper %T Looping back: Circular nodes revisited with novel applications in the radio frequency domain %A Nicholas Karris %A Luke Durell %A Javier Flores %A Tegan Emerson %B Proceedings of the 1st Conference on Topology, Algebra, and Geometry in Data Science(TAG-DS 2025) %C Proceedings of Machine Learning Research %D 2026 %E Guillermo Bernardez Gil %E Mitchell Black %E Alexander Cloninger %E Timothy Doster %E Tegan Emerson %E Ińes Garcı́a-Rodondo %E Chester Holtz %E Mit Kotak %E Henry Kvinge %E Gal Mishne %E Mathilde Papillon %E Alison Pouplin %E Katie Rainey %E Bastian Rieck %E Lev Telyatnikov %E Eric Yeats %E Qingsong Wang %E Yusu Wang %E Jeremy Wayland %F pmlr-v321-karris26a %I PMLR %P 114--125 %U https://proceedings.mlr.press/v321/karris26a.html %V 321 %X It can be shown that Stable Diffusion has a permutation-invariance property with respect to the rows of Contrastive Language-Image Pretraining (CLIP) embedding matrices. This inspired the novel observation that these embeddings can naturally be interpreted as point clouds in a Wasserstein space rather than as matrices in a Euclidean space. This perspective opens up new possibilities for understanding the geometry of embedding space. For example, when interpolating between embeddings of two distinct prompts, we propose reframing the interpolation problem as an optimal transport problem. By solving this optimal transport problem, we compute a shortest path (or geodesic) between embeddings that captures a more natural and geometrically smooth transition through the embedding space. This results in smoother and more coherent intermediate (interpolated) images when rendered by the Stable Diffusion generative model. We conduct experiments to investigate this effect, comparing the quality of interpolated images produced using optimal transport to those generated by other standard interpolation methods. The novel optimal transport–based approach presented indeed gives smoother image interpolations, suggesting that viewing the embeddings as point clouds (rather than as matrices) better reflects and leverages the geometry of the embedding space.
APA
Karris, N., Durell, L., Flores, J. & Emerson, T.. (2026). Looping back: Circular nodes revisited with novel applications in the radio frequency domain. Proceedings of the 1st Conference on Topology, Algebra, and Geometry in Data Science(TAG-DS 2025), in Proceedings of Machine Learning Research 321:114-125 Available from https://proceedings.mlr.press/v321/karris26a.html.

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