Fokker-Planck Analysis and Invariant Laws for a Continuous-Time Stochastic Model of Adam-Type Dynamics
Abstract
We develop a continuous-time model for the long-term dynamics of adaptive stochastic optimization, focusing on bias-corrected Adam-type methods. Starting from a finite-sum setting, we identify a canonical scaling of learning rates, decay parameters, and gradient noise that yields a coupled, time-inhomogeneous stochastic differential equation for the parameters , first-moment tracker , and second-moment tracker . Bias correction persists via explicit time-dependent coefficients, and the dynamics becomes asymptotically time-homogeneous. We analyze the associated Fokker-Planck equation and, under mild regularity and dissipativity assumptions on , prove existence and uniqueness of invariant measures. Noise propagation is governed by . Hypoellipticity may fail on , where and critical points of lie in . We show and use this to prove exponential convergence of the Markov semigroup to a unique invariant measure, uniformly in . The proof uses a Harris-type argument, minorization on Lyapunov sublevel sets, control constructions, and hypoellipticity on . This provides a transparent continuous-time view of Adam-type dynamics.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2604.00840,
title = {Fokker-Planck Analysis and Invariant Laws for a Continuous-Time Stochastic Model of Adam-Type Dynamics},
author = {Kaj Nyström},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.00840},
year = {2026}
}