这篇论文用群元素当token,不用那些复杂的学习核,参数还少50到80倍,做SE(2)、SO(3)和仿射群上的任务都更好,值得看看思路。
论文提出Lie-Algebra Attention,其中token被定义为矩阵李群G的元素gi,而非传统特征向量。注意力分数使用相对姿态的对数范数闭合形式sij = -‖log(gi^-1 gj)‖²/τ,无需学习核函数。该方法适用于非紧致非交换的仿射群Aff(2),这是向量token方法无法达到的。在SE(2)、SO(3)和Aff(2)上的序列补全实验中,其参数比MLP核少50-80倍,且在SE(2)上性能更优,而向量token基线的不变性误差高达5-12个数量级。
The Token Is a Group Element: On Lie-Algebra Attention over Matrix Lie Groups
We place the attention token on the group: a token is an element $g_i$ of a matrix Lie group $G$ -- a bare transformation, with no feature payload and no external action $ρ(g)$ carrying it. To our knowledge this is the first attention construction whose tokens are bare matrix Lie group elements: their score is the closed-form algebra norm of the relative pose rather than a learned kernel, and it reaches the affine full-frame groups that every irrep- or surjective-exp-based method must exclude. We call it Lie-Algebra Attention. Once tokens are group elements, the rest follows with none of the usual representation-theoretic machinery. The relative geometry of a pair is canonical, $g_i^{-1} g_j$, so the pairwise invariant $w_{ij} = \log(g_i^{-1} g_j)$ is intrinsic rather than designed; equivariance under the diagonal $G$-action is tautological, and the cocycle condition holds automatically. The attention score is the negative squared algebra norm, $s_{ij} = -\|\log(g_i^{-1} g_j)\|_λ^2/τ$: the canonical proximity kernel under a block-weighted Frobenius inner product, with no irreducible representations, spherical harmonics, Clebsch-Gordan products, or learned kernel. The construction applies to any matrix Lie group on a chosen logarithm chart containing the relative poses, including the non-compact non-abelian affine groups with scale and shear that no vector-token attention method reaches: neither the irrep tradition nor surjective-exp methods. Three sequence-completion experiments, on SE(2), SO(3), and Aff(2), bear this out: the closed-form score matches a learned MLP kernel on the same invariant and outperforms it on SE(2), using 50 to 80x fewer score parameters, while a vector-token baseline breaks invariance by five to twelve orders of magnitude.