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Muon on the Stiefel Manifold Admits an Exact Closed-Form Update

Research Optimization Algorithms

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TL;DR - An arXiv preprint showing that the Muon matrix-aware optimizer's update on the Stiefel manifold (matrices with orthonormal columns) has an exact closed-form solution, yielding a new algorithm called Skewon. It matters because prior Stiefel extensions of Muon relied on heuristic, approximate, or iterative updates with uneven efficiency.

  • Derives an exact closed-form solution for the Stiefel Muon update, replacing approximate/iterative schemes used in existing extensions.
  • Introduces Skewon, a practical algorithm for orthogonality-constrained optimization with an efficient implementation built on that closed form.
  • Establishes first-order convergence guarantees for Skewon in the smooth non-convex setting.
  • Targets a constraint set (orthonormal columns) that is common in machine learning and scientific computing; abstract reports no empirical benchmarks, so speed/quality gains are unquantified here.

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Muon on the Stiefel Manifold Admits an Exact Closed-Form Update

arXiv math.OC Mikhail Solonko, Molozhavenko Alexander, Maxim Rakhuba 2026-08-06 arXiv:2608.06218
Public signals Semantic Scholar citations 1 · Semantic Scholar influential citations 0
Providers: Hugging Face · N/A OpenAlex · N/A Publisher · N/A Semantic Scholar · Citations 1 · Influential citations 0 X · N/A Fetched 2026-08-31 14:25:10.319951 UTC

TL;DR - An arXiv preprint showing that the Muon matrix-aware optimizer's update on the Stiefel manifold (matrices with orthonormal columns) has an exact closed-form solution, yielding a new algorithm called Skewon. It matters because prior Stiefel extensions of Muon relied on heuristic, approximate, or iterative updates with uneven efficiency.

  • Derives an exact closed-form solution for the Stiefel Muon update, replacing approximate/iterative schemes used in existing extensions.
  • Introduces Skewon, a practical algorithm for orthogonality-constrained optimization with an efficient implementation built on that closed form.
  • Establishes first-order convergence guarantees for Skewon in the smooth non-convex setting.
  • Targets a constraint set (orthonormal columns) that is common in machine learning and scientific computing; abstract reports no empirical benchmarks, so speed/quality gains are unquantified here.
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