DFReg: A Physics-Inspired Framework for Global Weight Distribution Regularization in Neural Networks

Abstract: We introduce DFReg, a physics-inspired regularization method for deep neural networks that operates on the global distribution of weights. Drawing from Density Functional Theory (DFT), DFReg applies a functional penalty to encourage smooth, diverse, and well-distributed weight configurations. Unlike traditional techniques such as Dropout or L2 decay, DFReg imposes global structural regularity without architectural changes or stochastic perturbations.