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arXiv · 2606.06772

Minimax-Optimal Generalization Bounds for Smooth Deep Neural Networks Trained by (Stochastic) Gradient Descent

Junyu Zhou·Puyu Wang·Dennis Wagner·Yunwen Lei·Marius Kloft·Yiming Ying
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Abstract

Characterizing the optimization dynamics and statistical performance of over-parameterized deep neural networks (DNNs) remains a central challenge in understanding the remarkable success of deep learning. We establish quantitative bounds showing that kernel gradient descent in the reproducing kernel Hilbert space induced by the deterministic infinite-width neural tangent kernel approximates finite-width deep regression with smooth activations under gradient descent (GD) and stochastic gradient descent (SGD) training. The approximation gap is governed by the network width and training horizon, with an additional stochastic gradient error in the SGD case. This connection provides a general mechanism for transferring learning-theoretic guarantees from kernel methods to deep regression. As an application, under general source and effective dimension conditions, we show that both GD- and SGD-trained DNNs attain the minimax-optimal excess population risk rate, up to logarithmic factors, provided that the network width grows polynomially in the sample size. To the best of our knowledge, these are the first such guarantees for standard fully connected deep neural networks with smooth activations trained by GD and SGD.

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Junyu Zhou, Puyu Wang, Dennis Wagner, Yunwen Lei, Marius Kloft, Yiming Ying. 2026-07-29. Minimax-Optimal Generalization Bounds for Smooth Deep Neural Networks Trained by (Stochastic) Gradient Descent. https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.06772

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