SelfGRL: Self-Organized Graph Representation Learning Inspired by Helmholtz Free Energy Minimization

Abstract

Graph Representation Learning (GRL) requires node embeddings to preserve local structural coherence while remaining globally discriminative. Existing graph self-supervised methods generally coordinate these competing objectives through method-specific designs, lacking a unified and adaptive mechanism that responds to the evolving representation state. To address this limitation, we propose SelfGRL, a self-organized graph representation learning framework that reformulates representation learning as Helmholtz free-energy minimization on the unit hypersphere. SelfGRL models local neighborhood attraction as a Structural Binding Energy through neighbor-mean alignment, while introducing a Sampling-Free Repulsive Entropy objective to preserve global dispersion and prevent representation collapse without pairwise negative sampling. To dynamically coordinate these competing effects, we develop an endogenous Bayesian Thermostat that adaptively regulates their relative strengths in response to the evolving representation state, allowing the system to approach a metastable semantic equilibrium without requiring manually tuned loss weights. Extensive experiments on node classification across both homophilic and heterophilic benchmark datasets, together with link prediction evaluations, demonstrate that SelfGRL consistently achieves strong performance across diverse graph structures.

arXiv commentSubmitted to The ACM Web Conference 2027 (WWW 2027)