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pybind: Hessian-vector product inside VMEC++ + internal Newton-Krylov#10

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krystophny wants to merge 9 commits into
expose-preconditionerfrom
internal-hvp
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pybind: Hessian-vector product inside VMEC++ + internal Newton-Krylov#10
krystophny wants to merge 9 commits into
expose-preconditionerfrom
internal-hvp

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@krystophny krystophny commented Jun 14, 2026

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What

Expose VMEC++'s force Hessian-vector product through pybind
(VmecModel.hessian_vector_product) and drive a globalized, preconditioned
Newton-Krylov solver from it (examples/external_optimizers.py: solve_newton_hvp). Each Newton step solves H dx = -F with lgmres
preconditioned by VMEC's approximate inverse Hessian M^-1, with
Eisenstat-Walker adaptive inner forcing and a backtracking line search.

This PR's HVP is a central finite difference of the analytic force (2 force
evaluations per matvec); it establishes the second-order solver path and the
fair, force-eval-counted benchmark harness. The exact, finite-difference-free
autodiff HVP that replaces it is PR #23.

Verification (force evals counted in VMEC++, ns=11)

=== solovev ===   native W = 6.45510202e-02
optimizer                  F-evals  iters  time[s]    ||F||      dW
precond JFNK                   507      0    0.08   4.5e-10  2.4e-15
Newton FD-HVP + M^-1           483      5    0.04   2.0e-10  1.1e-15

=== cth_like ===  native W = 1.28103225e-03
precond JFNK                  1633      0    2.00   2.9e-09  2.1e-09
Newton FD-HVP + M^-1          1865      9    2.07   9.6e-13  5.7e-10

All methods are preconditioned by M^-1 and converge to the native equilibrium
energy. With Eisenstat-Walker forcing the FD Newton-HVP is competitive in
wall-clock; it still spends two force evaluations per matvec, which the exact HVP
removes.

Conclusion

This is the second-order path with the finite-difference HVP. PR #23 swaps in the
exact autodiff HVP (no force evaluation per matvec): the exact-HVP Newton-Krylov
then drops to 17 / 26 force evals and beats preconditioned JFNK in both evals and
wall-clock on both cases.

Stacked on #9 (preconditioner).

Add VmecModel.hessian_vector_product(v): the curvature of VMEC's
augmented functional, computed inside VMEC++ as a central directional
derivative of the analytic force (its gradient). The force is exact; only
the directional step is finite-differenced. Add a force_eval_count for
fair cross-optimizer cost comparison (counts evaluations hidden in the
Hessian-vector products).

Drive a true Newton-Krylov from this HVP plus the preconditioner: it
reaches the equilibrium in ~7 outer iterations (second order) versus
~1300 descent steps. This is the inside-the-solver Hessian path; together
with the external optimizers it gives differentiability inside and out.

Benchmark (solovev, ns=11, force evals counted in VMEC++):
  preconditioned descent          2606 evals  1302 iters
  Newton-Krylov (JFNK)            2243 evals
  Newton-Krylov (preconditioned)   507 evals
  Newton (VMEC++ HVP + M^-1)      9194 evals     7 iters

The HVP-Newton's higher force-eval count (two evals per finite-difference
HVP) is what the exact Enzyme Hessian will remove.
The full Newton step overshoots on stiff 3D equilibria (cth_like stalled
at the iteration cap with ||F|| ~ 5e-2). Add a backtracking line search on
||F|| so each step is damped to a decrease. With it the HVP-Newton
converges on cth_like in 9 outer iterations (||F|| = 1.8e-10) and still
converges solovev in 8.
The 'Compare benchmark result' step uses github-action-benchmark with
comment-on-alert and the GITHUB_TOKEN, which is read-only for pull requests from
forks -> 'Resource not accessible by integration'. Gate that step on the PR
coming from the same repo so fork PRs still run the benchmarks but skip the
write-back instead of failing.
The pinned vmec-0.0.6 cp310 wheel was f90wrapped against numpy 1.x. Under
the numpy 2.x that the test env now resolves, importing it dies in the
f90wrap array interface (f90wrap_vmec_input__array__rbc: 0-th dimension
must be fixed to 2 but got 4), so test_ensure_vmec2000_input_from_vmecpp_input
could never actually run on CI (and is currently red on main too, where the
wheel's runtime libs are not even installed).

Build VMEC2000 from upstream source with current f90wrap, which produces
numpy-2-compatible bindings. The recipe mirrors SIMSOPT's own CI
(hiddenSymmetries/VMEC2000, cmake/machines/ubuntu.json). An explicit
'import vmec' check in the install step surfaces any remaining problem here
rather than as a confusing test failure.
With VMEC2000 built from current upstream source, the compatibility test
runs for the first time and hits vmecpp indata fields that have no
counterpart in the legacy VMEC2000 INDATA namelist (e.g.
free_boundary_method), which raised AttributeError. The test explicitly
checks only the common subset, so guard the lookup with hasattr and skip
fields VMEC2000 does not have, instead of enumerating them one by one.
…mit pin

Bring this stack branch up to the corrected CI baseline (from proximafusion#583/proximafusion#564):
- tests.yaml: build VMEC2000 from the pinned source commit and cache the
  wheel; drop the unused FFTW/HDF5 dev packages.
- benchmarks.yaml: skip the result upload on fork PRs (read-only token).
- test_simsopt_compat.py: skip vmecpp-only INDATA fields.
- CMakeLists: pin abseil to the 20260107.1 commit hash for Clang >= 21.
…hmark fork guard (proximafusion#564)

* build: bump CMake abseil pin to 20260107.1 for Clang >= 21

The CMake FetchContent abseil pin (2024-08) fails to compile under
Clang >= 21: absl::Nonnull SFINAE in absl/strings/ascii.cc and the
numbers.cc nullability annotations are rejected by the newer frontend.
Bump to the 20260107.1 LTS, which compiles cleanly under Clang 21.1.8
and GCC. Clang is the compiler required for the Enzyme autodiff build.

The Bazel build keeps its own (BCR) abseil pin and is unaffected.

* ci: skip benchmark result upload on fork PRs (token is read-only)

The 'Compare benchmark result' step uses github-action-benchmark with
comment-on-alert and the GITHUB_TOKEN, which is read-only for pull requests from
forks -> 'Resource not accessible by integration'. Gate that step on the PR
coming from the same repo so fork PRs still run the benchmarks but skip the
write-back instead of failing.

* ci: build VMEC2000 from source so the compat test runs on numpy 2

The pinned vmec-0.0.6 cp310 wheel was f90wrapped against numpy 1.x. Under
the numpy 2.x that the test env now resolves, importing it dies in the
f90wrap array interface (f90wrap_vmec_input__array__rbc: 0-th dimension
must be fixed to 2 but got 4), so test_ensure_vmec2000_input_from_vmecpp_input
could never actually run on CI (and is currently red on main too, where the
wheel's runtime libs are not even installed).

Build VMEC2000 from upstream source with current f90wrap, which produces
numpy-2-compatible bindings. The recipe mirrors SIMSOPT's own CI
(hiddenSymmetries/VMEC2000, cmake/machines/ubuntu.json). An explicit
'import vmec' check in the install step surfaces any remaining problem here
rather than as a confusing test failure.

* test: skip vmecpp-only indata fields in the VMEC2000 compat subset

With VMEC2000 built from current upstream source, the compatibility test
runs for the first time and hits vmecpp indata fields that have no
counterpart in the legacy VMEC2000 INDATA namelist (e.g.
free_boundary_method), which raised AttributeError. The test explicitly
checks only the common subset, so guard the lookup with hasattr and skip
fields VMEC2000 does not have, instead of enumerating them one by one.

* build: pin abseil to the 20260107.1 commit hash

Pin the FetchContent abseil dependency to commit 255c84d (the exact
commit behind the 20260107.1 LTS tag) instead of the tag itself, so a
moved tag cannot change the dependency under us.

* ci: cache and pin the VMEC2000-from-source build

Use the canonical recipe (cache the built wheel keyed on the pinned
source commit 728af8b, drop the unused FFTW/HDF5 dev packages) instead
of rebuilding VMEC2000 unpinned on every run.
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