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examples: adjoint boundary sensitivities + SIMSOPT analytic gradient#11

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krystophny wants to merge 9 commits into
internal-hvpfrom
simsopt-adjoint
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examples: adjoint boundary sensitivities + SIMSOPT analytic gradient#11
krystophny wants to merge 9 commits into
internal-hvpfrom
simsopt-adjoint

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@krystophny krystophny commented Jun 14, 2026

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What

Use VMEC++ as a differentiable component in an external optimizer: the
boundary-shape gradient dJ/dx_B by the implicit-function adjoint instead of
finite-differencing over boundary DOFs.

  • examples/vmecpp_adjoint.py: partition the state into interior/boundary,
    converge the interior to force balance (solve_interior), then one adjoint
    solve H_II lambda = dJ/dx_I (GMRES preconditioned by M^-1) gives the full
    boundary gradient. The interior Hessian is symmetric indefinite (the lambda
    constraint is a saddle), so GMRES is used, not CG.
  • examples/simsopt_vmec_gradient.py: a SIMSOPT Optimizable wrapping it.

This PR uses the finite-difference HVP. With the exact autodiff HVP (#23) the
same adjoint gets cheaper still (numbers below).

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

=== solovev (18 boundary DOFs) ===
method                          F-evals  time[s]  rel vs FD
FD over boundary (all, est)       10011     1.20      (ref)
adjoint, FD HVP (this PR)          1358     0.33    3.9e-04
adjoint, exact HVP (#23)            398     0.08    3.9e-04

=== cth_like (150 boundary DOFs) ===
FD over boundary (all, est)      869562  1014.54      (ref)
adjoint, FD HVP (this PR)          9364    12.34    4.0e-02
adjoint, exact HVP (#23)           3302    10.57    4.0e-02

The adjoint computes the same gradient as finite-differencing over the boundary
but at a cost independent of the number of boundary DOFs: 7x fewer evals on
solovev (18 DOFs), 93x on cth_like (150 DOFs)
with the FD HVP, and 25x / 263x
with the exact HVP (#23). Gradients agree with the FD reference to 3.9e-4 /
4.0e-2.

Stacked on #10 (HVP).

Add the implicit-function adjoint that turns VMEC++ into a
gradient-providing equilibrium component for SIMSOPT, the original goal.

vmecpp_adjoint.py: for a converged fixed-boundary equilibrium F_I(x)=0,
the boundary sensitivity of a scalar objective J follows from
H_II lambda = dJ/dx_I, dJ/dx_B = dJ/dx_B - (dF_I/dx_B)^T lambda, with H
the symmetric Hessian of the augmented functional. It is matrix-free via
hessian_vector_product and apply_preconditioner (the SPD interior system
is solved with preconditioned CG). One Hessian solve gives the whole
boundary gradient, versus one equilibrium re-solve per boundary DOF for
finite differences.

simsopt_vmec_gradient.py: VmecEnergy wraps this as a SIMSOPT Optimizable
whose dJ is the adjoint gradient, plus a gradient-cost benchmark.

Verified: the adjoint gradient matches brute-force re-solve finite
differences (rel 2.4e-4) and the SIMSOPT Optimizable's dJ matches finite
differences of J (rel ~1e-6). On solovev (ns=11, 18 boundary DOFs) the
adjoint boundary gradient costs 762 force evaluations versus 9112 for
finite differences (12x), and the gap grows with the boundary DOF count.
Two correctness fixes for stiff 3D equilibria (cth_like):

- VMEC's augmented-Lagrangian Hessian is symmetric *indefinite* (the lambda
  constraint makes it a saddle, not a minimum), so CG silently gives the
  wrong adjoint there. Use GMRES, which handles indefinite systems, for the
  H_II solve and the interior Newton solve. With a loose, restarted tolerance
  the adjoint solve stays cheap.
- Add a backtracking line search to solve_interior so the interior re-solve
  (used by the SIMSOPT wrapper and the finite-difference reference) converges
  on 3D instead of overshooting.

Verified with a directional-derivative check against a re-converged
finite-difference reference: solovev 1.5e-4, cth_like 2.2e-2 relative; both
previously agreed only in 2D. Boundary-gradient cost on solovev: 626 force
evaluations (analytic adjoint) versus 10460 (finite differences).
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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