Goto

Collaborating Authors

 physics-informed neural network


A PAC-Bayesian View of Generalisation for Physics-Informed Machine Learning

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Physics-informed machine learning (PIML) integrates mechanistic knowledge, typically in the form of partial differential equations (PDE), into data-driven models. Despite strong empirical performance, its statistical generalisation properties remain poorly understood, particularly in the regression setting with unbounded losses. Existing analyses rely on approximation or stability arguments and do not fully capture how physical structure influences generalisation from finite data. In this work, we develop a PAC-Bayesian framework for PIML that provides high-probability generalisation guarantees in the presence of unbounded losses. We adopt a multi-task perspective that jointly treats data fidelity, PDE residuals, initial and boundary conditions, avoiding the looseness induced by standard union-bound approaches. Our analysis leverages the structure of physics-informed objectives to derive novel bounds where the complexity scales with input-gradient norms of the losses, revealing a direct link between physical regularity and generalisation. We instantiate this framework under Sobolev and Poincarรฉ-type assumptions, yielding two classes of bounds that trade off statistical complexity and smoothness in different regimes. Building on these results, we propose a self-bounding-aware learning algorithm that directly optimises tractable surrogates of the derived bounds, along with a practical procedure to estimate the associated constants in realistic settings. Empirical evaluations on standard PDE benchmarks demonstrate that our bounds are non-vacuous, significantly tighter than union-bound baselines, and can be effectively minimised during training. Overall, our results provide a principled statistical foundation for the generalisation of physics-informed models.


Fast Reconstruction of Exact Maxwell Dynamics from Sparse Data

arXiv.org Machine Learning

We introduce FLASH-MAX, a shallow, exact-by-construction neural network architecture for predicting homogeneous electromagnetic fields from sparse pointwise observations. Each hidden neuron represents a separate exact solution to Maxwell's equations, so that the network satisfies the governing equations symbolically by construction and can be trained end-to-end from sparse data within seconds. We prove a universal approximation result showing that this exact model class remains universal on arbitrary domains. FLASH-MAX reaches sub-1% relative validation error from about 1K sparse pointwise observations in seconds, all while maintaining a zero PDE residual, and keeps single-digit errors even for only 100 observations sampled from 3D space. These results suggest that moving governing structure from the loss into the hypothesis class can dramatically improve the trade-off between precision and optimization speed in scientific machine learning.


Unified generalization analysis for physics informed neural networks

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs) and their variational counterparts (VPINNs) are neural networks that incorporate physical laws, making them useful for scientific problems. Existing generalization analyses for PINNs and VPINNs remain limited, often requiring restrictive assumptions such as stability conditions or linear ellipticity. In this paper, we derive generalization bounds for neural networks that involve differentiation with respect to input variables, covering PINNs and VPINNs under a unified framework. We apply Taylor expansion to represent nonlinear differential operators as linear operators on a high-dimensional space, enabling the use of Koopman-based analysis and showing that high-rank networks can generalize well even in settings involving differential operators. We also show that the nonlinearity of the differential operator exponentially enlarges the bound, highlighting its significant impact on generalization.


Posterior Concentration of Bayesian Physics-Informed Neural Networks for Elliptic PDEs

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Unlike a standard PINN--which produces an approximate Deep neural networks (DNNs) or multi-layer perceptronssolution by minimizing a PDE-residual loss and thus yields (MLPs) offer various inherent advantages over traditionalonly a point estimate, failing to quantify uncertainty inapproaches of scientific computing and data analysis, suchduced by noisy or limited data, a Bayesian PINN returns a as finite element methods, wavelets and kernel methods, full posterior distribution over solutions by combining the which are often hampered by the irregular and nonlinearuncertain information from the likelihood (data) and the data structures and the high input dimensions. In contrast, DNNs are capable of approximating a rich class of functions prior. Bayesian neural networks, originating in the seminal works of MacKay (MacKay, 1995) and Neal (Neal, 1995), with aforementioned complexities and can also easily en-have been extensively studied over the past three decades codes additional complex physical structures, such as sym- (Lampinen & Vehtari, 2001; Titterington, 2004; Graves, metry and other invariant structures.


Entropy-dissipation Informed Neural Network for McKean-Vlasov Type PDEs

Neural Information Processing Systems

The McKean-Vlasov equation (MVE) describes the collective behavior of particles subject to drift, diffusion, and mean-field interaction. In physical systems, the interaction term can be singular, i.e. it diverges when two particles collide. Notable examples of such interactions include the Coulomb interaction, fundamental in plasma physics, and the Biot-Savart interaction, present in the vorticity formulation of the 2DNavier-Stokes equation (NSE) in fluid dynamics. Solving MVEs that involve singular interaction kernels presents a significant challenge, especially when aiming to provide rigorous theoretical guarantees. In this work, we propose a novel approach based on the concept of entropy dissipation in the underlying system.


Residual-loss Anomaly Analysis of Physics-Informed Neural Networks: An Inverse Method for Change-point Detection in Nonlinear Dynamical Systems with Regime Switching

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Nonlinear dynamical systems with regime transitions are typically described by ordinary differential equations with jumping parameters parameters. Traditional methods often treat change-point detection and parameter estimation as separate tasks, ignoring the inherent coupling between them. To address this, we propose residual-loss anomaly analysis of physics-informed neural networks, a unified framework that leverages dynamical consistency within the physics-informed learning paradigm. This approach jointly infers piecewise parameters and transition points under a single set of constraints. The method follows a two-stage strategy: First, local physical residuals are analyzed through overlapping subinterval decomposition. When a subinterval spans a true transition point, the residual exhibits a distinct structural elevation in noise-free conditions, which has a non-zero lower bound, enabling effective localization of potential transition intervals. Second, within our framework, change-point locations and piecewise parameters are integrated into a unified physical loss function for joint optimization, enabling simultaneous identification. Experiments on benchmark nonlinear dynamical systems, including Malthusian and logistic growth models, Van der Pol oscillator, Lotka-Volterra model and Lorenz system, demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms traditional decoupled approaches in both change-point localization and parameter estimation accuracy. This study provides an efficient, unified solution for structurally coupled inverse problems in nonlinear dynamical systems with regime switching.


Accelerated Training of Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs) using Meshless Discretizations

Neural Information Processing Systems

Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) are neural networks trained by using physical laws in the form of partial differential equations (PDEs) as soft constraints. We present a new technique for the accelerated training of PINNs that combines modern scientific computing techniques with machine learning: discretely-trained PINNs (DT-PINNs). The repeated computation of the partial derivative terms in the PINN loss functions via automatic differentiation during training is known to be computationally expensive, especially for higher-order derivatives. DT-PINNs are trained by replacing these exact spatial derivatives with high-order accurate numerical discretizations computed using meshless radial basis function-finite differences (RBF-FD) and applied via sparse-matrix vector multiplication. While in principle any high-order discretization may be used, the use of RBF-FD allows for DT-PINNs to be trained even on point cloud samples placed on irregular domain geometries.


A Comparative Investigation of Thermodynamic Structure-Informed Neural Networks

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) offer a unified framework for solving both forward and inverse problems of differential equations, yet their performance and physical consistency strongly depend on how governing laws are incorporated. In this work, we present a systematic comparison of different thermodynamic structure-informed neural networks by incorporating various thermodynamics formulations, including Newtonian, Lagrangian, and Hamiltonian mechanics for conservative systems, as well as the Onsager variational principle and extended irreversible thermodynamics for dissipative systems. Through comprehensive numerical experiments on representative ordinary and partial differential equations, we quantitatively evaluate the impact of these formulations on accuracy, physical consistency, noise robustness, and interpretability. The results show that Newtonian-residual-based PINNs can reconstruct system states but fail to reliably recover key physical and thermodynamic quantities, whereas structure-preserving formulation significantly enhances parameter identification, thermodynamic consistency, and robustness. These findings provide practical guidance for principled design of thermodynamics-consistency model, and lay the groundwork for integrating more general nonequilibrium thermodynamic structures into physics-informed machine learning.


PINNacle: A Comprehensive Benchmark of Physics-Informed Neural Networks for Solving PDEs

Neural Information Processing Systems

While significant progress has been made on Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs), a comprehensive comparison of these methods across a wide range of Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) is still lacking. This study introduces PINNacle, a benchmarking tool designed to fill this gap. PINNacle provides a diverse dataset, comprising over 20 distinct PDEs from various domains, including heat conduction, fluid dynamics, biology, and electromagnetics. These PDEs encapsulate key challenges inherent to real-world problems, such as complex geometry, multi-scale phenomena, nonlinearity, and high dimensionality. PINNacle also offers a user-friendly toolbox, incorporating about 10 state-of-the-art PINN methods for systematic evaluation and comparison. We have conducted extensive experiments with these methods, offering insights into their strengths and weaknesses. In addition to providing a standardized means of assessing performance, PINNacle also offers an in-depth analysis to guide future research, particularly in areas such as domain decomposition methods and loss reweighting for handling multi-scale problems and complex geometry. To the best of our knowledge, it is the largest benchmark with a diverse and comprehensive evaluation that will undoubtedly foster further research in PINNs.