pointwise error
DAS-PINNs for high-dimensional partial differential equations: extending deep adaptive sampling to spacetime domains
Singh, Anshima, Silvester, David J.
Time-dependent high-dimensional partial differential equations (PDEs) with spatially localised and dynamically evolving solutions pose a fundamental challenge for physics-informed neural networks (PINNs), as uniform collocation sampling becomes increasingly ineffective in high-dimensional spatiotemporal domains. In this work, a deep adaptive sampling framework for PINNs is extended to the time-dependent setting by treating space and time as a unified domain without any explicit time marching. A normalising flow neural network model effectively learns the distribution induced by the PDE residual and generates new collocation points concentrated in regions where the solution is most difficult to learn. Unlike conventional adaptive strategies that require explicit time stepping or moving meshes, high-residual regions are automatically identified and tracked across both space and time, driven purely by the PDE residual distribution. The effectiveness of the proposed strategy is assessed on a range of benchmark problems, from sharp and moving features in two spatial dimensions to localised structures in up to eight spatial dimensions.
Regularized Random Fourier Features and Finite Element Reconstruction for Operator Learning in Sobolev Space
Operator learning is a data-driven approximation of mappings between infinite-dimensional function spaces, such as the solution operators of partial differential equations. Kernel-based operator learning can offer accurate, theoretically justified approximations that require less training than standard methods. However, they can become computationally prohibitive for large training sets and can be sensitive to noise. We propose a regularized random Fourier feature (RRFF) approach, coupled with a finite element reconstruction map (RRFF-FEM), for learning operators from noisy data. The method uses random features drawn from multivariate Student's $t$ distributions, together with frequency-weighted Tikhonov regularization that suppresses high-frequency noise. We establish high-probability bounds on the extreme singular values of the associated random feature matrix and show that when the number of features $N$ scales like $m \log m$ with the number of training samples $m$, the system is well-conditioned, which yields estimation and generalization guarantees. Detailed numerical experiments on benchmark PDE problems, including advection, Burgers', Darcy flow, Helmholtz, Navier-Stokes, and structural mechanics, demonstrate that RRFF and RRFF-FEM are robust to noise and achieve improved performance with reduced training time compared to the unregularized random feature model, while maintaining competitive accuracy relative to kernel and neural operator tests.
Unsupervised operator learning approach for dissipative equations via Onsager principle
Chang, Zhipeng, Wen, Zhenye, Zhao, Xiaofei
Existing operator learning methods rely on supervised training with high-fidelity simulation data, introducing significant computational cost. In this work, we propose the deep Onsager operator learning (DOOL) method, a novel unsupervised framework for solving dissipative equations. Rooted in the Onsager variational principle (OVP), DOOL trains a deep operator network by directly minimizing the OVP-defined Rayleighian functional, requiring no labeled data, and then proceeds in time explicitly through conservation/change laws for the solution. Another key innovation here lies in the spatiotemporal decoupling strategy: the operator's trunk network processes spatial coordinates exclusively, thereby enhancing training efficiency, while integrated external time stepping enables temporal extrapolation. Numerical experiments on typical dissipative equations validate the effectiveness of the DOOL method, and systematic comparisons with supervised DeepONet and MIONet demonstrate its enhanced performance. Extensions are made to cover the second-order wave models with dissipation that do not directly follow OVP.
Cauchy Random Features for Operator Learning in Sobolev Space
Liao, Chunyang, Needell, Deanna, Schaeffer, Hayden
Operator learning is the approximation of operators between infinite dimensional Banach spaces using machine learning approaches. While most progress in this area has been driven by variants of deep neural networks such as the Deep Operator Network and Fourier Neural Operator, the theoretical guarantees are often in the form of a universal approximation property. However, the existence theorems do not guarantee that an accurate operator network is obtainable in practice. Motivated by the recent kernel-based operator learning framework, we propose a random feature operator learning method with theoretical guarantees and error bounds. The random feature method can be viewed as a randomized approximation of a kernel method, which significantly reduces the computation requirements for training. We provide a generalization error analysis for our proposed random feature operator learning method along with comprehensive numerical results. Compared to kernel-based method and neural network methods, the proposed method can obtain similar or better test errors across benchmarks examples with significantly reduced training times. An additional advantages it that our implementation is simple and does require costly computational resources, such as GPU.
Learning Surrogate Potential Mean Field Games via Gaussian Processes: A Data-Driven Approach to Ill-Posed Inverse Problems
Zhang, Jingguo, Yang, Xianjin, Mou, Chenchen, Zhou, Chao
Mean field games (MFGs) describe the collective behavior of large populations of interacting agents. In this work, we tackle ill-posed inverse problems in potential MFGs, aiming to recover the agents' population, momentum, and environmental setup from limited, noisy measurements and partial observations. These problems are ill-posed because multiple MFG configurations can explain the same data, or different parameters can yield nearly identical observations. Nonetheless, they remain crucial in practice for real-world scenarios where data are inherently sparse or noisy, or where the MFG structure is not fully determined. Our focus is on finding surrogate MFGs that accurately reproduce the observed data despite these challenges. We propose two Gaussian process (GP)-based frameworks: an inf-sup formulation and a bilevel approach. The choice between them depends on whether the unknown parameters introduce concavity in the objective. In the inf-sup framework, we use the linearity of GPs and their parameterization structure to maintain convex-concave properties, allowing us to apply standard convex optimization algorithms. In the bilevel framework, we employ a gradient-descent-based algorithm and introduce two methods for computing the outer gradient. The first method leverages an existing solver for the inner potential MFG and applies automatic differentiation, while the second adopts an adjoint-based strategy that computes the outer gradient independently of the inner solver. Our numerical experiments show that when sufficient prior information is available, the unknown parameters can be accurately recovered. Otherwise, if prior information is limited, the inverse problem is ill-posed, but our frameworks can still produce surrogate MFG models that closely match observed data.
Using Neural Implicit Flow To Represent Latent Dynamics Of Canonical Systems
Nasim, Imran, Almeida, Joaรต Lucas de Sousa
Over the last few years the class of the so-called Neural Operators [8] have emerged as a promising tool for many fundamental tasks in scientific machine learning (SciML), as data representation [15], time-series forecasting [19] and discovering of operators from data [11] both in data-driven and Physics-informed domains [20, 13]. Neural Operators first appeared with the introduction of Deep Neural Operators (DeepONets) [11], a new class of architectures designed to extend the capabilities of neural networks in order to better perform tasks related to operator learning. A DeepONet is composed by two subnetworks, termed trunk and branch, and essentially emulates a linear expansion, in which the trunk learns a set of basis functions for a predetermined system of coordinates, while the branch discovers penalties for these functions as they relate to the forcing variables. Alternatively, it is possible to see the branch network as a hypernetwork aimed at evaluating the last layer for the trunk [15]. Since DeepONets were first proposed, many derived and alternative approaches have been developed to address the operator learning problem.
Kernel Methods are Competitive for Operator Learning
Batlle, Pau, Darcy, Matthieu, Hosseini, Bamdad, Owhadi, Houman
We present a general kernel-based framework for learning operators between Banach spaces along with a priori error analysis and comprehensive numerical comparisons with popular neural net (NN) approaches such as Deep Operator Net (DeepONet) [Lu et al.] and Fourier Neural Operator (FNO) [Li et al.]. We consider the setting where the input/output spaces of target operator $\mathcal{G}^\dagger\,:\, \mathcal{U}\to \mathcal{V}$ are reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces (RKHS), the data comes in the form of partial observations $\phi(u_i), \varphi(v_i)$ of input/output functions $v_i=\mathcal{G}^\dagger(u_i)$ ($i=1,\ldots,N$), and the measurement operators $\phi\,:\, \mathcal{U}\to \mathbb{R}^n$ and $\varphi\,:\, \mathcal{V} \to \mathbb{R}^m$ are linear. Writing $\psi\,:\, \mathbb{R}^n \to \mathcal{U}$ and $\chi\,:\, \mathbb{R}^m \to \mathcal{V}$ for the optimal recovery maps associated with $\phi$ and $\varphi$, we approximate $\mathcal{G}^\dagger$ with $\bar{\mathcal{G}}=\chi \circ \bar{f} \circ \phi$ where $\bar{f}$ is an optimal recovery approximation of $f^\dagger:=\varphi \circ \mathcal{G}^\dagger \circ \psi\,:\,\mathbb{R}^n \to \mathbb{R}^m$. We show that, even when using vanilla kernels (e.g., linear or Mat\'{e}rn), our approach is competitive in terms of cost-accuracy trade-off and either matches or beats the performance of NN methods on a majority of benchmarks. Additionally, our framework offers several advantages inherited from kernel methods: simplicity, interpretability, convergence guarantees, a priori error estimates, and Bayesian uncertainty quantification. As such, it can serve as a natural benchmark for operator learning.
Ensemble learning for Physics Informed Neural Networks: a Gradient Boosting approach
Fang, Zhiwei, Wang, Sifan, Perdikaris, Paris
While the popularity of physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) is steadily rising, to this date, PINNs have not been successful in simulating multi-scale and singular perturbation problems. In this work, we present a new training paradigm referred to as "gradient boosting" (GB), which significantly enhances the performance of physics informed neural networks (PINNs). Rather than learning the solution of a given PDE using a single neural network directly, our algorithm employs a sequence of neural networks to achieve a superior outcome. This approach allows us to solve problems presenting great challenges for traditional PINNs. Our numerical experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithm through various benchmarks, including comparisons with finite element methods and PINNs. Furthermore, this work also unlocks the door to employing ensemble learning techniques in PINNs, providing opportunities for further improvement in solving PDEs.