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Nov 4

Physically Native World Models: A Hamiltonian Perspective on Generative World Modeling

World models have recently re-emerged as a central paradigm for embodied intelligence, robotics, autonomous driving, and model-based reinforcement learning. However, current world model research is often dominated by three partially separated routes: 2D video-generative models that emphasize visual future synthesis, 3D scene-centric models that emphasize spatial reconstruction, and JEPA-like latent models that emphasize abstract predictive representations. While each route has made important progress, they still struggle to provide physically reliable, action-controllable, and long-horizon stable predictions for embodied decision making. In this paper, we argue that the bottleneck of world models is no longer only whether they can generate realistic futures, but whether those futures are physically meaningful and useful for action. We propose Hamiltonian World Models as a physically grounded perspective on world modeling. The key idea is to encode observations into a structured latent phase space, evolve the latent state through Hamiltonian-inspired dynamics with control, dissipation, and residual terms, decode the predicted trajectory into future observations, and use the resulting rollouts for planning. We discuss how Hamiltonian structure may improve interpretability, data efficiency, and long-horizon stability, while also noting practical challenges in real-world robotic scenes involving friction, contact, non-conservative forces, and deformable objects.

  • 2 authors
·
Apr 30

Improving Long-Range Interactions in Graph Neural Simulators via Hamiltonian Dynamics

Learning to simulate complex physical systems from data has emerged as a promising way to overcome the limitations of traditional numerical solvers, which often require prohibitive computational costs for high-fidelity solutions. Recent Graph Neural Simulators (GNSs) accelerate simulations by learning dynamics on graph-structured data, yet often struggle to capture long-range interactions and suffer from error accumulation under autoregressive rollouts. To address these challenges, we propose Information-preserving Graph Neural Simulators (IGNS), a graph-based neural simulator built on the principles of Hamiltonian dynamics. This structure guarantees preservation of information across the graph, while extending to port-Hamiltonian systems allows the model to capture a broader class of dynamics, including non-conservative effects. IGNS further incorporates a warmup phase to initialize global context, geometric encoding to handle irregular meshes, and a multi-step training objective that facilitates PDE matching, where the trajectory produced by integrating the port-Hamiltonian core aligns with the ground-truth trajectory, thereby reducing rollout error. To evaluate these properties systematically, we introduce new benchmarks that target long-range dependencies and challenging external forcing scenarios. Across all tasks, IGNS consistently outperforms state-of-the-art GNSs, achieving higher accuracy and stability under challenging and complex dynamical systems. Our project page: https://thobotics.github.io/neural_pde_matching.

  • 7 authors
·
Nov 11, 2025

Towards Cross Domain Generalization of Hamiltonian Representation via Meta Learning

Recent advances in deep learning for physics have focused on discovering shared representations of target systems by incorporating physics priors or inductive biases into neural networks. While effective, these methods are limited to the system domain, where the type of system remains consistent and thus cannot ensure the adaptation to new, or unseen physical systems governed by different laws. For instance, a neural network trained on a mass-spring system cannot guarantee accurate predictions for the behavior of a two-body system or any other system with different physical laws. In this work, we take a significant leap forward by targeting cross domain generalization within the field of Hamiltonian dynamics. We model our system with a graph neural network and employ a meta learning algorithm to enable the model to gain experience over a distribution of tasks and make it adapt to new physics. Our approach aims to learn a unified Hamiltonian representation that is generalizable across multiple system domains, thereby overcoming the limitations of system-specific models. Our results demonstrate that the meta-trained model not only adapts effectively to new systems but also captures a generalized Hamiltonian representation that is consistent across different physical domains. Overall, through the use of meta learning, we offer a framework that achieves cross domain generalization, providing a step towards a unified model for understanding a wide array of dynamical systems via deep learning.

  • 2 authors
·
Dec 2, 2022

HaM-World: Soft-Hamiltonian World Models with Selective Memory for Planning

World models enable model-based planning through learned latent dynamics, but imagined rollouts become unstable as the planning horizon grows or the dynamics distribution shifts. We argue that this instability reflects two missing structures in planner-facing latents: history-conditioned memory for approximate Markov completeness, and geometric organization that separates configuration, momentum, and task semantics. We propose HaM-World (HMW), a structured world model that decomposes the latent state into a canonical (q, p) subspace and a context subspace c, while using Mamba selective state-space memory as the history-conditioned input to the same latent dynamics. Within this interface, (q, p) evolves through an energy-derived Hamiltonian vector field plus learnable residual/control dynamics, while c captures semantic, dissipative, and non-conservative factors. This gives the planner a single latent state shared by dynamics prediction, reward/value estimation, imagined rollouts, and CEM action search. On four DeepMind Control Suite tasks, HaM-World reaches the highest Avg. AUC (117.9, +9.5%), reduces long-horizon rollout error to 45% of a strong baseline model, and wins 11/12 k in {3,5,7} MSE cells. Under 12 OOD perturbations spanning dynamics shifts, action delay, and observation masking, HaM-World achieves the highest return in every condition, with average OOD-return gains of 10.2% on Finger Spin and 13.6% on Reacher Easy. Mechanism diagnostics further show bounded action-free Hamiltonian-energy drift, structured energy variation under policy rollouts, and coherent control-induced energy transfer, supporting the intended Soft-Hamiltonian dynamics design.

  • 5 authors
·
May 6

amangkurat: A Python Library for Symplectic Pseudo-Spectral Solution of the Idealized (1+1)D Nonlinear Klein-Gordon Equation

This study introduces amangkurat, an open-source Python library designed for the robust numerical simulation of relativistic scalar field dynamics governed by the nonlinear Klein-Gordon equation in (1+1)D spacetime. The software implements a hybrid computational strategy that couples Fourier pseudo-spectral spatial discretization with a symplectic Størmer-Verlet temporal integrator, ensuring both exponential spatial convergence for smooth solutions and long-term preservation of Hamiltonian structure. To optimize performance, the solver incorporates adaptive timestepping based on Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy (CFL) stability criteria and utilizes Just-In-Time (JIT) compilation for parallelized force computation. The library's capabilities are validated across four canonical physical regimes: dispersive linear wave propagation, static topological kink preservation in phi-fourth theory, integrable breather dynamics in the sine-Gordon model, and non-integrable kink-antikink collisions. Beyond standard numerical validation, this work establishes a multi-faceted analysis framework employing information-theoretic entropy metrics (Shannon, Rényi, and Tsallis), kernel density estimation, and phase space reconstruction to quantify the distinct phenomenological signatures of these regimes. Statistical hypothesis testing confirms that these scenarios represent statistically distinguishable dynamical populations. Benchmarks on standard workstation hardware demonstrate that the implementation achieves high computational efficiency, making it a viable platform for exploratory research and education in nonlinear field theory.

  • 2 authors
·
Dec 27, 2025

Quantum advantage from random geometrically-two-local Hamiltonian dynamics

Classical hardness-of-sampling results are largely established for random quantum circuits, whereas analog simulators natively realize time evolutions under geometrically local Hamiltonians. Does a typical such Hamiltonian already yield classically-intractable dynamics? We answer this question in the affirmative for the ensemble of geometrically-2-local Hamiltonians with Gaussian coefficients, evolved for constant time. This naturally leads to a quantum advantage scheme with clear prospects for experimental realization, necessitating only course-grained control. We give strong evidence of hardness for this physically-relevant ensemble. We develop the first worst-to-average-case reduction for approximating output probabilities of (time-independent) geometrically-2-local Hamiltonian evolutions. Our reduction proceeds by nonstandard means: while we also leverage polynomial interpolation, unlike previous works, we reduce directly to an evaluator for the exact distribution over Hamiltonians, from which we are trying to prove that sampling is hard. Previous works instead sampled from various perturbations of the true distribution, introducing additional constraints meant to keep the perturbation, measured in total variation distance, under control. We dispense with this step. Our reduction consists in a robust multivariate polynomial interpolation, reduced to sequential robust univariate interpolations via the symmetries of the Gaussian. We circumvent the fact that random Hamiltonians lack a hiding symmetry, a key property in previous proofs. We also contribute an algorithmic version of Berlekamp-Welch to deal with errored evaluations, solving an open problem from the RCS literature. We expect the machinery we develop to find use in average-case Hamiltonian complexity, filling in a gap in this literature which has thus far focussed on worst-case hardness results.

  • 1 authors
·
Oct 6, 2025

Momentum Attention: The Physics of In-Context Learning and Spectral Forensics for Mechanistic Interpretability

The Mechanistic Interpretability (MI) program has mapped the Transformer as a precise computational graph. We extend this graph with a conservation law and time-varying AC dynamics, viewing it as a physical circuit. We introduce Momentum Attention, a symplectic augmentation embedding physical priors via the kinematic difference operator p_t = q_t - q_{t-1}, implementing the symplectic shear q_t = q_t + γp_t on queries and keys. We identify a fundamental Symplectic-Filter Duality: the physical shear is mathematically equivalent to a High-Pass Filter. This duality is our cornerstone contribution -- by injecting kinematic momentum, we sidestep the topological depth constraint (L geq 2) for induction head formation. While standard architectures require two layers for induction from static positions, our extension grants direct access to velocity, enabling Single-Layer Induction and Spectral Forensics via Bode Plots. We formalize an Orthogonality Theorem proving that DC (semantic) and AC (mechanistic) signals segregate into orthogonal frequency bands when Low-Pass RoPE interacts with High-Pass Momentum. Validated through 5,100+ controlled experiments (documented in Supplementary Appendices A--R and 27 Jupyter notebooks), our 125M Momentum model exceeds expectations on induction-heavy tasks while tracking a 350M baseline within sim2.9% validation loss. Dedicated associative recall experiments reveal a scaling law γ^* = 4.17 times N^{-0.74} establishing momentum-depth fungibility. We offer this framework as a complementary analytical toolkit connecting Generative AI, Hamiltonian Physics, and Signal Processing.

  • 1 authors
·
Feb 3

Ground State Preparation via Dynamical Cooling

Quantum algorithms for probing ground-state properties of quantum systems require good initial states. Projection-based methods such as eigenvalue filtering rely on inputs that have a significant overlap with the low-energy subspace, which can be challenging for large, strongly-correlated systems. This issue has motivated the study of physically-inspired dynamical approaches such as thermodynamic cooling. In this work, we introduce a ground-state preparation algorithm based on the simulation of quantum dynamics. Our main insight is to transform the Hamiltonian by a shifted sign function via quantum signal processing, effectively mapping eigenvalues into positive and negative subspaces separated by a large gap. This automatically ensures that all states within each subspace conserve energy with respect to the transformed Hamiltonian. Subsequent time-evolution with a perturbed Hamiltonian induces transitions to lower-energy states while preventing unwanted jumps to higher energy states. The approach does not rely on a priori knowledge of energy gaps and requires no additional qubits to model a bath. Furthermore, it makes mathcal{O}(d^{,3/2}/epsilon) queries to the time-evolution operator of the system and mathcal{O}(d^{,3/2}) queries to a block-encoding of the perturbation, for d cooling steps and an epsilon-accurate energy resolution. Our results provide a framework for combining quantum signal processing and Hamiltonian simulation to design heuristic quantum algorithms for ground-state preparation.

  • 4 authors
·
Apr 8, 2024

Leslie Population Models in Predator-prey and Competitive populations: theory and applications by machine learning

We introduce a new predator-prey model by replacing the growth and predation constant by a square matrix, and the population density as a population vector. The classical Lotka-Volterra model describes a population that either modulates or converges. Stability analysis of such models have been extensively studied by the works of Merdan (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chaos.2007.06.062). The new model adds complexity by introducing an age group structure where the population of each age group evolves as prescribed by the Leslie matrix. The added complexity changes the behavior of the model such that the population either displays roughly an exponential growth or decay. We first provide an exact equation that describes a time evolution and use analytic techniques to obtain an approximate growth factor. We also discuss the variants of the Leslie model, i.e., the complex value predator-prey model and the competitive model. We then prove the Last Species Standing theorem that determines the dominant population in the large time limit. The recursive structure of the model denies the application of simple regression. We discuss a machine learning scheme that allows an admissible fit for the population evolution of Paramecium Aurelia and Paramecium Caudatum. Another potential avenue to simplify the computation is to use the machinery of quantum operators. We demonstrate the potential of this approach by computing the Hamiltonian of a simple Leslie system.

  • 5 authors
·
Dec 20, 2024

Towards A Universally Transferable Acceleration Method for Density Functional Theory

Recently, sophisticated deep learning-based approaches have been developed for generating efficient initial guesses to accelerate the convergence of density functional theory (DFT) calculations. While the actual initial guesses are often density matrices (DM), quantities that can convert into density matrices also qualify as alternative forms of initial guesses. Hence, existing works mostly rely on the prediction of the Hamiltonian matrix for obtaining high-quality initial guesses. However, the Hamiltonian matrix is both numerically difficult to predict and intrinsically non-transferable, hindering the application of such models in real scenarios. In light of this, we propose a method that constructs DFT initial guesses by predicting the electron density in a compact auxiliary basis representation using E(3)-equivariant neural networks. Trained on small molecules with up to 20 atoms, our model is able to achieve an average 33.3% self-consistent field (SCF) step reduction on systems up to 60 atoms, substantially outperforming Hamiltonian-centric and DM-centric models. Critically, this acceleration remains nearly constant with increasing system sizes and exhibits strong transferring behaviors across orbital basis sets and exchange-correlation (XC) functionals. To the best of our knowledge, this work represents the first and robust candidate for a universally transferable DFT acceleration method. We are also releasing the SCFbench dataset and its accompanying code to facilitate future research in this promising direction.

  • 6 authors
·
Sep 29, 2025

Limits and Powers of Koopman Learning

Dynamical systems provide a comprehensive way to study complex and changing behaviors across various sciences. Many modern systems are too complicated to analyze directly or we do not have access to models, driving significant interest in learning methods. Koopman operators have emerged as a dominant approach because they allow the study of nonlinear dynamics using linear techniques by solving an infinite-dimensional spectral problem. However, current algorithms face challenges such as lack of convergence, hindering practical progress. This paper addresses a fundamental open question: When can we robustly learn the spectral properties of Koopman operators from trajectory data of dynamical systems, and when can we not? Understanding these boundaries is crucial for analysis, applications, and designing algorithms. We establish a foundational approach that combines computational analysis and ergodic theory, revealing the first fundamental barriers -- universal for any algorithm -- associated with system geometry and complexity, regardless of data quality and quantity. For instance, we demonstrate well-behaved smooth dynamical systems on tori where non-trivial eigenfunctions of the Koopman operator cannot be determined by any sequence of (even randomized) algorithms, even with unlimited training data. Additionally, we identify when learning is possible and introduce optimal algorithms with verification that overcome issues in standard methods. These results pave the way for a sharp classification theory of data-driven dynamical systems based on how many limits are needed to solve a problem. These limits characterize all previous methods, presenting a unified view. Our framework systematically determines when and how Koopman spectral properties can be learned.

  • 3 authors
·
Jul 8, 2024

Equivariant Neural Networks for Force-Field Models of Lattice Systems

Machine-learning (ML) force fields enable large-scale simulations with near-first-principles accuracy at substantially reduced computational cost. Recent work has extended ML force-field approaches to adiabatic dynamical simulations of condensed-matter lattice models with coupled electronic and structural or magnetic degrees of freedom. However, most existing formulations rely on hand-crafted, symmetry-aware descriptors, whose construction is often system-specific and can hinder generality and transferability across different lattice Hamiltonians. Here we introduce a symmetry-preserving framework based on equivariant neural networks (ENNs) that provides a general, data-driven mapping from local configurations of dynamical variables to the associated on-site forces in a lattice Hamiltonian. In contrast to ENN architectures developed for molecular systems -- where continuous Euclidean symmetries dominate -- our approach aims to embed the discrete point-group and internal symmetries intrinsic to lattice models directly into the neural-network representation of the force field. As a proof of principle, we construct an ENN-based force-field model for the adiabatic dynamics of the Holstein Hamiltonian on a square lattice, a canonical system for electron-lattice physics. The resulting ML-enabled large-scale dynamical simulations faithfully capture mesoscale evolution of the symmetry-breaking phase, illustrating the utility of lattice-equivariant architectures for linking microscopic electronic processes to emergent dynamical behavior in condensed-matter lattice systems.

  • 2 authors
·
Jan 7

Physics-informed Reduced Order Modeling of Time-dependent PDEs via Differentiable Solvers

Reduced-order modeling (ROM) of time-dependent and parameterized differential equations aims to accelerate the simulation of complex high-dimensional systems by learning a compact latent manifold representation that captures the characteristics of the solution fields and their time-dependent dynamics. Although high-fidelity numerical solvers generate the training datasets, they have thus far been excluded from the training process, causing the learned latent dynamics to drift away from the discretized governing physics. This mismatch often limits generalization and forecasting capabilities. In this work, we propose Physics-informed ROM (Φ-ROM) by incorporating differentiable PDE solvers into the training procedure. Specifically, the latent space dynamics and its dependence on PDE parameters are shaped directly by the governing physics encoded in the solver, ensuring a strong correspondence between the full and reduced systems. Our model outperforms state-of-the-art data-driven ROMs and other physics-informed strategies by accurately generalizing to new dynamics arising from unseen parameters, enabling long-term forecasting beyond the training horizon, maintaining continuity in both time and space, and reducing the data cost. Furthermore, Φ-ROM learns to recover and forecast the solution fields even when trained or evaluated with sparse and irregular observations of the fields, providing a flexible framework for field reconstruction and data assimilation. We demonstrate the framework's robustness across various PDE solvers and highlight its broad applicability by providing an open-source JAX implementation that is readily extensible to other PDE systems and differentiable solvers, available at https://phi-rom.github.io.

  • 4 authors
·
May 20, 2025

Kinodynamic RRT*: Optimal Motion Planning for Systems with Linear Differential Constraints

We present Kinodynamic RRT*, an incremental sampling-based approach for asymptotically optimal motion planning for robots with linear differential constraints. Our approach extends RRT*, which was introduced for holonomic robots (Karaman et al. 2011), by using a fixed-final-state-free-final-time controller that exactly and optimally connects any pair of states, where the cost function is expressed as a trade-off between the duration of a trajectory and the expended control effort. Our approach generalizes earlier work on extending RRT* to kinodynamic systems, as it guarantees asymptotic optimality for any system with controllable linear dynamics, in state spaces of any dimension. Our approach can be applied to non-linear dynamics as well by using their first-order Taylor approximations. In addition, we show that for the rich subclass of systems with a nilpotent dynamics matrix, closed-form solutions for optimal trajectories can be derived, which keeps the computational overhead of our algorithm compared to traditional RRT* at a minimum. We demonstrate the potential of our approach by computing asymptotically optimal trajectories in three challenging motion planning scenarios: (i) a planar robot with a 4-D state space and double integrator dynamics, (ii) an aerial vehicle with a 10-D state space and linearized quadrotor dynamics, and (iii) a car-like robot with a 5-D state space and non-linear dynamics.

  • 2 authors
·
May 22, 2012

The Active Discoverer Framework: Towards Autonomous Physics Reasoning through Neuro-Symbolic LaTeX Synthesis

Modern artificial intelligence excels at statistical interpolation within seen manifolds but fundamentally fails at the exact reasoning required for theoretical physics and mathematics. We identify the "Float Wall" -- a catastrophic collapse of neural extrapolation at scales beyond 10^{16} -- caused by standard floating-point representation and linguistic tokenization (BPE). To resolve this, we introduce the Active Discoverer Framework, a digit-native neuro-symbolic architecture designed for invariant discovery. At its core is NumberNet, a Siamese Arithmetic Transformer that utilizes least-significant-bit (LSB) sequence encoding to achieve 0% precision loss and cosmic-scale extrapolation up to 10^{50}. To enforce physical grounding, we implement a Hamiltonian-based energy descent and Symmetry Grouping layer, ensuring the model respects Noether's theorem natively. The primary innovation is the Symbolic LaTeX Bottleneck: an active discovery loop where the model is forced to hypothesize unknown physical variables through an autoregressive LaTeX decoder. By reconciling numeric "hallucinations" with structurally valid mathematical expressions, the framework ensures that any discovered physics is parsimonious and human-interpretable. We evaluate this system against a 30-billion scale benchmark and the Universal Physics Pantheon, featuring 50 "Chaos Mode" systemic perturbations. Our results demonstrate that while traditional GBDT and LLM-based architectures collapse at cosmic scales, the Active Discoverer autonomously deduces universal constants such as the Gravitational Constant (G) with high fidelity. This framework establishes a path toward zero-hallucination artificial intelligence and truly autonomous scientific research agents.

  • 1 authors
·
Mar 14

DyMixOp: Guiding Neural Operator Design for PDEs from a Complex Dynamics Perspective with Local-Global-Mixing

A primary challenge in using neural networks to approximate nonlinear dynamical systems governed by partial differential equations (PDEs) is transforming these systems into a suitable format, especially when dealing with non-linearizable dynamics or the need for infinite-dimensional spaces for linearization. This paper introduces DyMixOp, a novel neural operator framework for PDEs that integrates insights from complex dynamical systems to address this challenge. Grounded in inertial manifold theory, DyMixOp transforms infinite-dimensional nonlinear PDE dynamics into a finite-dimensional latent space, establishing a structured foundation that maintains essential nonlinear interactions and enhances physical interpretability. A key innovation is the Local-Global-Mixing (LGM) transformation, inspired by convection dynamics in turbulence. This transformation effectively captures both fine-scale details and nonlinear interactions, while mitigating spectral bias commonly found in existing neural operators. The framework is further strengthened by a dynamics-informed architecture that connects multiple LGM layers to approximate linear and nonlinear dynamics, reflecting the temporal evolution of dynamical systems. Experimental results across diverse PDE benchmarks demonstrate that DyMixOp achieves state-of-the-art performance, significantly reducing prediction errors, particularly in convection-dominated scenarios reaching up to 86.7\%, while maintaining computational efficiency and scalability.

  • 3 authors
·
Aug 18, 2025

On the Dynamics of Acceleration in First order Gradient Methods

Ever since the original algorithm by Nesterov (1983), the true nature of the acceleration phenomenon has remained elusive, with various interpretations of why the method is actually faster. The diagnosis of the algorithm through the lens of Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs) and the corresponding dynamical system formulation to explain the underlying dynamics has a rich history. In the literature, the ODEs that explain algorithms are typically derived by considering the limiting case of the algorithm maps themselves, that is, an ODE formulation follows the development of an algorithm. This obfuscates the underlying higher order principles and thus provides little evidence of the working of the algorithm. Such has been the case with Nesterov algorithm and the various analogies used to describe the acceleration phenomena, viz, momentum associated with the rolling of a Heavy-Ball down a slope, Hessian damping etc. The main focus of our work is to ideate the genesis of the Nesterov algorithm from the viewpoint of dynamical systems leading to demystifying the mathematical rigour behind the algorithm. Instead of reverse engineering ODEs from discrete algorithms, this work explores tools from the recently developed control paradigm titled Passivity and Immersion approach and the Geometric Singular Perturbation theory which are applied to arrive at the formulation of a dynamical system that explains and models the acceleration phenomena. This perspective helps to gain insights into the various terms present and the sequence of steps used in Nesterovs accelerated algorithm for the smooth strongly convex and the convex case. The framework can also be extended to derive the acceleration achieved using the triple momentum method and provides justifications for the non-convergence to the optimal solution in the Heavy-Ball method.

  • 5 authors
·
Sep 22, 2025

A Topological and Operator Algebraic Framework for Asynchronous Lattice Dynamical Systems

I introduce a novel mathematical framework integrating topological dynamics, operator algebras, and ergodic geometry to study lattices of asynchronous metric dynamical systems. Each node in the lattice carries an internal flow represented by a one-parameter family of operators, evolving on its own time scale. I formalize stratified state spaces capturing multiple levels of synchronized behavior, define an asynchronous evolution metric that quantifies phase-offset distances between subsystems, and characterize emergent coherent topologies arising when subsystems synchronize. Within this framework, I develop formal operators for the evolution of each subsystem and give precise conditions under which phase-aligned synchronization occurs across the lattice. The main results include: (1) the existence and uniqueness of coherent (synchronized) states under a contractive coupling condition, (2) stability of these coherent states and criteria for their emergence as a collective phase transition in a continuous operator topology, and (3) the influence of symmetries, with group-invariant coupling leading to flow-invariant synchrony subspaces and structured cluster dynamics. Proofs are given for each theorem, demonstrating full mathematical rigor. In a final section, I discuss hypothetical applications of this framework to symbolic lattice systems (e.g. subshifts), to invariant group actions on dynamical lattices, and to operator fields over stratified manifolds in the spirit of noncommutative geometry. Throughout, I write in the first person to emphasize the exploratory nature of this work. The paper avoids any reference to cosmology or observers, focusing instead on clean, formal mathematics suitable for a broad array of dynamical systems.

  • 1 authors
·
May 14, 2025

NeuROK: Generative 4D Neural Object Kinematics

Data-driven approaches have revolutionized 3D vision, enabling transformers to effectively reconstruct and generate static 3D objects. However, generating simulative 4D dynamics -- realistic temporal deformations of static objects under various physical conditions -- remains challenging and often ad hoc, despite its importance in building comprehensive 3D world models. Most existing methods assume a predefined physical model and use system identification to estimate parameters, restricting these methods to specific categories and small-scale datasets. We propose that these restrictions can be overcome by learning a data-driven kinematic state parameterization for object-centric physical systems. Specifically, we learn both a latent space representing all possible states of the object and a decoder that maps any sampled latent to a plausibly deformed shape of the object. We refer to this parameterization as Neural Object Kinematics (NeuROK), and learn a transformer-based encoder-decoder model on a curated large-scale 4D dataset. This formulation and the learned model significantly simplify the generation of simulative dynamics since we only need to consider the dynamics within a low-dimensional latent space from the Lagrangian mechanics' perspective in classical physics. We demonstrate the effectiveness and generality of this neural simulation framework across diverse dynamic object types, showing clear advantages over prior works. Project page: https://chen-geng.com/neurok

  • 6 authors
·
May 27 2

Deep Learning for Solving and Estimating Dynamic Models in Economics and Finance

This script offers an implementation-oriented introduction to deep learning methods for solving and estimating high-dimensional dynamic stochastic models in economics and finance. Its starting point is the curse of dimensionality: heterogeneous-agent economies, overlapping-generations models with aggregate risk, continuous-time models with occasionally binding constraints, climate-economy models, and macro-finance environments with many assets and frictions generate state and parameter spaces that strain classical tensor-product grid methods. The exposition is organized around four complementary methodologies. Deep Equilibrium Nets embed discrete-time equilibrium conditions into neural-network loss functions. Physics-Informed Neural Networks approximate continuous-time Hamilton--Jacobi--Bellman, Kolmogorov forward, and related partial differential equations. Deep surrogate models provide fast, differentiable approximations to expensive structural models, while Gaussian processes add a probabilistic layer that quantifies approximation uncertainty; together they support estimation, sensitivity analysis, and constrained policy design. Gaussian-process-based dynamic programming, combined with active learning and dimension reduction, extends value-function iteration to very large continuous state spaces. Applications span representative-agent and international real business cycle models, overlapping-generations and heterogeneous-agent economies, continuous-time macro-finance, structural estimation by simulated method of moments, and climate economics under uncertainty. Companion notebooks in TensorFlow and PyTorch invite hands-on experimentation. These notes are a deliberately subjective and inevitably incomplete snapshot of a rapidly evolving field, aimed at equipping PhD students and researchers to engage with this frontier hands-on.

  • 1 authors
·
May 13

Respecting causality is all you need for training physics-informed neural networks

While the popularity of physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) is steadily rising, to this date PINNs have not been successful in simulating dynamical systems whose solution exhibits multi-scale, chaotic or turbulent behavior. In this work we attribute this shortcoming to the inability of existing PINNs formulations to respect the spatio-temporal causal structure that is inherent to the evolution of physical systems. We argue that this is a fundamental limitation and a key source of error that can ultimately steer PINN models to converge towards erroneous solutions. We address this pathology by proposing a simple re-formulation of PINNs loss functions that can explicitly account for physical causality during model training. We demonstrate that this simple modification alone is enough to introduce significant accuracy improvements, as well as a practical quantitative mechanism for assessing the convergence of a PINNs model. We provide state-of-the-art numerical results across a series of benchmarks for which existing PINNs formulations fail, including the chaotic Lorenz system, the Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation in the chaotic regime, and the Navier-Stokes equations in the turbulent regime. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that PINNs have been successful in simulating such systems, introducing new opportunities for their applicability to problems of industrial complexity.

  • 3 authors
·
Mar 14, 2022

Hierarchical Melnikov Realization: Logarithmic Factor Improvement to Hilbert Number Lower Bounds

The second part of Hilbert's 16th problem is one of the most fundamental open problems in the qualitative theory of ordinary differential equations and dynamical systems. A central unresolved question is whether the Hilbert number H(d) is finite for arbitrary polynomial degree d. (A very recent manuscript from OpenAI asserts the finiteness of H(d); see the remark at the end of this paper.) In the absence of a general upper bound theory, most existing work constructs explicit perturbed polynomial systems to obtain improved lower bounds for H(d), while rigorous upper bound estimates remain largely unavailable. This paper focuses on improving the quantitative lower bound for polynomial systems through a systematic Hierarchical Melnikov Realization framework. We construct perturbed dynamics based on an anisotropic Chebyshev Hamiltonian, where hierarchically selected perturbation coefficients generate simple zeros of the first-order Melnikov function simultaneously across multiple disjoint period annuli. Two distinct 3-adic filtrations supply the necessary logarithmic correction factors, and a Borel--Gauss analysis establishes the required local rank condition under sufficiently strong anisotropy. As the main result of this work, we prove that H(d)=Ωbigl(d^2ln^2 dbigr), which improves the previously known lower bound by a factor of ln d. The full construction of limit cycles and the resulting dynamical bounds are formally certified using Lean 4 formal verification.

  • 2 authors
·
Oct 7

Latent Dynamics Graph Convolutional Networks for model order reduction of parameterized time-dependent PDEs

Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) are emerging as powerful tools for nonlinear Model Order Reduction (MOR) of time-dependent parameterized Partial Differential Equations (PDEs). However, existing methodologies struggle to combine geometric inductive biases with interpretable latent behavior, overlooking dynamics-driven features or disregarding spatial information. In this work, we address this gap by introducing Latent Dynamics Graph Convolutional Network (LD-GCN), a purely data-driven, encoder-free architecture that learns a global, low-dimensional representation of dynamical systems conditioned on external inputs and parameters. The temporal evolution is modeled in the latent space and advanced through time-stepping, allowing for time-extrapolation, and the trajectories are consistently decoded onto geometrically parameterized domains using a GNN. Our framework enhances interpretability by enabling the analysis of the reduced dynamics and supporting zero-shot prediction through latent interpolation. The methodology is mathematically validated via a universal approximation theorem for encoder-free architectures, and numerically tested on complex computational mechanics problems involving physical and geometric parameters, including the detection of bifurcating phenomena for Navier-Stokes equations. Code availability: https://github.com/lorenzotomada/ld-gcn-rom

  • 3 authors
·
Jan 15

Identifiable World Models from Pretrained Diffusion Representations

Diffusion-based world models can generate and predict trajectories in high-dimensional dynamical systems, but predictive accuracy does not imply that their latent coordinates recover the underlying state variables or causal interactions. We ask whether a frozen pretrained diffusion model can be equipped with identifiable coordinates without retraining its generative backbone. We show that auxiliary-variable nonlinear ICA guarantees can be transferred to Contrastive Diffusion Alignment (ConDA), which learns only a lightweight alignment map on top of frozen diffusion latents. Under standard TCL/GCL assumptions, the aligned representation identifies latent dynamical states up to permutation and componentwise invertible transformations, preserves the latent dynamic structural causal model, and reduces lagged graph recovery to transition-Jacobian sparsity. We evaluate TCL-, GCL-, and CEBRA-based ConDA against TDRL, CaRiNG, IDOL, temporal SuaVE, and iVAE across physical and robotic video systems. TCL and GCL achieve near-perfect blockwise state recovery and competitive lagged graph recovery, including exact recovery in a simulated falling-body system. In a simulated bipedal robot, learned dynamics recover the sign and temporal structure of responses to held-out control perturbations. These results show that a frozen generative diffusion model can be equipped with coordinates that are identifiable, structurally interpretable, and useful for analyzing intervention-relevant dynamics.

  • 3 authors
·
Oct 3

Physical structure as an organizing principle for universal Hamiltonian learning

Density functional theory (DFT) gives the electronic structure of materials, but its cost limits large-supercell calculations and materials screening. Machine-learned Hamiltonians bypass the self-consistent cycle but are usually system-specific; universal ones could cover new compositions and disordered solids. Such models must generalize across chemistry and keep downstream properties physical, while staying inexpensive for large cells. Here we introduce UniTB, a universal E(3) equivariant Hamiltonian representation framework that integrates physical priors rooted in density-functional tight-binding theory with deep learning. UniTB's network, which corrects a prior Hamiltonian, generalizes across chemistry through a mixture of experts routed by that prior and a charge-equilibration head as in self-consistent-charge tight binding. A projection bounds band shifts from the prior, suppressing spurious states and keeping downstream properties physical. We provide the fastest SO(2) tensor-product GPU kernels for the network. The variant UniTB-Flash assembles its prior from two-center tables at O(N) cost for N atoms, against O(Nlog N) on a grid. Trained on 29,242 crystals, UniTB reaches a 0.48 meV matrix-element error on nonmagnetic test crystals spanning 68 elements. Without amorphous training data, both models agree with DFT optics and conductivity of amorphous Ge-Sb-Te. UniTB-Flash ranks candidates with no significant difference from UniTB, whose property values are more accurate; together they screen 16,195 crystals for five application domains of industrial relevance.

  • 6 authors
·
Oct 25

Chaos as an interpretable benchmark for forecasting and data-driven modelling

The striking fractal geometry of strange attractors underscores the generative nature of chaos: like probability distributions, chaotic systems can be repeatedly measured to produce arbitrarily-detailed information about the underlying attractor. Chaotic systems thus pose a unique challenge to modern statistical learning techniques, while retaining quantifiable mathematical properties that make them controllable and interpretable as benchmarks. Here, we present a growing database currently comprising 131 known chaotic dynamical systems spanning fields such as astrophysics, climatology, and biochemistry. Each system is paired with precomputed multivariate and univariate time series. Our dataset has comparable scale to existing static time series databases; however, our systems can be re-integrated to produce additional datasets of arbitrary length and granularity. Our dataset is annotated with known mathematical properties of each system, and we perform feature analysis to broadly categorize the diverse dynamics present across the collection. Chaotic systems inherently challenge forecasting models, and across extensive benchmarks we correlate forecasting performance with the degree of chaos present. We also exploit the unique generative properties of our dataset in several proof-of-concept experiments: surrogate transfer learning to improve time series classification, importance sampling to accelerate model training, and benchmarking symbolic regression algorithms.

  • 1 authors
·
Oct 11, 2021

PhyMPGN: Physics-encoded Message Passing Graph Network for spatiotemporal PDE systems

Solving partial differential equations (PDEs) serves as a cornerstone for modeling complex dynamical systems. Recent progresses have demonstrated grand benefits of data-driven neural-based models for predicting spatiotemporal dynamics (e.g., tremendous speedup gain compared with classical numerical methods). However, most existing neural models rely on rich training data, have limited extrapolation and generalization abilities, and suffer to produce precise or reliable physical prediction under intricate conditions (e.g., irregular mesh or geometry, complex boundary conditions, diverse PDE parameters, etc.). To this end, we propose a new graph learning approach, namely, Physics-encoded Message Passing Graph Network (PhyMPGN), to model spatiotemporal PDE systems on irregular meshes given small training datasets. Specifically, we incorporate a GNN into a numerical integrator to approximate the temporal marching of spatiotemporal dynamics for a given PDE system. Considering that many physical phenomena are governed by diffusion processes, we further design a learnable Laplace block, which encodes the discrete Laplace-Beltrami operator, to aid and guide the GNN learning in a physically feasible solution space. A boundary condition padding strategy is also designed to improve the model convergence and accuracy. Extensive experiments demonstrate that PhyMPGN is capable of accurately predicting various types of spatiotemporal dynamics on coarse unstructured meshes, consistently achieves the state-of-the-art results, and outperforms other baselines with considerable gains.

  • 9 authors
·
Mar 2, 2025

Orbital Error Dynamics: Self-Organized Criticality, Ephemeral Parameter Resonance, and Non-Linear Biological Ontologies in Zero-Storage Neural Synthesis

Modern deep neural networks treat parameters as static floating-point matrices stored in physical memory, incurring Von Neumann memory bottlenecks and representation collapse. We formulate Orbital Error Dynamics (OED), an analytical framework wherein synaptic weights are not stored masses (O(W)), but transient topological resonances (O(1)) derived procedurally from the complex quadratic polynomial map z_{n+1} = z_n^2 + c. We introduce the Bent Sine Wave Hypothesis, demonstrating that non-equilibrium living systems emerge when harmonic waves curl inward through environmental drag toward the cardioid cusp (c = 1/4). We define the Observer Horizon Geometry in parameter space, identifying interior resonance shoulder loci X_upper = (0.25, +0.18) and X_lower = (0.25, -0.18) between the fixed-point basin and the true boundary at c = 0.25 +/- 0.50i. To escape non-convex stagnation without loss zeroing, we introduce a heavy-tailed Biomimetic Perturbed Jump Operator (Omega_tunneling) inspired by mammalian fertilization zinc sparks. We further couple an enteric-cranial Dual-Brain architecture shielded by adaptive CD4+ regulatory immune gating (M_CD4), and project the 4-nucleotide genetic basis (A, T, C, G) across quadrants in C. Multi-seed empirical validation on the Two-Moons manifold (5 seeds, 80/20 train/test split, 32x32 grid, zero test-time updates, zero label leakage) demonstrates that procedural parameterization from a 24-byte coordinate seed achieves 77.67% +/- 5.35% clean test accuracy (within an 8.00-point paired difference of an unconstrained gradient baseline at 85.67% +/- 5.35%, 95% CI: [-1.07%, 17.07%]) and 71.33% +/- 3.80% under distribution shift (N(1.2, 0.4)), alongside conceptual equivalence with an analog optical co-processor.

  • 3 authors
·
Sep 23

Mamba Integrated with Physics Principles Masters Long-term Chaotic System Forecasting

Long-term forecasting of chaotic systems from short-term observations remains a fundamental and underexplored challenge due to the intrinsic sensitivity to initial conditions and the complex geometry of strange attractors. Existing approaches often rely on long-term training data or focus on short-term sequence correlations, struggling to maintain predictive stability and dynamical coherence over extended horizons. We propose PhyxMamba, a novel framework that integrates a Mamba-based state-space model with physics-informed principles to capture the underlying dynamics of chaotic systems. By reconstructing the attractor manifold from brief observations using time-delay embeddings, PhyxMamba extracts global dynamical features essential for accurate forecasting. Our generative training scheme enables Mamba to replicate the physical process, augmented by multi-token prediction and attractor geometry regularization for physical constraints, enhancing prediction accuracy and preserving key statistical invariants. Extensive evaluations on diverse simulated and real-world chaotic systems demonstrate that PhyxMamba delivers superior long-term forecasting and faithfully captures essential dynamical invariants from short-term data. This framework opens new avenues for reliably predicting chaotic systems under observation-scarce conditions, with broad implications across climate science, neuroscience, epidemiology, and beyond. Our code is open-source at https://github.com/tsinghua-fib-lab/PhyxMamba.

  • 5 authors
·
May 29, 2025

Lagrangian PINNs: A causality-conforming solution to failure modes of physics-informed neural networks

Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) leverage neural-networks to find the solutions of partial differential equation (PDE)-constrained optimization problems with initial conditions and boundary conditions as soft constraints. These soft constraints are often considered to be the sources of the complexity in the training phase of PINNs. Here, we demonstrate that the challenge of training (i) persists even when the boundary conditions are strictly enforced, and (ii) is closely related to the Kolmogorov n-width associated with problems demonstrating transport, convection, traveling waves, or moving fronts. Given this realization, we describe the mechanism underlying the training schemes such as those used in eXtended PINNs (XPINN), curriculum regularization, and sequence-to-sequence learning. For an important category of PDEs, i.e., governed by non-linear convection-diffusion equation, we propose reformulating PINNs on a Lagrangian frame of reference, i.e., LPINNs, as a PDE-informed solution. A parallel architecture with two branches is proposed. One branch solves for the state variables on the characteristics, and the second branch solves for the low-dimensional characteristics curves. The proposed architecture conforms to the causality innate to the convection, and leverages the direction of travel of the information in the domain. Finally, we demonstrate that the loss landscapes of LPINNs are less sensitive to the so-called "complexity" of the problems, compared to those in the traditional PINNs in the Eulerian framework.

  • 3 authors
·
May 5, 2022

Hybrid Neural World Models

Neural surrogates promise large speedups over classical solvers for physical dynamics but fail silently at sharp dynamical events such as shocks, fronts, and contact. We present hybrid neural world models for physical dynamics: a recipe for training and deploying multi-horizon surrogates in physical state space, where a single network with continuous horizon conditioning is trained with direct supervision against textbook reference solvers to predict any future state at horizon T in one forward pass. Although no part of the training data, loss function, or architecture supervises discontinuity location, the trained surrogate encodes it implicitly, recoverable from its forward passes alone as a per-trajectory error map that concentrates on shocks, fronts, and contacts, and stays small elsewhere. The map is competitive with or better than standard label-free baselines including deep ensembles, learned error heads, gradient-magnitude indicators, and locally-adaptive conformal prediction, while using only a single trained network and requiring no calibration set or governing-equation knowledge. The recipe supports two operating points. Mode 1 runs the surrogate alone for maximum throughput, with same-hardware CPU speedups of 26x to 72x against textbook solvers on the PDE environments. Mode 2 uses the error map to gate a reference-solver fallback, deferring uncertain trajectories and roughly halving the surrogate's residual error at the default operating point. The recipe applies without modification across reaction-diffusion, compressible Euler, and rigid-body collision dynamics.

  • 2 authors
·
May 26 1

ODEWorld: A Continuous Predictive Architecture via Physical-Time Flow

In the physical world we inhabit, space and time are fundamentally continuous. However, existing machine learning paradigms for world modeling are largely confined to discrete-time prediction, thereby exhibiting significant inefficiency in capturing the dynamics of physical world. We introduce Physical-Time Flow (PT-Flow), a novel approach that learns a continuous latent velocity field operating in physical time. Crucially, the underlying dynamics of sequential data are parameterized by an ordinary differential equation (ODE) embedded in a well-structured representation space. Under this paradigm, the prediction of future can be recast as temporal integration via an ODE solver in the compressed latent space. Building upon PT-Flow, we construct ODEWorld, a continuous-time latent world model that is both efficient and versatile. By extracting time-variant features and enforcing ODE properties on both the dynamical representation space and the latent velocity field, ODEWorld effectively addresses the long-standing representation collapse issue in latent world model literature. This also enables high-quality image reconstruction even after long-horizon prediction. Moreover, its continuous nature allows for arbitrary temporal resolution and even backward prediction, which is impossible for most discrete-time models. Lastly, ODEWorld can provide rich planning-oriented information to facilitate downstream policy learning. Comprehensive experiments demonstrate that ODEWorld successfully reconciles planning-conducive dynamics abstraction with visual realism, excelling in both video generation and robotic control. https://dstate.github.io/odeworld_website/{Project Website}.

  • 8 authors
·
Jul 29 2

SkyJEPA: Learning Long-Horizon World Models for Zero-Shot Sim-to-Real Control of Quadrotors

Accurate dynamics models are critical for informed decision-making in robotic systems, particularly for agile aerial vehicles operating under uncertainty. Neural network dynamics models are attractive for capturing complex nonlinear effects, but existing predictive approaches struggle with long-horizon forecasting because their autoregressive rollout mechanism amplifies errors over time. Joint Embedding Predictive Architectures (JEPAs) offer a compelling alternative by modeling dynamics in latent space, yet prior JEPA-style methods for robot navigation have been studied primarily for kinematic-level planning, with limited investigation in high-frequency control. In this work, we introduce the JEPA-style model for real-time quadrotor control. The proposed approach combines a latent dynamics model with a novel physics-inspired prober that maps frozen latents to interpretable state, enabling physically grounded long-horizon prediction. Additionally, we combine the learned model with a sampling-based optimal control solution to take advantage of its predictive capabilities for real-time control on embedded hardware. Finally, to reduce the dependence on expensive and unsafe real-world data collection, we develop a structured pipeline for automated dataset generation. Extensive open-loop and outdoor closed-loop experiments demonstrate accurate prediction, robust zero-shot sim-to-real transfer, and strong generalization across diverse operating conditions.

  • 5 authors
·
Jun 22

The Hamilton-Jacobi Theory of Deep Learning

In this paper, training a neural network is identified, exactly, as a search through Hamilton--Jacobi initial-value problems: each gradient step selects the initial data of a viscous Hamilton--Jacobi equation whose Hopf--Cole propagator best fits the observations; at inference, the input is the spatial point at which that solution is evaluated and the initial condition is already encoded in the weights. The correspondence is exact for log-sum-exp layers and structural for broader architectures: residual networks, transformers, and recurrent architectures (RNNs, LSTMs, SSMs) each discretize the same class of Hamilton--Jacobi equations, with architecture-dependent Hamiltonian and viscosity. A single deformation parameter varepsilon unifies all four perspectives (network, tropical algebra, viscous PDE, convex optimization) in a commutative diagram closed under Lipschitz conditions. Quantitative consequences include: the minimax optimal generalization rate O(n^{-1/(d+2)}) for fixed t; adversarial robustness controlled by varepsilon; backpropagation as the co-state equation of the Hamiltonian system for residual networks (Pontryagin Maximum Principle); scaling exponents consistent with data intrinsic dimension via PDE quadrature; and a closed-form O(N) influence function (softmax attribution weights π_j) whose entropy landscape undergoes fold bifurcations as varepsilon increases, each merging attribution basins.

Noether's Learning Dynamics: Role of Symmetry Breaking in Neural Networks

In nature, symmetry governs regularities, while symmetry breaking brings texture. In artificial neural networks, symmetry has been a central design principle to efficiently capture regularities in the world, but the role of symmetry breaking is not well understood. Here, we develop a theoretical framework to study the "geometry of learning dynamics" in neural networks, and reveal a key mechanism of explicit symmetry breaking behind the efficiency and stability of modern neural networks. To build this understanding, we model the discrete learning dynamics of gradient descent using a continuous-time Lagrangian formulation, in which the learning rule corresponds to the kinetic energy and the loss function corresponds to the potential energy. Then, we identify "kinetic symmetry breaking" (KSB), the condition when the kinetic energy explicitly breaks the symmetry of the potential function. We generalize Noether's theorem known in physics to take into account KSB and derive the resulting motion of the Noether charge: "Noether's Learning Dynamics" (NLD). Finally, we apply NLD to neural networks with normalization layers and reveal how KSB introduces a mechanism of "implicit adaptive optimization", establishing an analogy between learning dynamics induced by normalization layers and RMSProp. Overall, through the lens of Lagrangian mechanics, we have established a theoretical foundation to discover geometric design principles for the learning dynamics of neural networks.

  • 2 authors
·
May 6, 2021

Almost-Linear RNNs Yield Highly Interpretable Symbolic Codes in Dynamical Systems Reconstruction

Dynamical systems (DS) theory is fundamental for many areas of science and engineering. It can provide deep insights into the behavior of systems evolving in time, as typically described by differential or recursive equations. A common approach to facilitate mathematical tractability and interpretability of DS models involves decomposing nonlinear DS into multiple linear DS separated by switching manifolds, i.e. piecewise linear (PWL) systems. PWL models are popular in engineering and a frequent choice in mathematics for analyzing the topological properties of DS. However, hand-crafting such models is tedious and only possible for very low-dimensional scenarios, while inferring them from data usually gives rise to unnecessarily complex representations with very many linear subregions. Here we introduce Almost-Linear Recurrent Neural Networks (AL-RNNs) which automatically and robustly produce most parsimonious PWL representations of DS from time series data, using as few PWL nonlinearities as possible. AL-RNNs can be efficiently trained with any SOTA algorithm for dynamical systems reconstruction (DSR), and naturally give rise to a symbolic encoding of the underlying DS that provably preserves important topological properties. We show that for the Lorenz and R\"ossler systems, AL-RNNs discover, in a purely data-driven way, the known topologically minimal PWL representations of the corresponding chaotic attractors. We further illustrate on two challenging empirical datasets that interpretable symbolic encodings of the dynamics can be achieved, tremendously facilitating mathematical and computational analysis of the underlying systems.

  • 4 authors
·
Oct 18, 2024

Physics-guided Deep Markov Models for Learning Nonlinear Dynamical Systems with Uncertainty

In this paper, we propose a probabilistic physics-guided framework, termed Physics-guided Deep Markov Model (PgDMM). The framework targets the inference of the characteristics and latent structure of nonlinear dynamical systems from measurement data, where exact inference of latent variables is typically intractable. A recently surfaced option pertains to leveraging variational inference to perform approximate inference. In such a scheme, transition and emission functions of the system are parameterized via feed-forward neural networks (deep generative models). However, due to the generalized and highly versatile formulation of neural network functions, the learned latent space often lacks physical interpretation and structured representation. To address this, we bridge physics-based state space models with Deep Markov Models, thus delivering a hybrid modeling framework for unsupervised learning and identification of nonlinear dynamical systems. The proposed framework takes advantage of the expressive power of deep learning, while retaining the driving physics of the dynamical system by imposing physics-driven restrictions on the side of the latent space. We demonstrate the benefits of such a fusion in terms of achieving improved performance on illustrative simulation examples and experimental case studies of nonlinear systems. Our results indicate that the physics-based models involved in the employed transition and emission functions essentially enforce a more structured and physically interpretable latent space, which is essential for enhancing and generalizing the predictive capabilities of deep learning-based models.

  • 4 authors
·
Oct 16, 2021

Efficient and Scalable Density Functional Theory Hamiltonian Prediction through Adaptive Sparsity

Hamiltonian matrix prediction is pivotal in computational chemistry, serving as the foundation for determining a wide range of molecular properties. While SE(3) equivariant graph neural networks have achieved remarkable success in this domain, their substantial computational cost--driven by high-order tensor product (TP) operations--restricts their scalability to large molecular systems with extensive basis sets. To address this challenge, we introduce SPHNet, an efficient and scalable equivariant network, that incorporates adaptive SParsity into Hamiltonian prediction. SPHNet employs two innovative sparse gates to selectively constrain non-critical interaction combinations, significantly reducing tensor product computations while maintaining accuracy. To optimize the sparse representation, we develop a Three-phase Sparsity Scheduler, ensuring stable convergence and achieving high performance at sparsity rates of up to 70%. Extensive evaluations on QH9 and PubchemQH datasets demonstrate that SPHNet achieves state-of-the-art accuracy while providing up to a 7x speedup over existing models. Beyond Hamiltonian prediction, the proposed sparsification techniques also hold significant potential for improving the efficiency and scalability of other SE(3) equivariant networks, further broadening their applicability and impact. Our code can be found at https://github.com/microsoft/SPHNet.

  • 10 authors
·
Feb 3, 2025

Ultrafast Sampling-based Kinodynamic Planning via Differential Flatness

Motion planning under dynamics constraints, i.e., kinodynamic planning, enables safe robot operation by generating dynamically feasible trajectories that the robot can accurately track. For high-\dof robots such as manipulators, sampling-based motion planners are commonly used, especially for complex tasks in cluttered environments. However, enforcing constraints on robot dynamics in such planners requires solving either challenging two-point boundary value problems (BVPs) or propagating robot dynamics over time, both of which are computational bottlenecks that drastically increase planning times. Meanwhile, recent efforts have shown that sampling-based motion planners can generate plans in microseconds using parallelization, but are limited to geometric paths. This paper develops AkinoPDF, a fast parallelized sampling-based kinodynamic motion planning technique for a broad class of differentially flat robot systems, including manipulators, ground and aerial vehicles, and more. Differential flatness allows us to transform the motion planning problem from the original state space to a flat output space, where an analytical time-parameterized solution of the BVP and dynamics integration can be obtained. A trajectory in the flat output space is then converted back to a closed-form dynamically feasible trajectory in the original state space, enabling fast validation via ``single instruction, multiple data" parallelism. Our method is fast, exact, and compatible with any sampling-based motion planner. We extensively verify the effectiveness of our approach in both simulated benchmarks and real experiments with cluttered and dynamic environments, requiring mere microseconds to milliseconds of planning time.

  • 5 authors
·
Mar 16

PFGM++: Unlocking the Potential of Physics-Inspired Generative Models

We introduce a new family of physics-inspired generative models termed PFGM++ that unifies diffusion models and Poisson Flow Generative Models (PFGM). These models realize generative trajectories for N dimensional data by embedding paths in N{+}D dimensional space while still controlling the progression with a simple scalar norm of the D additional variables. The new models reduce to PFGM when D{=}1 and to diffusion models when D{to}infty. The flexibility of choosing D allows us to trade off robustness against rigidity as increasing D results in more concentrated coupling between the data and the additional variable norms. We dispense with the biased large batch field targets used in PFGM and instead provide an unbiased perturbation-based objective similar to diffusion models. To explore different choices of D, we provide a direct alignment method for transferring well-tuned hyperparameters from diffusion models (D{to} infty) to any finite D values. Our experiments show that models with finite D can be superior to previous state-of-the-art diffusion models on CIFAR-10/FFHQ 64{times}64 datasets, with FID scores of 1.91/2.43 when D{=}2048/128. In class-conditional setting, D{=}2048 yields current state-of-the-art FID of 1.74 on CIFAR-10. In addition, we demonstrate that models with smaller D exhibit improved robustness against modeling errors. Code is available at https://github.com/Newbeeer/pfgmpp

  • 6 authors
·
Feb 8, 2023

Autoregressive Transformer Neural Network for Simulating Open Quantum Systems via a Probabilistic Formulation

The theory of open quantum systems lays the foundations for a substantial part of modern research in quantum science and engineering. Rooted in the dimensionality of their extended Hilbert spaces, the high computational complexity of simulating open quantum systems calls for the development of strategies to approximate their dynamics. In this paper, we present an approach for tackling open quantum system dynamics. Using an exact probabilistic formulation of quantum physics based on positive operator-valued measure (POVM), we compactly represent quantum states with autoregressive transformer neural networks; such networks bring significant algorithmic flexibility due to efficient exact sampling and tractable density. We further introduce the concept of String States to partially restore the symmetry of the autoregressive transformer neural network and improve the description of local correlations. Efficient algorithms have been developed to simulate the dynamics of the Liouvillian superoperator using a forward-backward trapezoid method and find the steady state via a variational formulation. Our approach is benchmarked on prototypical one and two-dimensional systems, finding results which closely track the exact solution and achieve higher accuracy than alternative approaches based on using Markov chain Monte Carlo to sample restricted Boltzmann machines. Our work provides general methods for understanding quantum dynamics in various contexts, as well as techniques for solving high-dimensional probabilistic differential equations in classical setups.

  • 4 authors
·
Sep 11, 2020

Model scale versus domain knowledge in statistical forecasting of chaotic systems

Chaos and unpredictability are traditionally synonymous, yet large-scale machine learning methods recently have demonstrated a surprising ability to forecast chaotic systems well beyond typical predictability horizons. However, recent works disagree on whether specialized methods grounded in dynamical systems theory, such as reservoir computers or neural ordinary differential equations, outperform general-purpose large-scale learning methods such as transformers or recurrent neural networks. These prior studies perform comparisons on few individually-chosen chaotic systems, thereby precluding robust quantification of how statistical modeling choices and dynamical invariants of different chaotic systems jointly determine empirical predictability. Here, we perform the largest to-date comparative study of forecasting methods on the classical problem of forecasting chaos: we benchmark 24 state-of-the-art forecasting methods on a crowdsourced database of 135 low-dimensional systems with 17 forecast metrics. We find that large-scale, domain-agnostic forecasting methods consistently produce predictions that remain accurate up to two dozen Lyapunov times, thereby accessing a new long-horizon forecasting regime well beyond classical methods. We find that, in this regime, accuracy decorrelates with classical invariant measures of predictability like the Lyapunov exponent. However, in data-limited settings outside the long-horizon regime, we find that physics-based hybrid methods retain a comparative advantage due to their strong inductive biases.

  • 1 authors
·
Mar 12, 2023

Beyond the Ergodic Wall: A Discrete Geometric Physics Sandbox for Analysing AI Scaling Limits and Complexity Collapse

This paper exposes the ergodic ceiling and thermodynamic inefficiency of current deep learning, which converges to a statistical average of historic human knowledge. True semantic novelty requires a path-dependent, spatiotemporally bounded observer (a Data LifeCone) to inject non-ergodic insight, achieving KL divergence and avoiding manifold lock-in. AI Safety must recognise that a mature Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) would regard human-AI symbiosis as a thermodynamic necessity to avoid model collapse. We therefore propose hard physical containment via a digital physics sandbox powered by a Holographic E8 Projection Engine to verify models against real-world constraints. Spacetime is modeled as an information substrate of nested face-centered cubic (FCC) lattices of oscillating Planck-scale spheres maximizing local information and entropy density. Cut-and-project methods from the E8 root lattice produce a quasi-crystalline geometry where tetrahedral voids support SU chiral structure and elastic-shear eigenvalues generate candidate mass spectra. Rest mass is treated as discrete, integer microstate counts on local holographic boundaries (Bekenstein bound), replacing floating-point approximations with strict integer arithmetic to provide an information-theoretic definition of matter. Stable particles emerge as recurring lattice dislocations, and continuum recovery proceeds via variational renormalisation-group flows and Fourier Neural Operators that learn continuous spectral operators to recover the Schrödinger equation as an emergent statistical description. Crucially, these top-down topological constraints offer a mechanism for "NP-to-P" complexity collapse: by restricting an algorithm's proposal space to physically conserved causal trajectories, the sandbox prunes the combinatorial tree to deterministic, polynomial-time paths.

  • 1 authors
·
Oct 6

Deep Embedded Multiplicative DMD for Algebra-Preserving Koopman Learning

Koopman theory turns nonlinear dynamics into a linear spectral problem. In computation, however, everything depends on a hard finite-dimensional choice: the observables must be expressive, nearly invariant under the dynamics, and, ideally, compatible with composition. Deep Koopman methods learn flexible coordinates, whereas structure-preserving methods enforce operator identities on fixed dictionaries. We combine these ideas by introducing Deep Embedded Multiplicative Dynamic Mode Decomposition (DeepMDMD), a method that learns a latent space and a partition of it, while enforcing the Koopman product rule as an exact algebraic constraint. Training alternates between an exact multiplicative operator update and a differentiable latent-clustering step that promotes Koopman closure. The result is a finite transition map on learned latent cells. Its nonzero spectrum lies on the unit circle, its dictionary is shaped by the dynamics rather than by ambient geometry, and forecasts are made in latent coordinates before being decoded to physical space. Across Hamiltonian, chaotic, and fluid examples, DeepMDMD learns dictionaries that are far more compact and dynamically coherent than those produced by geometric MDMD partitions. It reduces spectral pollution, reveals richer continuous-spectrum structure, and gives stable forecasts under severe noise. In high-dimensional flows, including a 158,624-dimensional cylinder wake and a noisy Re=20,000 lid-driven cavity, it preserves coherent structures and long-time spectral statistics where state-space MDMD fails. These results suggest a practical rule for Koopman learning: learn the coordinates, constrain the algebra.

Structure-Preserving Operator Learning

Learning complex dynamics driven by partial differential equations directly from data holds great promise for fast and accurate simulations of complex physical systems. In most cases, this problem can be formulated as an operator learning task, where one aims to learn the operator representing the physics of interest, which entails discretization of the continuous system. However, preserving key continuous properties at the discrete level, such as boundary conditions, and addressing physical systems with complex geometries is challenging for most existing approaches. We introduce a family of operator learning architectures, structure-preserving operator networks (SPONs), that allows to preserve key mathematical and physical properties of the continuous system by leveraging finite element (FE) discretizations of the input-output spaces. SPONs are encode-process-decode architectures that are end-to-end differentiable, where the encoder and decoder follows from the discretizations of the input-output spaces. SPONs can operate on complex geometries, enforce certain boundary conditions exactly, and offer theoretical guarantees. Our framework provides a flexible way of devising structure-preserving architectures tailored to specific applications, and offers an explicit trade-off between performance and efficiency, all thanks to the FE discretization of the input-output spaces. Additionally, we introduce a multigrid-inspired SPON architecture that yields improved performance at higher efficiency. Finally, we release a software to automate the design and training of SPON architectures.

  • 2 authors
·
Oct 1, 2024

Tackling the Curse of Dimensionality with Physics-Informed Neural Networks

The curse-of-dimensionality taxes computational resources heavily with exponentially increasing computational cost as the dimension increases. This poses great challenges in solving high-dimensional PDEs, as Richard E. Bellman first pointed out over 60 years ago. While there has been some recent success in solving numerically partial differential equations (PDEs) in high dimensions, such computations are prohibitively expensive, and true scaling of general nonlinear PDEs to high dimensions has never been achieved. We develop a new method of scaling up physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) to solve arbitrary high-dimensional PDEs. The new method, called Stochastic Dimension Gradient Descent (SDGD), decomposes a gradient of PDEs into pieces corresponding to different dimensions and randomly samples a subset of these dimensional pieces in each iteration of training PINNs. We prove theoretically the convergence and other desired properties of the proposed method. We demonstrate in various diverse tests that the proposed method can solve many notoriously hard high-dimensional PDEs, including the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) and the Schrödinger equations in tens of thousands of dimensions very fast on a single GPU using the PINNs mesh-free approach. Notably, we solve nonlinear PDEs with nontrivial, anisotropic, and inseparable solutions in 100,000 effective dimensions in 12 hours on a single GPU using SDGD with PINNs. Since SDGD is a general training methodology of PINNs, it can be applied to any current and future variants of PINNs to scale them up for arbitrary high-dimensional PDEs.

  • 4 authors
·
Jul 23, 2023

Structure-Preserving Spectral Dynamic Programming on Compact Lie Groups

We study spectral approximations of the dynamic programming semigroup for finite-horizon optimal control on a connected compact Lie group G, and of the associated first-order Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation. The Bellman operator is monotone and non-expansive in the supremum norm, while the Peter-Weyl decomposition of L^{2}(G), on which every Fourier method on G rests, is orthogonal, and the mismatch is quantitative. The natural sup-norm error recursion of the Galerkin iteration is amplified at every step by the Lebesgue constant of the spectral projection, which grows logarithmically on S^{1} and polynomially on compact Lie groups of rank one, including SO(3), and in computation the iteration violates elementary bounds within a few steps. We restore the dynamic programming structure at the discrete level by replacing the orthogonal projection with spectral filters of Markov type. An auxiliary heat-kernel/vanishing-viscosity scheme yields qualitative sup-norm convergence for Lipschitz data. The main result is a Fejér-type filter on G, finite-rank, positivity preserving and non-expansive, together with a convergence theorem at the rate O(sqrtδ+ε+1/(δN^2)) for Lipschitz data, where δ is the time step, N the spectral resolution and ε the viscosity. The viscosity may be zero, and the coupling δ=N^{-1} then gives the rate N^{-1/2}. The proof interprets the filter as a small random perturbation of the controlled dynamics, requires neither a priori regularity of the value function nor a consistency argument in the viscosity sense for the filtering step, and extends to a fully discrete realization based on positive cubature, with exact Wigner transport on SO(3). Numerical experiments confirm the predicted rates and filter bias and quantify the frame dependence of two chart-based baselines.

  • 2 authors
·
Jul 22

Quantum simulations of nuclear resonances with variational methods

The many-body nature of nuclear physics problems poses significant computational challenges. These challenges become even more pronounced when studying the resonance states of nuclear systems, which are governed by the non-Hermitian Hamiltonian. Quantum computing, particularly for quantum many-body systems, offers a promising alternative, especially within the constraints of current noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices. This work aims to simulate nuclear resonances using quantum algorithms by developing a variational framework compatible with non-Hermitian Hamiltonians and implementing it fully on a quantum simulator. We employ the complex scaling technique to extract resonance positions classically and adapt it for quantum simulations using a two-step algorithm. First, we transform the non-Hermitian Hamiltonian into a Hermitian form by using the energy variance as a cost function within a variational framework. Second, we perform theta-trajectory calculations to determine optimal resonance positions in the complex energy plane. To address resource constraints on NISQ devices, we utilize Gray Code (GC) encoding to reduce qubit requirements. We first validate our approach using a schematic potential model that mimics a nuclear potential, successfully reproducing known resonance energies with high fidelity. We then extend the method to a more realistic alpha-alpha nuclear potential and compute the resonance energies with a basis size of 16, using only four qubits. This study demonstrates, for the first time, that the complete theta-trajectory method can be implemented on a quantum computer without relying on any classical input beyond the Hamiltonian. The results establish a scalable and efficient quantum framework for simulating resonance phenomena in nuclear systems. This work represents a significant step toward quantum simulations of open quantum systems.

  • 3 authors
·
Apr 15, 2025

Generalizing Dynamic Mode Decomposition: Balancing Accuracy and Expressiveness in Koopman Approximations

This paper tackles the data-driven approximation of unknown dynamical systems using Koopman-operator methods. Given a dictionary of functions, these methods approximate the projection of the action of the operator on the finite-dimensional subspace spanned by the dictionary. We propose the Tunable Symmetric Subspace Decomposition algorithm to refine the dictionary, balancing its expressiveness and accuracy. Expressiveness corresponds to the ability of the dictionary to describe the evolution of as many observables as possible and accuracy corresponds to the ability to correctly predict their evolution. Based on the observation that Koopman-invariant subspaces give rise to exact predictions, we reason that prediction accuracy is a function of the degree of invariance of the subspace generated by the dictionary and provide a data-driven measure to measure invariance proximity. The proposed algorithm iteratively prunes the initial functional space to identify a refined dictionary of functions that satisfies the desired level of accuracy while retaining as much of the original expressiveness as possible. We provide a full characterization of the algorithm properties and show that it generalizes both Extended Dynamic Mode Decomposition and Symmetric Subspace Decomposition. Simulations on planar systems show the effectiveness of the proposed methods in producing Koopman approximations of tunable accuracy that capture relevant information about the dynamical system.

  • 2 authors
·
Feb 26, 2023

BOWConnect: Parallel Bayesian Optimization over Windows with Learned Local Cost Maps for Sample-Efficient Kinodynamic Motion Planning

This paper presents BOWConnect, a bidirectional parallel kinodynamic motion planner that addresses three fundamental limitations of existing sampling-based methods: sample inefficiency in high-dimensional state spaces, unreliable cost heuristics under dynamic constraints, and poor performance in narrow passage environments. Unlike classical planners that rely on random control sampling and geometric distance heuristics, BOWConnect integrates Bayesian Optimization over Windows (BOW) as a learning-based steering function within a parallel tree-based exploration framework, enabling each worker to learn local cost maps and constraints to guide sampling toward dynamically feasible and collision-free controls. A bidirectional architecture simultaneously grows forward and backward trees from the start and goal regions in parallel threads, with a spatial hashing mechanism enabling fast connection queries and a boundary value problem solver generating kinodynamically consistent bridge trajectories. Extensive evaluations across ten benchmark environments demonstrate that BOWConnect achieves 100\% success while delivering the fastest or near-fastest planning time in complex scenarios, including narrow passages and non-convex spaces where state-of-the-art planners fail or degrade substantially. Real-world deployment on a ground vehicle and a quadrotor confirms real-time planning with no collisions. Videos of real-world and simulated experiments, high-resolution versions of the figures, and the open-source code are available at https://bow-connect.github.io/.

  • 4 authors
·
Jun 24

Diffusion limits of cyclic finite-velocity random motions along vector fields

We investigate diffusion approximations for a class of multivariate inhomogeneous finite-velocity random motions motivated by models of active particles. A particle alternates cyclically among prescribed velocity fields V_1,dots,V_p with random run times and evolves according to either a flight dynamics, consisting of piecewise-linear motion, or a gliding dynamics, in which the particle follows the corresponding velocity flow. Under a Kac-type scaling that couples vanishing run times with diverging particle speed, we prove weak convergence of both processes to multidimensional diffusions. It turns out that the order of successive cyclic motions affects the diffusion limit. In addition to the second-order term generated by fluctuations of the random run times, the limiting drift contains directional derivatives DV_i[V_j] of the underlying vector fields. In Stratonovich form, part of this drift is expressed through their Lie brackets [V_i,V_j]. Thus, the generic non-commutativity of the microscopic motions survives the diffusive scaling and generates a macroscopic drift which depends on the cyclic order. The limiting drift also distinguishes the flight and gliding dynamics, despite their being driven by the same vector fields and run times. Several examples, including run-and-reverse motion and cyclic dynamics generated by multiple vector fields, illustrate how the cyclic switching protocol and the geometry of the underlying velocity fields shape the limiting diffusions.

  • 3 authors
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Aug 30 1