Papers for
geophysics modelers
Papers whose findings have a practical use for this group, as judged from the abstract. Open a paper to read what it means in practice.
Localized neural networks improve accuracy in complex equation models
Localized Operator Learning with Adaptive Partition-of-Unity Mixture-of-Expert Networks
Abstract: Operator learning methods such as DeepONets and FNOs often struggle with PDE families featuring sharp interfaces, heterogeneous coefficients, and localized multiscale structures. We introduce a partition-of-unity (POU) mixture-of-experts framework for localized operator learning, in which geometry-aware gating networks produce smooth spatial partitions which blend the contributions of local expert networks. Our main contribution is HiRefPOU, a residual-style hierarchical POU architecture for DeepONets that organizes localized representations through nested parent-child partitions while preserving global continuity. We also show that the same POU principle can be incorporated into Fourier Neural Operators to introduce spatial adaptivity without modifying the underlying spectral layers. On heterogeneous Darcy and reaction-diffusion benchmarks, HiRefPOU achieves substantially lower error than global DeepONet and static POU-MoE baselines, while the broader operator-learning experiments show that the benefits of localization depend on the PDE structure and the chosen neural-operator backbone. The learned partitions are interpretable and align with interfaces and regions of rapid solution variation. These results show that explicit geometric localization can improve both accuracy and interpretability in neural operator learning.
Deep learning maps one physics type to another despite key differences
Can Deep Learning Achieve Cross-Physics Mapping?
Abstract: Can deep learning translate physical fields governed by fundamentally different equations? We address this question by introducing Cross-Physics Mapping (CPM), an operator-learning framework for mappings between heterogeneous physical domains. We formulate sufficient conditions for such mappings through compatible latent representations and propose a dimensionless scaling principle that aligns the characteristic evolution scales of the source and target systems without assuming their dynamical equivalence. As a representative test, paired diffusion and wave fields are generated independently from their respective parabolic and hyperbolic equations while sharing the same latent geometry, material heterogeneity, excitation, and dimensionless scale. Seven architectures-ResUNet, DeepONet, Fourier, latent, wavelet, U-shaped, and Galerkin neural operators-are evaluated for both diffusion-to-wave and wave-to-diffusion mappings. The results reveal a strong directional asymmetry. Diffusion-to-wave reconstruction is more challenging because it requires recovering wavefront, phase, and time-of-flight information attenuated by diffusion; U-NO performs best in this direction, achieving a relative $\ell_2$ error of $0.307$ and an $R^2$ of $0.905$. Wave-to-diffusion mapping is considerably more stable, with GNO attaining a relative $\ell_2$ error of $0.154$ and an $R^2$ of $0.935$. Neural operators generally outperform the conventional convolutional baseline, highlighting the nonlocal nature of cross-physics transformations. These findings demonstrate that deep learning can establish useful mappings between distinct physical modalities on a shared latent manifold, while the achievable accuracy remains fundamentally constrained by the direction-dependent information content of the governing physics.