In this work we consider the Allen--Cahn equation, a prototypical model problem in nonlinear dynamics that exhibits bifurcations corresponding to variations of a deterministic bifurcation parameter. Going beyond the state-of-the-art, we introduce a random coefficient function in the linear reaction part of the equation, thereby accounting for random, spatially-heterogeneous effects. Importantly, we assume a spatially constant, deterministic mean value of the random coefficient. We show that this mean value is in fact a bifurcation parameter in the Allen--Cahn equation with random coefficients. Moreover, we show that the bifurcation points and bifurcation curves become random objects. We consider two distinct modelling situations: (i) for a spatially homogeneous coefficient we derive analytical expressions for the distribution of the bifurcation points and show that the bifurcation curves are random shifts of a fixed reference curve; (ii) for a spatially heterogeneous coefficient we employ a generalized polynomial chaos expansion to approximate the statistical properties of the random bifurcation points and bifurcation curves. We present numerical examples in 1D physical space, where we combine the popular software package Continuation Core and Toolboxes (CoCo) for numerical continuation and the Sparse Grids Matlab Kit for the polynomial chaos expansion. Our exposition addresses both, dynamical systems and uncertainty quantification, highlighting how analytical and numerical tools from both areas can be combined efficiently for the challenging uncertainty quantification analysis of bifurcations in random differential equations.
We give a complete complexity classification for the problem of finding a solution to a given system of equations over a fixed finite monoid, given that a solution over a more restricted monoid exists. As a corollary, we obtain a complexity classification for the same problem over groups.
Generative diffusion models apply the concept of Langevin dynamics in physics to machine leaning, attracting a lot of interest from industrial application, but a complete picture about inherent mechanisms is still lacking. In this paper, we provide a transparent physics analysis of the diffusion models, deriving the fluctuation theorem, entropy production, Franz-Parisi potential to understand the intrinsic phase transitions discovered recently. Our analysis is rooted in non-equlibrium physics and concepts from equilibrium physics, i.e., treating both forward and backward dynamics as a Langevin dynamics, and treating the reverse diffusion generative process as a statistical inference, where the time-dependent state variables serve as quenched disorder studied in spin glass theory. This unified principle is expected to guide machine learning practitioners to design better algorithms and theoretical physicists to link the machine learning to non-equilibrium thermodynamics.
We propose an operator learning approach to accelerate geometric Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) for solving infinite-dimensional Bayesian inverse problems (BIPs). While geometric MCMC employs high-quality proposals that adapt to posterior local geometry, it requires repeated computations of gradients and Hessians of the log-likelihood, which becomes prohibitive when the parameter-to-observable (PtO) map is defined through expensive-to-solve parametric partial differential equations (PDEs). We consider a delayed-acceptance geometric MCMC method driven by a neural operator surrogate of the PtO map, where the proposal exploits fast surrogate predictions of the log-likelihood and, simultaneously, its gradient and Hessian. To achieve a substantial speedup, the surrogate must accurately approximate the PtO map and its Jacobian, which often demands a prohibitively large number of PtO map samples via conventional operator learning methods. In this work, we present an extension of derivative-informed operator learning [O'Leary-Roseberry et al., J. Comput. Phys., 496 (2024)] that uses joint samples of the PtO map and its Jacobian. This leads to derivative-informed neural operator (DINO) surrogates that accurately predict the observables and posterior local geometry at a significantly lower training cost than conventional methods. Cost and error analysis for reduced basis DINO surrogates are provided. Numerical studies demonstrate that DINO-driven MCMC generates effective posterior samples 3--9 times faster than geometric MCMC and 60--97 times faster than prior geometry-based MCMC. Furthermore, the training cost of DINO surrogates breaks even compared to geometric MCMC after just 10--25 effective posterior samples.
We perform numerical investigation of nearly self-similar blowup of generalized axisymmetric Navier-Stokes equations and Boussinesq system with a time-dependent fractional dimension. The dynamic change of the space dimension is proportional to the ratio R(t)/Z(t), where (R(t),Z(t)) is the position at which the maximum vorticity achieves its global maximum. This choice of space dimension is to ensure that the advection along the r-direction has the same scaling as that along the z-direction, thus preventing formation of two-scale solution structure. For the generalized axisymmetric Navier-Stokes equations with solution dependent viscosity, we show that the solution develops a self-similar blowup with dimension equal to 3.188 and the self-similar profile satisfies the axisymmetric Navier-Stokes equations with constant viscosity. We also study the nearly self-similar blowup of the axisymmetric Boussinesq system with constant viscosity. The generalized axisymmetric Boussinesq system preserves almost all the known properties of the 3D Navier-Stokes equations except for the conservation of angular momentum. We present convincing numerical evidence that the generalized axisymmetric Boussinesq system develops a stable nearly self-similar blowup solution with maximum vorticity increased by O(10^{30}).
In this manuscript, we present a collective multigrid algorithm to solve efficiently the large saddle-point systems of equations that typically arise in PDE-constrained optimization under uncertainty, and develop a novel convergence analysis of collective smoothers and collective two-level methods. The multigrid algorithm is based on a collective smoother that at each iteration sweeps over the nodes of the computational mesh, and solves a reduced saddle-point system whose size is proportional to the number $N$ of samples used to discretized the probability space. We show that this reduced system can be solved with optimal $O(N)$ complexity. The multigrid method is tested both as a stationary method and as a preconditioner for GMRES on three problems: a linear-quadratic problem, possibly with a local or a boundary control, for which the multigrid method is used to solve directly the linear optimality system; a nonsmooth problem with box constraints and $L^1$-norm penalization on the control, in which the multigrid scheme is used as an inner solver within a semismooth Newton iteration; a risk-averse problem with the smoothed CVaR risk measure where the multigrid method is called within a preconditioned Newton iteration. In all cases, the multigrid algorithm exhibits excellent performances and robustness with respect to the parameters of interest.
We analyze a bilinear optimal control problem for the Stokes--Brinkman equations: the control variable enters the state equations as a coefficient. In two- and three-dimensional Lipschitz domains, we perform a complete continuous analysis that includes the existence of solutions and first- and second-order optimality conditions. We also develop two finite element methods that differ fundamentally in whether the admissible control set is discretized or not. For each of the proposed methods, we perform a convergence analysis and derive a priori error estimates; the latter under the assumption that the domain is convex. Finally, assuming that the domain is Lipschitz, we develop an a posteriori error estimator for each discretization scheme and obtain a global reliability bound.
We propose a particle method for numerically solving the Landau equation, inspired by the score-based transport modeling (SBTM) method for the Fokker-Planck equation. This method can preserve some important physical properties of the Landau equation, such as the conservation of mass, momentum, and energy, and decay of estimated entropy. We prove that matching the gradient of the logarithm of the approximate solution is enough to recover the true solution to the Landau equation with Maxwellian molecules. Several numerical experiments in low and moderately high dimensions are performed, with particular emphasis on comparing the proposed method with the traditional particle or blob method.
Maximal regularity is a kind of a priori estimates for parabolic-type equations and it plays an important role in the theory of nonlinear differential equations. The aim of this paper is to investigate the temporally discrete counterpart of maximal regularity for the discontinuous Galerkin (DG) time-stepping method. We will establish such an estimate without logarithmic factor over a quasi-uniform temporal mesh. To show the main result, we introduce the temporally regularized Green's function and then reduce the discrete maximal regularity to a weighted error estimate for its DG approximation. Our results would be useful for investigation of DG approximation of nonlinear parabolic problems.
The main purpose of this paper is to design a local discontinuous Galerkin (LDG) method for the Benjamin-Ono equation. We analyze the stability and error estimates for the semi-discrete LDG scheme. We prove that the scheme is $L^2$-stable and it converges at a rate $\mathcal{O}(h^{k+1/2})$ for general nonlinear flux. Furthermore, we develop a fully discrete LDG scheme using the four-stage fourth order Runge-Kutta method and ensure the devised scheme is strongly stable in case of linear flux using two-step and three-step stability approach under an appropriate time step constraint. Numerical examples are provided to validate the efficiency and accuracy of the method.
We study stochastic approximation procedures for approximately solving a $d$-dimensional linear fixed point equation based on observing a trajectory of length $n$ from an ergodic Markov chain. We first exhibit a non-asymptotic bound of the order $t_{\mathrm{mix}} \tfrac{d}{n}$ on the squared error of the last iterate of a standard scheme, where $t_{\mathrm{mix}}$ is a mixing time. We then prove a non-asymptotic instance-dependent bound on a suitably averaged sequence of iterates, with a leading term that matches the local asymptotic minimax limit, including sharp dependence on the parameters $(d, t_{\mathrm{mix}})$ in the higher order terms. We complement these upper bounds with a non-asymptotic minimax lower bound that establishes the instance-optimality of the averaged SA estimator. We derive corollaries of these results for policy evaluation with Markov noise -- covering the TD($\lambda$) family of algorithms for all $\lambda \in [0, 1)$ -- and linear autoregressive models. Our instance-dependent characterizations open the door to the design of fine-grained model selection procedures for hyperparameter tuning (e.g., choosing the value of $\lambda$ when running the TD($\lambda$) algorithm).