English

Convolutional Neural Operators for robust and accurate learning of PDEs

Machine Learning 2023-12-05 v3

Abstract

Although very successfully used in conventional machine learning, convolution based neural network architectures -- believed to be inconsistent in function space -- have been largely ignored in the context of learning solution operators of PDEs. Here, we present novel adaptations for convolutional neural networks to demonstrate that they are indeed able to process functions as inputs and outputs. The resulting architecture, termed as convolutional neural operators (CNOs), is designed specifically to preserve its underlying continuous nature, even when implemented in a discretized form on a computer. We prove a universality theorem to show that CNOs can approximate operators arising in PDEs to desired accuracy. CNOs are tested on a novel suite of benchmarks, encompassing a diverse set of PDEs with possibly multi-scale solutions and are observed to significantly outperform baselines, paving the way for an alternative framework for robust and accurate operator learning. Our code is publicly available at https://github.com/bogdanraonic3/ConvolutionalNeuralOperator

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2302.01178,
  title  = {Convolutional Neural Operators for robust and accurate learning of PDEs},
  author = {Bogdan Raonić and Roberto Molinaro and Tim De Ryck and Tobias Rohner and Francesca Bartolucci and Rima Alaifari and Siddhartha Mishra and Emmanuel de Bézenac},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2302.01178},
  year   = {2023}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T08:30:26.622Z