English

Symbolic Regression Is All You Need: From Simulations to Scaling Laws in Binary Neutron Star Mergers

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2025-11-13 v1

Abstract

Gravitational wave sources with electromagnetic counterparts have highlighted the need for predictive, interpretable models linking the parameters of compact binary systems to post-merger remnants and mass outflows. In this work, we explore AI-driven symbolic regression (SR) frameworks to derive updated analytical relations for disk ejecta mass in binary neutron star mergers, trained on state-of-the-art numerical relativity simulations. Our method reveals a set of compact equations that outperform existing fitting formulae across multiple statistical metrics while remaining physically interpretable. Notably, SR also enables alternative predictor sets (e.g., {M1,M2,Λ~}\{M_1,M_2,\tilde{\Lambda}\}) that match or exceed the accuracy of models relying solely on compactness of the lightest neutron star (C1C_1), enabling new parameter constraints from electromagnetic observations. Unlike traditional black-box machine learning models, these closed-form expressions generalize robustly to regions of the parameter space not represented in the training data, offering a physics-informed tool for multimessenger observations and constraints on the neutron star equation of state.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2511.08784,
  title  = {Symbolic Regression Is All You Need: From Simulations to Scaling Laws in Binary Neutron Star Mergers},
  author = {P. Darc and Clecio R. Bom and Charles Kilpatrick and Bernardo M. O. Fraga and Gabriel S. M. Teixeira},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.08784},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

Accepted at Machine Learning and the Physical Sciences Workshop, NeurIPS 2025