Universal Approximation of Operators with Transformers and Neural Integral Operators
Machine Learning
2026-04-28 v3 Numerical Analysis
Numerical Analysis
Abstract
We study the universal approximation properties of transformers and neural integral operators for operators in Banach spaces. In particular, we show that the transformer architecture is a universal approximator of integral operators between H\"older spaces. Moreover, we show that a generalized version of neural integral operators, based on the Gavurin integral, are universal approximators of arbitrary operators between Banach spaces. Lastly, we show that a modified version of transformer, which uses Leray-Schauder mappings, is a universal approximator of operators between arbitrary Banach spaces.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2409.00841,
title = {Universal Approximation of Operators with Transformers and Neural Integral Operators},
author = {Emanuele Zappala and Maryam Bagherian},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.00841},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
15 pages. Comments are welcome! v3: Some proofs have been rewritten for clarity. References have been added to give more context to the work