NAMay 15
Explicit Construction of Approximate Kolmogorov Superpositions with C2 SmoothnessLunji Song, Zilan Cheng, Juan Diego Toscano et al.
We explicitly construct an approximate version of the Kolmogorov superpositions, which is composed of C2-inner and outer functions, and can approximate an arbitrary alpha Holder continuous function with accuracy of N to the power -alpha, where N denotes the number of outer summations. The inner functions are generated by applying suitable translations and dilations to a piecewise C2, strictly increasing function, while the outer functions are constructed rowwise through piecewise C2 interpolation using newly designed shape functions. This novel variant of Kolmogorov superpositions overcomes the wild and pathological behaviors of the inherent single variable functions, but retains the essence of Kolmogorov strategy of exact representation-an objective that Sprecher (Neural Netw. 144(2021)438-442) has actively pursued. We also discuss the implications of this new construction and demonstrate its applicability to related neural networks.
MLMar 16
Preconditioned One-Step Generative Modeling for Bayesian Inverse Problems in Function SpacesZilan Cheng, Li-Lian Wang, Zhongjian Wang
We propose a machine-learning algorithm for Bayesian inverse problems in the function-space regime based on one-step generative transport. Building on the Mean Flows, we learn a fully conditional amortized sampler with a neural-operator backbone that maps a reference Gaussian noise to approximate posterior samples. We show that while white-noise references may be admissible at fixed discretization, they become incompatible with the function-space limit, leading to instability in inference for Bayesian problems arising from PDEs. To address this issue, we adopt a prior-aligned anisotropic Gaussian reference distribution and establish the Lipschitz regularity of the resulting transport. Our method is not distilled from MCMC: training relies only on prior samples and simulated partial and noisy observations. Once trained, it generates a $64\times64$ posterior sample in $\sim 10^{-3}$s, avoiding the repeated PDE solves of MCMC while matching key posterior summaries.
NAApr 25, 2025
PODNO: Proper Orthogonal Decomposition Neural OperatorsZilan Cheng, Zhongjian Wang, Li-Lian Wang et al.
In this paper, we introduce Proper Orthogonal Decomposition Neural Operators (PODNO) for solving partial differential equations (PDEs) dominated by high-frequency components. Building on the structure of Fourier Neural Operators (FNO), PODNO replaces the Fourier transform with (inverse) orthonormal transforms derived from the Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) method to construct the integral kernel. Due to the optimality of POD basis, the PODNO has potential to outperform FNO in both accuracy and computational efficiency for high-frequency problems. From analysis point of view, we established the universality of a generalization of PODNO, termed as Generalized Spectral Operator (GSO). In addition, we evaluate PODNO's performance numerically on dispersive equations such as the Nonlinear Schrodinger (NLS) equation and the Kadomtsev-Petviashvili (KP) equation.