Learned Lagrangian Models of PDEs via Euler-Lagrange Residual Minimization
For researchers in physics-guided machine learning and computational physics, this method enables stable, long-term forecasting of conservative PDEs using learned models, bypassing traditional time-stepping limitations.
The paper introduces the first method to directly use a learned continuous Lagrangian for forecasting PDE-governed dynamics, achieving stable long-range predictions with error comparable to classical symplectic methods while generalizing to spatially varying dynamics and arbitrary boundary conditions without retraining.
We present the first method to directly use a learned continuous Lagrangian to forecast the dynamics of systems governed by partial differential equations, exploiting the inherent conservative structure to achieve stable long-range predictions. We develop an optimization-based integrator that minimizes the squared Euler--Lagrange residual via a mesh-free near-symplectic construction on local space-time patches. Different from integrators for analytical models, integrators for learned models should decouple model error (phase error) from integration error (conservation error). By relying on optimization rather than time-stepping, we bypass the global coupling inherent to fixed discretizations, which slows time- and space-stepping and complicates learning. Our method scales linearly with domain size via Jacobi iteration, and places no structural requirements on the learned network, allowing it to be coupled with existing physics-guided machine learning (ML) methods. We validate our approach on a learned representation of a double pendulum, a one-dimensional wave equation, and a two-dimensional wave equation. Our method achieves error comparable to classical symplectic methods while generalizing to spatially varying dynamics and arbitrary boundary conditions without retraining.