Evolutionary Algorithm-Guided LLMs for Physics-Informed Neural Network Design
For researchers using PINNs, this work demonstrates a feasible closed-loop approach to automate architecture and hyperparameter design, though results are limited to a single controlled PDE.
The authors propose an evolutionary algorithm that guides an LLM to generate PINN configurations over generations, using training outcomes to inform search. On a 1D multiscale wave equation, the best configuration in two runs reduced mean-squared error by 2.97% and 95.38% relative to the initial population.
Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) are unusually sensitive to interacting choices of architecture, activation, loss weighting, collocation, optimization, and constraint enforcement. Large language models (LLMs) can propose these choices, but independent recommendations do not accumulate experience from previously trained PINNs. We propose a closed-loop evolutionary algorithm that guides an LLM to generate complete, executable PINN configurations across generations, using measured training outcomes to determine subsequent search decisions. The algorithm maintains an evaluated population and lineage, applies parent-conditioned mutation and crossover, preserves elite and diverse solutions, rejects effective duplicates, and converts parent-relative successes and failures into the next-generation context supplied to the LLM. Every proposed configuration is executed directly under an exact optimizer-step budget. On a one-dimensional multiscale wave equation, two independent ten-generation runs trained 60 PINNs for 600,000 optimizer steps. In both runs, the best configuration appeared in the final generation, with best mean-squared error reduced by 2.97\% and 95.38\% relative to the initial population. The stronger run validated residual connections and increased depth on separate branches, combined them in a later generation, and then refined width and collocation density. It also revealed that low solution error can coexist with a high PDE residual. These results demonstrate the feasibility of evolutionary-algorithm-guided LLMs for PINN design on a controlled PDE while motivating broader, physics-aware evaluation.