1. Neural Q-learning for solving PDEs.
- Author
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Cohen, Samuel N., Deqing Jiang, and Sirignano, Justin
- Subjects
- *
MACHINE learning , *ORDINARY differential equations , *PARTIAL differential equations , *MONOTONE operators , *REINFORCEMENT learning , *SCIENTIFIC computing - Abstract
Solving high-dimensional partial differential equations (PDEs) is a major challenge in scientific computing. We develop a new numerical method for solving elliptic-type PDEs by adapting the Q-learning algorithm in reinforcement learning. To solve PDEs with Dirichlet boundary condition, our "Q-PDE" algorithm is mesh-free and therefore has the potential to overcome the curse of dimensionality. Using a neural tangent kernel (NTK) approach, we prove that the neural network approximator for the PDE solution, trained with the QPDE algorithm, converges to the trajectory of an infinite-dimensional ordinary differential equation (ODE) as the number of hidden units → ∞. For monotone PDEs (i.e. those given by monotone operators, which may be nonlinear), despite the lack of a spectral gap in the NTK, we then prove that the limit neural network, which satisfies the infinite-dimensional ODE, strongly converges in L² to the PDE solution as the training time → ∞. More generally, we can prove that any fixed point of the wide-network limit for the Q-PDE algorithm is a solution of the PDE (not necessarily under the monotone condition). The numerical performance of the Q-PDE algorithm is studied for several elliptic PDEs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2023