Explicit Discovery of Nonlinear Symmetries from Dynamic Data

Lexiang Hu, Yikang Li, Zhouchen Lin

TL;DR: A pipeline for explicitly discovering nonlinear symmetries from dynamic data

Abstract: Symmetry is widely applied in problems such as the design of equivariant networks and the discovery of governing equations, but in complex scenarios, it is not known in advance. Most previous symmetry discovery methods are limited to linear symmetries, and recent attempts to discover nonlinear symmetries fail to explicitly get the Lie algebra subspace. In this paper, we propose LieNLSD, which is, to our knowledge, the first method capable of determining the number of infinitesimal generators with nonlinear terms and their explicit expressions. We specify a function library for the infinitesimal group action and aim to solve for its coefficient matrix, proving that its prolongation formula for differential equations, which governs dynamic data, is also linear with respect to the coefficient matrix. By substituting the central differences of the data and the Jacobian matrix of the trained neural network into the infinitesimal criterion, we get a system of linear equations for the coefficient matrix, which can then be solved using SVD. On top quark tagging and a series of dynamic systems, LieNLSD shows qualitative advantages over existing methods and improves the long rollout accuracy of neural PDE solvers by over $20\\%$ while applying to guide data augmentation. Code and data are available at [https://github.com/hulx2002/LieNLSD](https://github.com/hulx2002/LieNLSD).

Lay Summary:

Discovering new physical laws from the world is like solving a puzzle of finding patterns in data. Behind this lies the hard work of human scientists—but can we use AI technology to assist in this endeavor?

Our approach achieves the following:
(1) Discovers more universal and complex laws;
(2) Presents the discovered laws clearly and intuitively;
(3) Accurately determines the number of laws.

These laws can help us better understand the world and predict the future more efficiently and accurately—just like applying knowledge flexibly in learning.

Link To Code: https://github.com/hulx2002/LieNLSD

Primary Area: Deep Learning

Keywords: symmetry discovery, Lie theory, equivariant neural network

Submission Number: 4776