Modeling Lunar Surface Charging Using Physics-Informed Neural Networks

Niloofar Zendehdel, Adib Mosharrof, Katherine Delgado, Daoru Han, Xin Liang, Tong Shu

Abstract: Modeling the electric potential profile above the lunar surface is critical for understanding surface charging and interactions with the space environment. Traditional methods like Particle-in-Cell (PIC) simulations are highly accurate but computationally expensive. To address this, we propose a hybrid approach using a Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) architecture in both data-driven neural networks and Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs). The PINN component incorporates physical laws directly into the training process, ensuring physical consistency, while the data-driven component captures complex patterns. This combination offers a significant reduction in computational cost compared to PIC methods while maintaining high modeling accuracy. Our results show that the proposed method effectively represents the electric potential profile above the lunar surface, even with limited data.