Discovery of Unstable Singularities

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Wang, Yongji, Bennani, Mehdi, Martens, James, Racanière, Sébastien, Blackwell, Sam, Matthews, Alex, Nikolov, Stanislav, Cao-Labora, Gonzalo, Park, Daniel S., Arjovsky, Martin, Worrall, Daniel, Qin, Chongli, Alet, Ferran, Kozlovskii, Borislav, Tomašev, Nenad, Davies, Alex, Kohli, Pushmeet, Buckmaster, Tristan, Georgiev, Bogdan, Gómez-Serrano, Javier, Jiang, Ray, Lai, Ching-Yao
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Wang, Yongji
Bennani, Mehdi
Martens, James
Racanière, Sébastien
Blackwell, Sam
Matthews, Alex
Nikolov, Stanislav
Cao-Labora, Gonzalo
Park, Daniel S.
Arjovsky, Martin
Worrall, Daniel
Qin, Chongli
Alet, Ferran
Kozlovskii, Borislav
Tomašev, Nenad
Davies, Alex
Kohli, Pushmeet
Buckmaster, Tristan
Georgiev, Bogdan
Gómez-Serrano, Javier
Jiang, Ray
Lai, Ching-Yao
author_facet Wang, Yongji
Bennani, Mehdi
Martens, James
Racanière, Sébastien
Blackwell, Sam
Matthews, Alex
Nikolov, Stanislav
Cao-Labora, Gonzalo
Park, Daniel S.
Arjovsky, Martin
Worrall, Daniel
Qin, Chongli
Alet, Ferran
Kozlovskii, Borislav
Tomašev, Nenad
Davies, Alex
Kohli, Pushmeet
Buckmaster, Tristan
Georgiev, Bogdan
Gómez-Serrano, Javier
Jiang, Ray
Lai, Ching-Yao
contents Whether singularities can form in fluids remains a foundational unanswered question in mathematics. This phenomenon occurs when solutions to governing equations, such as the 3D Euler equations, develop infinite gradients from smooth initial conditions. Historically, numerical approaches have primarily identified stable singularities. However, these are not expected to exist for key open problems, such as the boundary-free Euler and Navier-Stokes cases, where unstable singularities are hypothesized to play a crucial role. Here, we present the first systematic discovery of new families of unstable singularities. A stable singularity is a robust outcome, forming even if the initial state is slightly perturbed. In contrast, unstable singularities are exceptionally elusive; they require initial conditions tuned with infinite precision, being in a state of instability whereby infinitesimal perturbations immediately divert the solution from its blow-up trajectory. In particular, we present multiple new, unstable self-similar solutions for the incompressible porous media equation and the 3D Euler equation with boundary, revealing a simple empirical asymptotic formula relating the blow-up rate to the order of instability. Our approach combines curated machine learning architectures and training schemes with a high-precision Gauss-Newton optimizer, achieving accuracies that significantly surpass previous work across all discovered solutions. For specific solutions, we reach near double-float machine precision, attaining a level of accuracy constrained only by the round-off errors of the GPU hardware. This level of precision meets the requirements for rigorous mathematical validation via computer-assisted proofs. This work provides a new playbook for exploring the complex landscape of nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs) and tackling long-standing challenges in mathematical physics.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_14185
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Discovery of Unstable Singularities
Wang, Yongji
Bennani, Mehdi
Martens, James
Racanière, Sébastien
Blackwell, Sam
Matthews, Alex
Nikolov, Stanislav
Cao-Labora, Gonzalo
Park, Daniel S.
Arjovsky, Martin
Worrall, Daniel
Qin, Chongli
Alet, Ferran
Kozlovskii, Borislav
Tomašev, Nenad
Davies, Alex
Kohli, Pushmeet
Buckmaster, Tristan
Georgiev, Bogdan
Gómez-Serrano, Javier
Jiang, Ray
Lai, Ching-Yao
Analysis of PDEs
Fluid Dynamics
Whether singularities can form in fluids remains a foundational unanswered question in mathematics. This phenomenon occurs when solutions to governing equations, such as the 3D Euler equations, develop infinite gradients from smooth initial conditions. Historically, numerical approaches have primarily identified stable singularities. However, these are not expected to exist for key open problems, such as the boundary-free Euler and Navier-Stokes cases, where unstable singularities are hypothesized to play a crucial role. Here, we present the first systematic discovery of new families of unstable singularities. A stable singularity is a robust outcome, forming even if the initial state is slightly perturbed. In contrast, unstable singularities are exceptionally elusive; they require initial conditions tuned with infinite precision, being in a state of instability whereby infinitesimal perturbations immediately divert the solution from its blow-up trajectory. In particular, we present multiple new, unstable self-similar solutions for the incompressible porous media equation and the 3D Euler equation with boundary, revealing a simple empirical asymptotic formula relating the blow-up rate to the order of instability. Our approach combines curated machine learning architectures and training schemes with a high-precision Gauss-Newton optimizer, achieving accuracies that significantly surpass previous work across all discovered solutions. For specific solutions, we reach near double-float machine precision, attaining a level of accuracy constrained only by the round-off errors of the GPU hardware. This level of precision meets the requirements for rigorous mathematical validation via computer-assisted proofs. This work provides a new playbook for exploring the complex landscape of nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs) and tackling long-standing challenges in mathematical physics.
title Discovery of Unstable Singularities
topic Analysis of PDEs
Fluid Dynamics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.14185