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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Feng, Haotian
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.14094
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author Feng, Haotian
author_facet Feng, Haotian
contents Reaction-diffusion systems represent one of the most fundamental formulations used to describe a wide range of physical, chemical, and biological processes. With the increasing adoption of neural networks, recent research has focused on solving differential equations using machine learning techniques. However, the theoretical foundation explaining why neural networks can effectively approximate such solutions remains insufficiently explored. This paper provides a theoretical analysis of the approximation power of neural networks for one- and two-dimensional reaction-diffusion equations in both homogeneous and heterogeneous media. Building upon the universal approximation theorem, we demonstrate that a two-layer neural network can approximate the one-dimensional reaction-diffusion equation, while a three-layer neural network can approximate its two-dimensional counterpart. The theoretical framework presented here can be further extended to elliptic and parabolic equations. Overall, this work highlights the expressive power of neural networks in approximating solutions to reaction-diffusion equations and related PDEs, providing a theoretical foundation for neural network-based differential equation solvers.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_14094
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Neural Network approximation power on homogeneous and heterogeneous reaction-diffusion equations
Feng, Haotian
Machine Learning
Reaction-diffusion systems represent one of the most fundamental formulations used to describe a wide range of physical, chemical, and biological processes. With the increasing adoption of neural networks, recent research has focused on solving differential equations using machine learning techniques. However, the theoretical foundation explaining why neural networks can effectively approximate such solutions remains insufficiently explored. This paper provides a theoretical analysis of the approximation power of neural networks for one- and two-dimensional reaction-diffusion equations in both homogeneous and heterogeneous media. Building upon the universal approximation theorem, we demonstrate that a two-layer neural network can approximate the one-dimensional reaction-diffusion equation, while a three-layer neural network can approximate its two-dimensional counterpart. The theoretical framework presented here can be further extended to elliptic and parabolic equations. Overall, this work highlights the expressive power of neural networks in approximating solutions to reaction-diffusion equations and related PDEs, providing a theoretical foundation for neural network-based differential equation solvers.
title Neural Network approximation power on homogeneous and heterogeneous reaction-diffusion equations
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.14094