Walsh-Hadamard Neural Operators for Solving PDEs with Discontinuous Coefficients

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Cavallazzi, Giorgio M., Cuadrado, Miguel Pérez, Pinelli, Alfredo
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866916023596220416
author Cavallazzi, Giorgio M.
Cuadrado, Miguel Pérez
Pinelli, Alfredo
author_facet Cavallazzi, Giorgio M.
Cuadrado, Miguel Pérez
Pinelli, Alfredo
contents Neural operators have emerged as powerful tools for learning solution operators of partial differential equations (PDEs). However, standard spectral methods based on Fourier transforms struggle with problems involving discontinuous coefficients due to the Gibbs phenomenon and poor representation of sharp interfaces. We introduce the Walsh-Hadamard Neural Operator (WHNO), which leverages Walsh-Hadamard transforms-a spectral basis of rectangular wave functions naturally suited for piecewise constant fields-combined with learnable spectral weights that transform low-sequency Walsh coefficients to capture global dependencies efficiently. We validate WHNO on three problems: steady-state Darcy flow (preliminary validation), heat conduction with discontinuous thermal conductivity, and the 2D Burgers equation with discontinuous initial conditions. In controlled comparisons with Fourier Neural Operators (FNO) under identical conditions, WHNO demonstrates superior accuracy with better preservation of sharp solution features at material interfaces. Critically, we discover that weighted ensemble combinations of WHNO and FNO achieve substantial improvements over either model alone: for both heat conduction and Burgers equation, optimal ensembles reduce mean squared error by 35-40 percent and maximum error by up to 25 percent compared to individual models. This demonstrates that Walsh-Hadamard and Fourier representations capture complementary aspects of discontinuous PDE solutions, with WHNO excelling at sharp interfaces while FNO captures smooth features effectively.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_07347
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Walsh-Hadamard Neural Operators for Solving PDEs with Discontinuous Coefficients
Cavallazzi, Giorgio M.
Cuadrado, Miguel Pérez
Pinelli, Alfredo
Computational Physics
Machine Learning
Neural operators have emerged as powerful tools for learning solution operators of partial differential equations (PDEs). However, standard spectral methods based on Fourier transforms struggle with problems involving discontinuous coefficients due to the Gibbs phenomenon and poor representation of sharp interfaces. We introduce the Walsh-Hadamard Neural Operator (WHNO), which leverages Walsh-Hadamard transforms-a spectral basis of rectangular wave functions naturally suited for piecewise constant fields-combined with learnable spectral weights that transform low-sequency Walsh coefficients to capture global dependencies efficiently. We validate WHNO on three problems: steady-state Darcy flow (preliminary validation), heat conduction with discontinuous thermal conductivity, and the 2D Burgers equation with discontinuous initial conditions. In controlled comparisons with Fourier Neural Operators (FNO) under identical conditions, WHNO demonstrates superior accuracy with better preservation of sharp solution features at material interfaces. Critically, we discover that weighted ensemble combinations of WHNO and FNO achieve substantial improvements over either model alone: for both heat conduction and Burgers equation, optimal ensembles reduce mean squared error by 35-40 percent and maximum error by up to 25 percent compared to individual models. This demonstrates that Walsh-Hadamard and Fourier representations capture complementary aspects of discontinuous PDE solutions, with WHNO excelling at sharp interfaces while FNO captures smooth features effectively.
title Walsh-Hadamard Neural Operators for Solving PDEs with Discontinuous Coefficients
topic Computational Physics
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.07347