PHDME: Physics-Informed Diffusion Models without Explicit Governing Equations

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Tan, Kaiyuan, Givens, Kendra, Li, Peilun, Beckers, Thomas
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Tan, Kaiyuan
Givens, Kendra
Li, Peilun
Beckers, Thomas
author_facet Tan, Kaiyuan
Givens, Kendra
Li, Peilun
Beckers, Thomas
contents Diffusion models provide expressive priors for forecasting trajectories of dynamical systems, but are typically unreliable in the sparse data regime. Physics-informed machine learning (PIML) improves reliability in such settings; however, most methods require \emph{explicit governing equations} during training, which are often only partially known due to complex and nonlinear dynamics. We introduce \textbf{PHDME}, a port-Hamiltonian diffusion framework designed for \emph{sparse observations} and \emph{incomplete physics}. PHDME leverages port-Hamiltonian structural prior but does not require full knowledge of the closed-form governing equations. Our approach first trains a Gaussian process distributed Port-Hamiltonian system (GP-dPHS) on limited observations to capture an energy-based representation of the dynamics. The GP-dPHS is then used to generate a physically consistent artificial dataset for diffusion training, and to inform the diffusion model with a structured physics residual loss. After training, the diffusion model acts as an amortized sampler and forecaster for fast trajectory generation. Finally, we apply split conformal calibration to provide uncertainty statements for the generated predictions. Experiments on PDE benchmarks and a real-world spring system show improved accuracy and physical consistency under data scarcity.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_21234
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle PHDME: Physics-Informed Diffusion Models without Explicit Governing Equations
Tan, Kaiyuan
Givens, Kendra
Li, Peilun
Beckers, Thomas
Machine Learning
Diffusion models provide expressive priors for forecasting trajectories of dynamical systems, but are typically unreliable in the sparse data regime. Physics-informed machine learning (PIML) improves reliability in such settings; however, most methods require \emph{explicit governing equations} during training, which are often only partially known due to complex and nonlinear dynamics. We introduce \textbf{PHDME}, a port-Hamiltonian diffusion framework designed for \emph{sparse observations} and \emph{incomplete physics}. PHDME leverages port-Hamiltonian structural prior but does not require full knowledge of the closed-form governing equations. Our approach first trains a Gaussian process distributed Port-Hamiltonian system (GP-dPHS) on limited observations to capture an energy-based representation of the dynamics. The GP-dPHS is then used to generate a physically consistent artificial dataset for diffusion training, and to inform the diffusion model with a structured physics residual loss. After training, the diffusion model acts as an amortized sampler and forecaster for fast trajectory generation. Finally, we apply split conformal calibration to provide uncertainty statements for the generated predictions. Experiments on PDE benchmarks and a real-world spring system show improved accuracy and physical consistency under data scarcity.
title PHDME: Physics-Informed Diffusion Models without Explicit Governing Equations
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.21234