Beyond Uniform Sampling: Synergistic Active Learning and Input Denoising for Robust Neural Operators

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Roy, Samrendra, Chakraborty, Souvik, Alam, Syed Bahauddin
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
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author Roy, Samrendra
Chakraborty, Souvik
Alam, Syed Bahauddin
author_facet Roy, Samrendra
Chakraborty, Souvik
Alam, Syed Bahauddin
contents Neural operators have emerged as fast surrogate models for physics simulations, yet they remain acutely vulnerable to adversarial perturbations, a critical liability for safety-critical digital twin deployments. We present a synergistic defense that combines active learning-based data generation with an input denoising architecture. The active learning component adaptively probes model weaknesses using differential evolution attacks, then generates targeted training data at discovered vulnerability locations while an adaptive smooth-ratio safeguard preserves baseline accuracy. The input denoising component augments the operator architecture with a learnable bottleneck that filters adversarial noise while retaining physics-relevant features. On the viscous Burgers' equation benchmark, the combined approach achieves a 2.04% combined error (1.21% baseline + 0.83% robustness), representing an 87% reduction relative to standard training (15.42% combined) and outperforming both active learning alone (3.42%) and input denoising alone (5.22%). More broadly, our results, combined with cross-architecture vulnerability analysis from prior work, suggest that optimal training data for neural operators is architecture-dependent: because different architectures concentrate sensitivity in distinct input subspaces, uniform sampling cannot adequately cover the vulnerability landscape of all models. These findings have potential implications for the deployment of neural operators in safety-critical energy systems including nuclear reactor monitoring.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_13316
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Beyond Uniform Sampling: Synergistic Active Learning and Input Denoising for Robust Neural Operators
Roy, Samrendra
Chakraborty, Souvik
Alam, Syed Bahauddin
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Neural operators have emerged as fast surrogate models for physics simulations, yet they remain acutely vulnerable to adversarial perturbations, a critical liability for safety-critical digital twin deployments. We present a synergistic defense that combines active learning-based data generation with an input denoising architecture. The active learning component adaptively probes model weaknesses using differential evolution attacks, then generates targeted training data at discovered vulnerability locations while an adaptive smooth-ratio safeguard preserves baseline accuracy. The input denoising component augments the operator architecture with a learnable bottleneck that filters adversarial noise while retaining physics-relevant features. On the viscous Burgers' equation benchmark, the combined approach achieves a 2.04% combined error (1.21% baseline + 0.83% robustness), representing an 87% reduction relative to standard training (15.42% combined) and outperforming both active learning alone (3.42%) and input denoising alone (5.22%). More broadly, our results, combined with cross-architecture vulnerability analysis from prior work, suggest that optimal training data for neural operators is architecture-dependent: because different architectures concentrate sensitivity in distinct input subspaces, uniform sampling cannot adequately cover the vulnerability landscape of all models. These findings have potential implications for the deployment of neural operators in safety-critical energy systems including nuclear reactor monitoring.
title Beyond Uniform Sampling: Synergistic Active Learning and Input Denoising for Robust Neural Operators
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.13316