Operator Learning for Reconstructing Flow Fields from Sparse Measurements: a Language Model Approach

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Zhang, Qian, Karniadakis, George Em
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
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author Zhang, Qian
Karniadakis, George Em
author_facet Zhang, Qian
Karniadakis, George Em
contents Reconstructing flow fields from sparse measurements is a fundamental problem in fluid mechanics with broad implications for modeling, control, and design. In this work, we propose a novel operator learning framework that leverages the architecture of language models to perform flow reconstruction in a mesh-free manner. We reformulate flow field reconstruction as a sequence-to-sequence learning task, where sparse measurements are treated as context and unobserved locations as queries. Our model learns to reconstruct the full flow field from sparse inputs, effectively capturing spatial correlations and long-range dependencies. We evaluate the proposed approach on four benchmark datasets: (1) two-dimensional vortex street simulations, (2) daily average temperature data across the contiguous United States, (3) three-dimensional blood flow simulations based on dissipative particle dynamics, and (4) three-dimensional turbulent jet flow measurements obtained via particle tracking velocimetry. Across all cases, our method demonstrates competitive reconstruction accuracy, even with highly incomplete data (less than 10\% observed), and achieves efficient performance. The results highlight the potential of language models as robust and scalable tools for scientific data reconstruction, and suggest a promising direction toward the development of foundation models for scientific and engineering applications.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_23712
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Operator Learning for Reconstructing Flow Fields from Sparse Measurements: a Language Model Approach
Zhang, Qian
Karniadakis, George Em
Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
Machine Learning
Reconstructing flow fields from sparse measurements is a fundamental problem in fluid mechanics with broad implications for modeling, control, and design. In this work, we propose a novel operator learning framework that leverages the architecture of language models to perform flow reconstruction in a mesh-free manner. We reformulate flow field reconstruction as a sequence-to-sequence learning task, where sparse measurements are treated as context and unobserved locations as queries. Our model learns to reconstruct the full flow field from sparse inputs, effectively capturing spatial correlations and long-range dependencies. We evaluate the proposed approach on four benchmark datasets: (1) two-dimensional vortex street simulations, (2) daily average temperature data across the contiguous United States, (3) three-dimensional blood flow simulations based on dissipative particle dynamics, and (4) three-dimensional turbulent jet flow measurements obtained via particle tracking velocimetry. Across all cases, our method demonstrates competitive reconstruction accuracy, even with highly incomplete data (less than 10\% observed), and achieves efficient performance. The results highlight the potential of language models as robust and scalable tools for scientific data reconstruction, and suggest a promising direction toward the development of foundation models for scientific and engineering applications.
title Operator Learning for Reconstructing Flow Fields from Sparse Measurements: a Language Model Approach
topic Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.23712