JAX-DIPS: Neural bootstrapping of finite discretization methods and application to elliptic problems with discontinuities

We present a scalable strategy for development of mesh-free hybrid neuro-symbolic partial differential equation solvers based on existing mesh-based numerical discretization methods. Particularly, this strategy can be used to efficiently train neural network surrogate models of partial differential equations by (i) leveraging the accuracy and convergence properties of advanced numerical methods, solvers, and preconditioners, as well as (ii) better scalability to higher order PDEs by strictly limiting optimization to first order automatic differentiation. The presented neural bootstrapping method (hereby dubbed NBM) is based on evaluation of the finite discretization residuals of the PDE system obtained on implicit Cartesian cells centered on a set of random collocation points with respect to trainable parameters of the neural network. Importantly, the conservation laws and symmetries present in the bootstrapped finite discretization equations inform the neural network about solution regularities within local neighborhoods of training points. We apply NBM to the important class of elliptic problems with jump conditions across irregular interfaces in three spatial dimensions. We show the method is convergent such that model accuracy improves by increasing number of collocation points in the domain and preconditioning the residuals. We show NBM is competitive in terms of memory and training speed with other PINN-type frameworks. The algorithms presented here are implemented using JAX in a software package named JAX-DIPS (https://github.com/JAX-DIPS/JAX-DIPS)