LPINNs: First-Layer Gated Localization for Physics-Informed Neural Networks

Abstract

Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) use one shared representation over the computational domain, which can become difficult to optimize on long domains and for high-order operators. We study a minimal alternative: multiply the first hidden activation of an otherwise unchanged dense PINN by input-dependent localization functions, giving first-layer units receptive fields without partitioning the domain or adding interface losses. We screen 13 families of localization functions, in up to three parameterizations each, on a nonlinear harmonic oscillator (HO), a heat equation on a long spatial interval, and a manufactured four-dimensional (4D) fourth-order problem, with ten paired seeds throughout. Three configurations give large reductions in solution error at matched budgets: (i) Fixed Gaussian localization functions on the $2\pi$ HO domain cut mean solution RMSE from $4.8369\times 10^{-1}$ to $8.83\times 10^{-3}$ at 3k epochs. (ii) The inverse-quadratic family with learnable centers and widths cuts it from $2.896\times 10^{-1}$ to $3.06\times 10^{-2}$ on the $8\pi$ heat domain at 10k epochs. (iii) Fixed bump localization functions cut it from $1.75947\times 10^1$ to $2.260\times 10^{-1}$ on the $4\pi$ 4D domain at 10k epochs. Every paired seed improves in these three comparisons. The screen also shows that the mechanism is not a free win: on HO only 2 of 13 families beat the baseline, and 10 of the remaining 11 are 9 to 23 times worse; on 4D four families are non-finite and five are more than three orders of magnitude worse than the baseline. The inverse-quadratic family is the only one that beats the baseline on all three equations. Overall, these results show that first-layer localization can provide measurable improvements to baseline PINNs on long-domain and high-order problems.