Asymptotic-Preserving Neural Networks for Multiscale Time-Dependent Linear Transport Equations

Abstract: In this paper we develop a neural network for the numerical simulation of time-dependent linear transport equations with diffusive scaling and uncertainties. The goal of the network is to resolve the computational challenges of curse-of-dimensionality and multiple scales of the problem. We first show that a standard Physics-Informed Neural Network (PINN) fails to capture the multiscale nature of the problem, hence justifies the need to use Asymptotic-Preserving Neural Networks (APNNs). We show that not all classical AP formulations are fit for the neural network approach. We construct a micro-macro decomposition based neural network, and also build in a mass conservation mechanism into the loss function, in order to capture the dynamic and multiscale nature of the solutions. Numerical examples are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of this APNNs.