Vector-Valued Reproducing Kernel Banach Spaces for Neural Networks and Operators

Abstract

Recently, there has been growing interest in characterizing the function spaces underlying neural networks. While shallow and deep scalar-valued neural networks have been linked to scalar-valued reproducing kernel Banach spaces (RKBS), $\mathbb{R}^d$-valued neural networks and neural operator models remain less understood in the RKBS setting. To address this gap, we develop a notion of adjoint pairs of vector-valued RKBSs (vv-RKBS), which inherently involves an associated reproducing kernel, and prove that every vv-RKBS belongs to such a pair. Our construction extends existing kernel definitions by avoiding restrictive assumptions such as symmetric kernel domains, finite-dimensional output spaces, reflexivity, or separability, while still recovering familiar properties of vector-valued reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces (vv-RKHS). We then show that shallow $\mathbb{R}^d$-valued neural networks are elements of a specific vv-RKBS, namely an instance of an integral vv-RKBS. To also explore the functional structure of neural operators, we analyze the DeepONet and Hypernetwork architectures and demonstrate that they too belong to an integral vv-RKBS. In all cases, we establish a representer theorem, showing that optimization over these function spaces recovers the corresponding neural architectures.