Charis Harley | Searcharxiv

arXiv2026

Summation-by-parts operators for general function spaces: optimal nodes

Gauss-Lobatto quadrature nodes and weights are optimal for closed summation-by-parts (SBP) formulations based on polynomial approximation spaces in the sense that for a prescribed function space they yield an SBP operator of minimal dimension. We show that the same principle extends to general (possibly non-polynomial) function spaces: an associated generalised Gauss-Lobatto quadrature provides the optimal nodes and weights for the SBP formulation. We present an algorithm for computing these quadrature rules, demonstrate their accuracy and efficiency across a range of function spaces, and illustrate their use in solving initial boundary value problems.

math.NA↗

arXiv2025

Solving Lane-Emden-Type Eigenvalue Problems with Physics-Informed Neural Networks

The Lane-Emden equation, a nonlinear second-order ordinary differential equation, plays a fundamental role in theoretical physics and astrophysics, particularly in modeling the structure of stellar interiors. Also referred to as the polytropic differential equation, it describes the behavior of self-gravitating polytropic spheres. In this study, we present a novel approach to the solution of the eigenvalue problem which arises when considering the Lane-Emden equation for n = 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 using Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs). The novelty of this work is that, we not only solve the Lane-Emden equation via PINNS but we also determine the eigenvalue, r, which is the stellar radius. Hyperparameter tuning was conducted using Bayesian optimization in the Optuna framework to identify optimal values for the number of hidden layers, number of neurons, activation function, optimizer, and learning rate for each value of n. The results show that, for n = 0, 1, PINNs achieve near-exact agreement with theoretical eigenvalues (errors < 0.000806%). While for more nonlinear cases, n = 2, 3 and n=4, PINNs yield errors below 0.0009% and 0.05% respectively, validating their robustness.

astro-ph.SR↗