arXiv subjects

Hongli Zhao

Publications and source records attributed to Hongli Zhao.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Overlapping Schwarz Scheme for Linear-Quadratic Programs in Continuous Time

We present an optimize-then-discretize framework for solving linear-quadratic optimal control problems (OCP) governed by time-inhomogeneous ordinary differential equations (ODEs). Our method employs a modified overlapping Schwarz decomposition based on the Pontryagin Minimum Principle, partitioning the temporal domain into overlapping intervals and independently solving Hamiltonian systems in continuous time. We demonstrate that the convergence is ensured by appropriately updating the boundary conditions of the individual Hamiltonian dynamics. The cornerstone of our analysis is to prove that the exponential decay of sensitivity (EDS) exhibited in discrete-time OCPs carries over to the continuous-time setting. Unlike the discretize-then-optimize approach, our method can flexibly incorporate different numerical integration methods for solving the resulting Hamiltonian two-point boundary-value subproblems, including adaptive-time integrators. A numerical experiment on a linear-quadratic OCP illustrates the practicality of our approach in broad scientific applications.

math.OC↗

arXiv2024

Data-Driven Estimation of Failure Probabilities in Correlated Structure-Preserving Stochastic Power System Models

We propose a data-driven approach for propagating uncertainty in stochastic power grid simulations and apply it to the estimation of transmission line failure probabilities. A reduced-order equation governing the evolution of the observed line energy probability density function is derived from the Fokker--Planck equation of the full-order continuous Markov process. Our method consists of estimates produced by numerically integrating this reduced equation. Numerical experiments for scalar- and vector-valued energy functions are conducted using the classical multimachine model under spatiotemporally correlated noise perturbation. The method demonstrates a more sample-efficient approach for computing probabilities of tail events when compared with kernel density estimation. Moreover, it produces vastly more accurate estimates of joint event occurrence when compared with independent models.

cs.CE↗

arXiv2023

Data-driven Closures & Assimilation for Stiff Multiscale Random Dynamics

We introduce a data-driven and physics-informed framework for propagating uncertainty in stiff, multiscale random ordinary differential equations (RODEs) driven by correlated (colored) noise. Unlike systems subjected to Gaussian white noise, a deterministic equation for the joint probability density function (PDF) of RODE state variables does not exist in closed form. Moreover, such an equation would require as many phase-space variables as there are states in the RODE system. To alleviate this curse of dimensionality, we instead derive exact, albeit unclosed, reduced-order PDF (RoPDF) equations for low-dimensional observables/quantities of interest. The unclosed terms take the form of state-dependent conditional expectations, which are directly estimated from data at sparse observation times. However, for systems exhibiting stiff, multiscale dynamics, data sparsity introduces regression discrepancies that compound during RoPDF evolution. This is overcome by introducing a kinetic-like defect term to the RoPDF equation, which is learned by assimilating in sparse, low-fidelity RoPDF estimates. Two assimilation methods are considered, namely nudging and deep neural networks, which are successfully tested against Monte Carlo simulations.

math.DS↗

arXiv2023

Model discovery for nonautonomous translation-invariant problems

Discovery of mathematical descriptors of physical phenomena from observational and simulated data, as opposed to from the first principles, is a rapidly evolving research area. Two factors, time-dependence of the inputs and hidden translation invariance, are known to complicate this task. To ameliorate these challenges, we combine Lagrangian dynamic mode decomposition with a locally time-invariant approximation of the Koopman operator. The former component of our method yields the best linear estimator of the system's dynamics, while the latter deals with the system's nonlinearity and non-autonomous behavior. We provide theoretical estimators (bounds) of prediction accuracy and perturbation error to guide the selection of both rank truncation and temporal discretization. We demonstrate the performance of our approach on several non-autonomous problems, including two-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations.

math.NA↗

arXiv2023

Tensorizing flows: a tool for variational inference

Fueled by the expressive power of deep neural networks, normalizing flows have achieved spectacular success in generative modeling, or learning to draw new samples from a distribution given a finite dataset of training samples. Normalizing flows have also been applied successfully to variational inference, wherein one attempts to learn a sampler based on an expression for the log-likelihood or energy function of the distribution, rather than on data. In variational inference, the unimodality of the reference Gaussian distribution used within the normalizing flow can cause difficulties in learning multimodal distributions. We introduce an extension of normalizing flows in which the Gaussian reference is replaced with a reference distribution that is constructed via a tensor network, specifically a matrix product state or tensor train. We show that by combining flows with tensor networks on difficult variational inference tasks, we can improve on the results obtained by using either tool without the other.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2022

High-dimensional density estimation with tensorizing flow

We propose the tensorizing flow method for estimating high-dimensional probability density functions from the observed data. The method is based on tensor-train and flow-based generative modeling. Our method first efficiently constructs an approximate density in the tensor-train form via solving the tensor cores from a linear system based on the kernel density estimators of low-dimensional marginals. We then train a continuous-time flow model from this tensor-train density to the observed empirical distribution by performing a maximum likelihood estimation. The proposed method combines the optimization-less feature of the tensor-train with the flexibility of the flow-based generative models. Numerical results are included to demonstrate the performance of the proposed method.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2020

Autonomous learning of nonlocal stochastic neuron dynamics

Neuronal dynamics is driven by externally imposed or internally generated random excitations/noise, and is often described by systems of random or stochastic ordinary differential equations. Such systems admit a distribution of solutions, which is (partially) characterized by the single-time joint probability density function (PDF) of system states. It can be used to calculate such information-theoretic quantities as the mutual information between the stochastic stimulus and various internal states of the neuron (e.g., membrane potential), as well as various spiking statistics. When random excitations are modeled as Gaussian white noise, the joint PDF of neuron states satisfies exactly a Fokker-Planck equation. However, most biologically plausible noise sources are correlated (colored). In this case, the resulting PDF equations require a closure approximation. We propose two methods for closing such equations: a modified nonlocal large-eddy-diffusivity closure and a data-driven closure relying on sparse regression to learn relevant features. The closures are tested for the stochastic non-spiking leaky integrate-and-fire and FitzHugh-Nagumo (FHN) neurons driven by sine-Wiener noise. Mutual information and total correlation between the random stimulus and the internal states of the neuron are calculated for the FHN neuron.

q-bio.NC↗