# Residual-based attention in physics-informed neural networks

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.00379 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.00379/

## Key facts

- Cited by 72 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 23 of its 39 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Jul 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 23 of 23)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Characterizing possible failure modes in physics-informed neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.01050/) (2021)
- [DeepXDE: A deep learning library for solving differential equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.04502/) (2019)
- [Weight Normalization: A Simple Reparameterization to Accelerate Training of Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.07868/) (2016)
- [Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) for fluid mechanics: A review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.09506/) (2021)
- [On the eigenvector bias of Fourier feature networks: From regression to solving multi-scale PDEs with physics-informed neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.10047/) (2020)
- [Physics-informed neural networks with hard constraints for inverse design](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.04626/) (2021)
- [A comprehensive study of non-adaptive and residual-based adaptive sampling for physics-informed neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.10289/) (2022)
- [Self-Adaptive Physics-Informed Neural Networks using a Soft Attention Mechanism](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.04544/) (2020)
- [Respecting causality is all you need for training physics-informed neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.07404/) (2022)
- [Exact imposition of boundary conditions with distance functions in physics-informed deep neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08426/) (2021)
- [Solving Allen-Cahn and Cahn-Hilliard Equations using the Adaptive Physics Informed Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.04542/) (2020)
- [A Method for Representing Periodic Functions and Enforcing Exactly Periodic Boundary Conditions with Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.07442/) (2020)
- [A Dual-Dimer Method for Training Physics-Constrained Neural Networks with Minimax Architecture](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.00615/) (2020)
- [Physics and Equality Constrained Artificial Neural Networks: Application to Forward and Inverse Problems with Multi-fidelity Data Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.14860/) (2021)
- [Enhanced Physics-Informed Neural Networks with Augmented Lagrangian Relaxation Method (AL-PINNs)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.01059/) (2022)
- [Investigating molecular transport in the human brain from MRI with physics-informed neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.02592/) (2022)
- [Enhancing training of physics-informed neural networks using domain-decomposition based preconditioning strategies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.17648/) (2023)
- [Deep Theory of Functional Connections: A New Method for Estimating the Solutions of PDEs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.08625/) (2018)
- [Investigating and Mitigating Failure Modes in Physics-informed Neural Networks (PINNs)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.09988/) (2022)
- [An adaptive augmented Lagrangian method for training physics and equality constrained artificial neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.04904/) (2023)
- [A Dimension-Augmented Physics-Informed Neural Network (DaPINN) with High Level Accuracy and Efficiency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.13212/) (2022)
- [About optimal loss function for training physics-informed neural networks under respecting causality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02282/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 72)

- [A comprehensive and FAIR comparison between MLP and KAN representations for differential equations and operator networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.02917/) (2024)
- [From PINNs to PIKANs: Recent Advances in Physics-Informed Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.13228/) (2024)
- [Gradient Alignment in Physics-informed Neural Networks: A Second-Order Optimization Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.00604/) (2025)
- [Adaptive Training of Grid-Dependent Physics-Informed Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.17611/) (2024)
- [Integrating Neural Operators with Diffusion Models Improves Spectral Representation in Turbulence Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.08477/) (2024)
- [Finite basis Kolmogorov-Arnold networks: domain decomposition for data-driven and physics-informed problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.19662/) (2024)
- [Unveiling the optimization process of Physics Informed Neural Networks: How accurate and competitive can PINNs be?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.04230/) (2024)
- [Rethinking materials simulations: Blending direct numerical simulations with neural operators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.05410/) (2023)
- [Self-adaptive weights based on balanced residual decay rate for physics-informed neural networks and deep operator networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.01613/) (2024)
- [Inferring turbulent velocity and temperature fields and their statistics from Lagrangian velocity measurements using physics-informed Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.15727/) (2024)
- [Learning in PINNs: Phase transition, diffusion equilibrium, and generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.18494/) (2024)
- [SPIKANs: Separable Physics-Informed Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.06286/) (2024)
- [Residual-based Attention Physics-informed Neural Networks for Spatio-Temporal Ageing Assessment of Transformers Operated in Renewable Power Plants](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.06443/) (2024)
- [Challenges and Advancements in Modeling Shock Fronts with Physics-Informed Neural Networks: A Review and Benchmarking Study](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.17379/) (2025)
- [Anant-Net: Breaking the Curse of Dimensionality with Scalable and Interpretable Neural Surrogate for High-Dimensional PDEs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.03595/) (2025)
- [Initialization Schemes for Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks: An Empirical Study](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.03417/) (2025)
- [Initialization-enhanced Physics-Informed Neural Network with Domain Decomposition (IDPINN)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.03172/) (2024)
- [BiLO: Bilevel Local Operator Learning for PDE Inverse Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.17789/) (2024)
- [Learnable Activation Functions in Physics-Informed Neural Networks for Solving Partial Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.15111/) (2024)
- [Complex Physics-Informed Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.04917/) (2025)
- [High precision PINNs in unbounded domains: application to singularity formulation in PDEs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.19243/) (2025)
- [ATHENA: Agentic Team for Hierarchical Evolutionary Numerical Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.03476/) (2025)
- [GMC-PINNs: A new general Monte Carlo PINNs method for solving fractional partial differential equations on irregular domains](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.00217/) (2024)
- [Convolution-weighting method for the physics-informed neural network: A Primal-Dual Optimization Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.19805/) (2025)
- [A Variational Framework for Residual-Based Adaptivity in Neural PDE Solvers and Operator Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.14198/) (2025)
- [Self-adaptive weighting and sampling for physics-informed neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.05452/) (2025)
- [Two-level overlapping additive Schwarz preconditioner for training scientific machine learning applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.10997/) (2024)
- [Advancing Generalization in PINNs through Latent-Space Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.19125/) (2024)
- [E-PINNs: Epistemic Physics-Informed Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.19333/) (2025)
- [AB-PINNs: Adaptive-Basis Physics-Informed Neural Networks for Residual-Driven Domain Decomposition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.08924/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Driven by the need for more efficient and seamless integration of physical models and data, physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) have seen a surge of interest in recent years. However, ensuring the reliability of their convergence and accuracy remains a challenge. In this work, we propose an efficient, gradient-less weighting scheme for PINNs that accelerates the convergence of dynamic or static systems. This simple yet effective attention mechanism is a bounded function of the evolving cumulative residuals and aims to make the optimizer aware of problematic regions at no extra computational cost or adversarial learning. We illustrate that this general method consistently achieves one order of magnitude faster convergence than vanilla PINNs and a minimum relative L2 error of O(10-5), on typical benchmarks of the literature. The method is further tested on the inverse solution of the Navier-Stokes within the brain perivascular spaces, where it considerably improves the prediction accuracy. Furthermore, an ablation study is performed for each case to identify the contribution of the components that enhance the vanilla PINN formulation. Evident from the convergence trajectories is the ability of the optimizer to effectively escape from poor local minima or saddle points while focusing on the challenging domain regions, which consistently have a high residual score. We believe that alongside exact boundary conditions and other model reparameterizations, this type of attention mask could be an essential element for fast training of both PINNs and neural operators.