# Approximating High-Dimensional Minimal Surfaces with Physics-Informed Neural Networks

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.02589 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.02589/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 16 of its 29 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 5 Sep 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [The Deep Ritz method: A deep learning-based numerical algorithm for solving variational problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.00211/) (2017)
- [Physics Informed Deep Learning (Part I): Data-driven Solutions of Nonlinear Partial Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.10561/) (2017)
- [A unified deep artificial neural network approach to partial differential equations in complex geometries](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.06464/) (2017)
- [Parallel Physics-Informed Neural Networks via Domain Decomposition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.10013/) (2021)
- [Estimates on the generalization error of Physics Informed Neural Networks (PINNs) for approximating a class of inverse problems for PDEs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.01138/) (2020)
- [Physics-informed neural networks for inverse problems in supersonic flows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.11821/) (2022)
- [Error estimates for physics informed neural networks approximating the Navier-Stokes equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.09346/) (2022)
- [When Do Extended Physics-Informed Neural Networks (XPINNs) Improve Generalization?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.09444/) (2021)
- [A unified scalable framework for causal sweeping strategies for Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs) and their temporal decompositions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.14227/) (2023)
- [Augmented Physics-Informed Neural Networks (APINNs): A gating network-based soft domain decomposition methodology](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.08939/) (2022)
- [nPINNs: nonlocal Physics-Informed Neural Networks for a parametrized nonlocal universal Laplacian operator. Algorithms and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.04276/) (2020)
- [SPINN: Sparse, Physics-based, and partially Interpretable Neural Networks for PDEs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.13037/) (2021)
- [Numerical Solution of Inverse Problems by Weak Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.11340/) (2020)
- [A Deep Neural Network Surrogate for High-Dimensional Random Partial Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.02957/) (2018)
- [Neural Networks Trained to Solve Differential Equations Learn General Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.00042/) (2018)

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [A Machine Learning Approach to the Nirenberg Problem](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.12368/) (2026)
- [Minimising Willmore Energy via Neural Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.04321/) (2026)
- [Minimal surfaces, Knots, and Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.26234/) (2026)
- [PINNs in More General Geometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.25020/) (2026)
- [A user's guide to PINNs in geometric analysis: lessons from the asymptotic Plateau problem](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.28733/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In this paper, we compute numerical approximations of the minimal surfaces, an essential type of Partial Differential Equation (PDE), in higher dimensions. Classical methods cannot handle it in this case because of the Curse of Dimensionality, where the computational cost of these methods increases exponentially fast in response to higher problem dimensions, far beyond the computing capacity of any modern supercomputers. Only in the past few years have machine learning researchers been able to mitigate this problem. The solution method chosen here is a model known as a Physics-Informed Neural Network (PINN) which trains a deep neural network (DNN) to solve the minimal surface PDE. It can be scaled up into higher dimensions and trained relatively quickly even on a laptop with no GPU. Due to the inability to view the high-dimension output, our data is presented as snippets of a higher-dimension shape with enough fixed axes so that it is viewable with 3-D graphs. Not only will the functionality of this method be tested, but we will also explore potential limitations in the method's performance.