# Learning Physical Operators using Neural Operators

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.23113 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.23113/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 45 of its 105 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 26 Feb 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 45)

- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Neural Ordinary Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.07366/) (2018)
- [Outrageously Large Neural Networks: The Sparsely-Gated Mixture-of-Experts Layer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1701.06538/) (2017)
- [Implicit Neural Representations with Periodic Activation Functions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.09661/) (2020)
- [DeepONet: Learning nonlinear operators for identifying differential equations based on the universal approximation theorem of operators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.03193/) (2019)
- [On the Spectral Bias of Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.08734/) (2018)
- [Learning Mesh-Based Simulation with Graph Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.03409/) (2020)
- [Neural Operator: Graph Kernel Network for Partial Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.03485/) (2020)
- [Physics-Informed Neural Operator for Learning Partial Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.03794/) (2021)
- [Augmented Neural ODEs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.01681/) (2019)
- [Message Passing Neural PDE Solvers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.03376/) (2022)
- [Universal Differential Equations for Scientific Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.04385/) (2020)
- [Geometry-Informed Neural Operator for Large-Scale 3D PDEs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.00583/) (2023)
- [Learning Factored Representations in a Deep Mixture of Experts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.4314/) (2013)
- [U-NO: U-shaped Neural Operators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.11127/) (2022)
- [PDE-Refiner: Achieving Accurate Long Rollouts with Neural PDE Solvers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.05732/) (2023)
- [Solver-in-the-Loop: Learning from Differentiable Physics to Interact with Iterative PDE-Solvers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.00016/) (2020)
- [Poseidon: Efficient Foundation Models for PDEs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.19101/) (2024)
- [Towards Multi-spatiotemporal-scale Generalized PDE Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.15616/) (2022)
- [Physics-informed learning of governing equations from scarce data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.03448/) (2020)
- [Neural SDEs as Infinite-Dimensional GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.03657/) (2021)
- [Graph Neural Ordinary Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.07532/) (2019)
- [Learning to Control PDEs with Differentiable Physics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.07457/) (2020)
- [Multiple Physics Pretraining for Physical Surrogate Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.02994/) (2023)
- [Physics-informed neural networks for inverse problems in supersonic flows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.11821/) (2022)
- [Simulation Intelligence: Towards a New Generation of Scientific Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03235/) (2021)
- [APEBench: A Benchmark for Autoregressive Neural Emulators of PDEs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.00180/) (2024)
- [Towards Stability of Autoregressive Neural Operators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.10619/) (2023)
- [Pretraining Codomain Attention Neural Operators for Solving Multiphysics PDEs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.12553/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [HyCOP: Hybrid Composition Operators for Interpretable Learning of PDEs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.00820/) (2026)
- [PDE-JEPA: Predictive Representation Learning of Latent Dynamics Modeling for Parametric PDEs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.34715/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Neural operators have emerged as promising surrogate models for solving partial differential equations (PDEs), but struggle to generalise beyond training distributions and are often constrained to a fixed temporal discretisation. This work introduces a physics-informed training framework that addresses these limitations by decomposing PDEs using operator splitting methods, training separate neural operators to learn individual non-linear physical operators while approximating linear operators with fixed finite-difference convolutions. This modular mixture-of-experts architecture enables generalisation to novel physical regimes by explicitly encoding the underlying operator structure. We formulate the modelling task as a neural ordinary differential equation (ODE) where these learned operators constitute the right-hand side, enabling continuous-in-time predictions through standard ODE solvers and implicitly enforcing PDE constraints. Demonstrated on incompressible and compressible Navier--Stokes equations, our approach achieves better convergence and superior performance when generalising to unseen physics. The method remains parameter-efficient, enabling temporal extrapolation beyond training horizons, and provides interpretable components whose behaviour can be verified against known physics.