# Discovery of Interpretable Surrogates via Agentic AI: Application to Gravitational Waves

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.11280 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.11280/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Web, search, and research agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 29 of its 112 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 May 2026.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [Web, search, and research agents](https://mlsanity.com/agents/web-search-and-research-agents/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 29 of 29)

- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11903/) (2022)
- [ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03629/) (2022)
- [Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.03374/) (2021)
- [Toolformer: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Use Tools](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04761/) (2023)
- [SWE-bench: Can Language Models Resolve Real-World GitHub Issues?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06770/) (2023)
- [Fourier Neural Operator for Parametric Partial Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.08895/) (2020)
- [Voyager: An Open-Ended Embodied Agent with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.16291/) (2023)
- [SWE-agent: Agent-Computer Interfaces Enable Automated Software Engineering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.15793/) (2024)
- [Competition-Level Code Generation with AlphaCode](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.07814/) (2022)
- [Tulu 3: Pushing Frontiers in Open Language Model Post-Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.15124/) (2024)
- [AlphaEvolve: A coding agent for scientific and algorithmic discovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.13131/) (2025)
- [AI Feynman: a Physics-Inspired Method for Symbolic Regression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.11481/) (2019)
- [Discovering Symbolic Models from Deep Learning with Inductive Biases](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11287/) (2020)
- [LLM-SR: Scientific Equation Discovery via Programming with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.18400/) (2024)
- [Symbolic Regression with a Learned Concept Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.09359/) (2024)
- [Interpretable Machine Learning for Science with PySR and SymbolicRegression.jl](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.01582/) (2023)
- [How Efficient is LLM-Generated Code? A Rigorous & High-Standard Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.06647/) (2024)
- [AstroLLaMA: Towards Specialized Foundation Models in Astronomy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.06126/) (2023)
- [SR-Scientist: Scientific Equation Discovery With Agentic AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.11661/) (2025)
- [DrSR: LLM based Scientific Equation Discovery with Dual Reasoning from Data and Experience](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.04282/) (2025)
- [The Denario project: Deep knowledge AI agents for scientific discovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.26887/) (2025)
- [Think like a Scientist: Physics-guided LLM Agent for Equation Discovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.12259/) (2026)
- [Fast prediction and evaluation of gravitational waveforms using surrogate models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1308.3565/) (2013)
- [Automated Algorithmic Discovery for Scientific Computing through LLM-Guided Evolutionary Search: A Case Study in Gravitational-Wave Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.03661/) (2025)
- [Open Source Planning & Control System with Language Agents for Autonomous Scientific Discovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.07257/) (2025)
- [Eccentric, nonspinning, inspiral, Gaussian-process merger approximant for the detection and characterization of eccentric binary black hole mergers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.06276/) (2017)
- [Enhancing Agentic Autonomous Scientific Discovery with Vision-Language Model Capabilities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.14631/) (2025)
- [spectroxide: A code package for computing cosmic microwave background spectral distortions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.24838/) (2026)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [How AI Agents Discover Scientific Equations: From Hydrotope Rediscovery to New Water-Wave Amplitudes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.00435/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Fast surrogate models for expensive simulations are now essential across the sciences, yet they typically operate as black boxes. We present textttGWAgent, a large language model (LLM)-based workflow that constructs interpretable analytic surrogates directly from simulation data. Surrogate modeling is well suited to agentic workflows because candidate models can be quantitatively validated against ground-truth simulations at each iteration. As a demonstration, we build a surrogate for gravitational waveforms from eccentric binary black hole mergers. We show that providing the agent with a physics-informed domain ansatz substantially improves output model accuracy. The resulting analytic surrogate attains a median Advanced LIGO mismatch of 6.9×10-4 together with an ~ 8.4× speedup in waveform evaluation, surpassing both symbolic regression and conventional machine learning baselines. Beyond producing an accurate model, the workflow identifies compact physical structure from the learned representation. As an astrophysical application, we use textttGWAgent to analyze the eccentricity of GW200129 and infer e20Hz=0.099+0.063-0.044. These results show that validation-constrained agentic workflows can produce accurate, fast, and interpretable surrogates for scientific simulations and inference.
