# From Fixed Grids to Moving Particles:A Transferable Latent Operator for Fluid Dynamics

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.14120 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.14120/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 17 of its 26 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 14 Aug 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [Fourier Neural Operator for Parametric Partial Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.08895/) (2020)
- [DeepONet: Learning nonlinear operators for identifying differential equations based on the universal approximation theorem of operators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.03193/) (2019)
- [Learning to Simulate Complex Physics with Graph Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.09405/) (2020)
- [Choose a Transformer: Fourier or Galerkin](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.14995/) (2021)
- [GNOT: A General Neural Operator Transformer for Operator Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.14376/) (2023)
- [Transolver: A Fast Transformer Solver for PDEs on General Geometries](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.02366/) (2024)
- [Geometry-Informed Neural Operator for Large-Scale 3D PDEs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.00583/) (2023)
- [U-NO: U-shaped Neural Operators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.11127/) (2022)
- [The Well: a Large-Scale Collection of Diverse Physics Simulations for Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.00568/) (2024)
- [Solving High-Dimensional PDEs with Latent Spectral Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.12664/) (2023)
- [Latent Neural Operator for Solving Forward and Inverse PDE Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.03923/) (2024)
- [Geometry Aware Operator Transformer as an Efficient and Accurate Neural Surrogate for PDEs on Arbitrary Domains](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.18781/) (2025)
- [APEBench: A Benchmark for Autoregressive Neural Emulators of PDEs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.00180/) (2024)
- [LagrangeBench: A Lagrangian Fluid Mechanics Benchmarking Suite](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16342/) (2023)
- [Harnessing Scale and Physics: A Multi-Graph Neural Operator Framework for PDEs on Arbitrary Geometries](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.15178/) (2024)
- [Neural Vortex Method: from Finite Lagrangian Particles to Infinite Dimensional Eulerian Dynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.04178/) (2020)
- [DeepLag: Discovering Deep Lagrangian Dynamics for Intuitive Fluid Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.02425/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Lagrangian modeling is vital to fluid dynamics, as it characterizes particle transport and complements the Eulerian representation. However, Lagrangian trajectories are less commonly available than Eulerian fields, while most neural operators are trained and evaluated primarily in the Eulerian representation. This mismatch motivates a new learning problem: can a model trained solely on Eulerian observations generalize zero-shot from Eulerian field prediction to Lagrangian particle rollout, without Lagrangian supervision or task-specific adaptation? To address this problem, we propose the Transferable Latent Operator (TLO), which learns a unified flow representation shared by Eulerian field prediction and Lagrangian particle rollout. TLO decouples latent flow evolution from coordinate-dependent decoding: querying the evolving latent representation at fixed spatial coordinates yields Eulerian fields, whereas querying velocities at particle positions and recursively updating these positions enables Lagrangian rollout. Across five fluid-dynamics benchmarks, TLO consistently outperforms existing neural operators in both Eulerian field prediction and zero-shot Lagrangian rollout, with further gains from limited Lagrangian fine-tuning.