Adaptive-Growth Randomized Neural Networks for Level-Set Computation of Multivalued Nonlinear First-Order PDEs with Hyperbolic Characteristics

Abstract

This paper proposes an Adaptive-Growth Randomized Neural Network (AG-RaNN) method for computing multivalued solutions of nonlinear first-order PDEs with hyperbolic characteristics, including quasilinear hyperbolic balance laws and Hamilton--Jacobi equations. Such solutions arise in geometric optics, seismic waves, semiclassical limit of quantum dynamics and high frequency limit of linear waves, and differ markedly from the viscosity or entropic solutions. The main computational challenges lie in that the solutions are no longer functions, and become union of multiple branches, after the formation of singularities. Level-set formulations offer a systematic alternative by embedding the nonlinear dynamics into linear transport equations posed in an augmented phase space, at the price of substantially increased dimensionality. To alleviate this computational burden, we combine AG-RaNN with an adaptive collocation strategy that concentrates samples in a tubular neighborhood of the zero level set, together with a layer-growth mechanism that progressively enriches the randomized feature space. Under standard regularity assumptions on the transport field and the characteristic flow, we establish a convergence result for the AG-RaNN approximation of the level-set equations. Numerical experiments demonstrate that the proposed method can efficiently recover multivalued structures and resolve nonsmooth features in high-dimensional settings.