8,911 research outputs found
Optimizing Photonic Nanostructures via Multi-fidelity Gaussian Processes
We apply numerical methods in combination with finite-difference-time-domain
(FDTD) simulations to optimize transmission properties of plasmonic mirror
color filters using a multi-objective figure of merit over a five-dimensional
parameter space by utilizing novel multi-fidelity Gaussian processes approach.
We compare these results with conventional derivative-free global search
algorithms, such as (single-fidelity) Gaussian Processes optimization scheme,
and Particle Swarm Optimization---a commonly used method in nanophotonics
community, which is implemented in Lumerical commercial photonics software. We
demonstrate the performance of various numerical optimization approaches on
several pre-collected real-world datasets and show that by properly trading off
expensive information sources with cheap simulations, one can more effectively
optimize the transmission properties with a fixed budget.Comment: NIPS 2018 Workshop on Machine Learning for Molecules and Materials.
arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1811.0075
Numerical computation of rare events via large deviation theory
An overview of rare events algorithms based on large deviation theory (LDT)
is presented. It covers a range of numerical schemes to compute the large
deviation minimizer in various setups, and discusses best practices, common
pitfalls, and implementation trade-offs. Generalizations, extensions, and
improvements of the minimum action methods are proposed. These algorithms are
tested on example problems which illustrate several common difficulties which
arise e.g. when the forcing is degenerate or multiplicative, or the systems are
infinite-dimensional. Generalizations to processes driven by non-Gaussian
noises or random initial data and parameters are also discussed, along with the
connection between the LDT-based approach reviewed here and other methods, such
as stochastic field theory and optimal control. Finally, the integration of
this approach in importance sampling methods using e.g. genealogical algorithms
is explored
The instanton method and its numerical implementation in fluid mechanics
A precise characterization of structures occurring in turbulent fluid flows
at high Reynolds numbers is one of the last open problems of classical physics.
In this review we discuss recent developments related to the application of
instanton methods to turbulence. Instantons are saddle point configurations of
the underlying path integrals. They are equivalent to minimizers of the related
Freidlin-Wentzell action and known to be able to characterize rare events in
such systems. While there is an impressive body of work concerning their
analytical description, this review focuses on the question on how to compute
these minimizers numerically. In a short introduction we present the relevant
mathematical and physical background before we discuss the stochastic Burgers
equation in detail. We present algorithms to compute instantons numerically by
an efficient solution of the corresponding Euler-Lagrange equations. A second
focus is the discussion of a recently developed numerical filtering technique
that allows to extract instantons from direct numerical simulations. In the
following we present modifications of the algorithms to make them efficient
when applied to two- or three-dimensional fluid dynamical problems. We
illustrate these ideas using the two-dimensional Burgers equation and the
three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations
Information-Geometric Optimization Algorithms: A Unifying Picture via Invariance Principles
We present a canonical way to turn any smooth parametric family of
probability distributions on an arbitrary search space into a
continuous-time black-box optimization method on , the
\emph{information-geometric optimization} (IGO) method. Invariance as a design
principle minimizes the number of arbitrary choices. The resulting \emph{IGO
flow} conducts the natural gradient ascent of an adaptive, time-dependent,
quantile-based transformation of the objective function. It makes no
assumptions on the objective function to be optimized.
The IGO method produces explicit IGO algorithms through time discretization.
It naturally recovers versions of known algorithms and offers a systematic way
to derive new ones. The cross-entropy method is recovered in a particular case,
and can be extended into a smoothed, parametrization-independent maximum
likelihood update (IGO-ML). For Gaussian distributions on , IGO
is related to natural evolution strategies (NES) and recovers a version of the
CMA-ES algorithm. For Bernoulli distributions on , we recover the
PBIL algorithm. From restricted Boltzmann machines, we obtain a novel algorithm
for optimization on . All these algorithms are unified under a
single information-geometric optimization framework.
Thanks to its intrinsic formulation, the IGO method achieves invariance under
reparametrization of the search space , under a change of parameters of the
probability distributions, and under increasing transformations of the
objective function.
Theory strongly suggests that IGO algorithms have minimal loss in diversity
during optimization, provided the initial diversity is high. First experiments
using restricted Boltzmann machines confirm this insight. Thus IGO seems to
provide, from information theory, an elegant way to spontaneously explore
several valleys of a fitness landscape in a single run.Comment: Final published versio
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