Koopman operator theory, a powerful framework for discovering the underlying dynamics of nonlinear dynamical systems, was recently shown to be intimately connected with neural network training. In this work, we take the first steps in making use of t
his connection. As Koopman operator theory is a linear theory, a successful implementation of it in evolving network weights and biases offers the promise of accelerated training, especially in the context of deep networks, where optimization is inherently a non-convex problem. We show that Koopman operator theoretic methods allow for accurate predictions of weights and biases of feedforward, fully connected deep networks over a non-trivial range of training time. During this window, we find that our approach is >10x faster than various gradient descent based methods (e.g. Adam, Adadelta, Adagrad), in line with our complexity analysis. We end by highlighting open questions in this exciting intersection between dynamical systems and neural network theory. We highlight additional methods by which our results could be expanded to broader classes of networks and larger training intervals, which shall be the focus of future work.
Neural Networks (NNs) have been identified as a potentially powerful tool in the study of complex dynamical systems. A good example is the NN differential equation (DE) solver, which provides closed form, differentiable, functional approximations for
the evolution of a wide variety of dynamical systems. A major disadvantage of such NN solvers can be the amount of computational resources needed to achieve accuracy comparable to existing numerical solvers. We present new strategies for existing dynamical system NN DE solvers, making efficient use of the textit{learnt} information, to speed up their training process, while still pursuing a completely unsupervised approach. We establish a fundamental connection between NN theory and dynamical systems theory via Koopman Operator Theory (KOT), by showing that the usual training processes for Neural Nets are fertile ground for identifying multiple Koopman operators of interest. We end by illuminating certain applications that KOT might have for NNs in general.
