Discover physical concepts and equations with machine learning

Abstract Machine learning can uncover physical concepts or physical equations when prior knowledge from the other is available. However, these two aspects are often intertwined and cannot be discovered independently. We extend SciNet , which is a neural network architecture that simulates the human physical reasoning process for physics discovery, by proposing a model that combines Variational Autoencoders (VAE) with Neural Ordinary Differential equations (Neural ODEs). This allows us to simultaneously rediscover physical concepts and governing equations from simulated experimental data across various physical systems. We apply the model to several examples inspired by the history of physics, including Copernicus’ heliocentrism, Newton’s law of gravity, Schrödinger’s wave mechanics, and Pauli’s spin-magnetic formulation. The results demonstrate that the correct physical theories can emerge in the neural network.