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Model reduction of large Markov chains is an essential step in a wide array of techniques for understanding complex systems and for efficiently learning structures from high-dimensional data. We present a novel aggregation algorithm for compressing such chains that exploits a specific low-rank structure in the transition matrix which, e.g., is present in metastable systems, among others. It enables the recovery of the aggregates from a vastly undersampled transition matrix which in practical applications may gain a speedup of several orders of mag- nitude over methods that require the full transition matrix. Moreover, we show that the new technique is robust under perturbation of the transition matrix. The practical applicability of the new method is demonstrated by identifying a reduced model for the large-scale traffic flow patterns from real-world taxi trip data.
In this paper, we consider the eigenvalue PDE problem of the infinitesimal generators of metastable diffusion processes. We propose a numerical algorithm based on training artificial neural networks for solving the leading eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of such high-dimensional eigenvalue problem. The algorithm is useful in understanding the dynamical behaviors of metastable processes on large timescales. We demonstrate the capability of our algorithm on a high-dimensional model problem, and on the simple molecular system alanine dipeptide.
Accurate modeling and numerical simulation of reaction kinetics is a topic of steady interest. We consider the spatiotemporal chemical master equation (ST-CME) as a model for stochastic reaction-diffusion systems that exhibit properties of metastability. The space of motion is decomposed into metastable compartments and diffusive motion is approximated by jumps between these compartments. Treating these jumps as first-order reactions, simulation of the resulting stochastic system is possible by the Gillespie method. We present the theory of Markov state models (MSM) as a theoretical foundation of this intuitive approach. By means of Markov state modeling, both the number and shape of compartments and the transition rates between them can be determined. We consider the ST-CME for two reaction-diffusion systems and compare it to more detailed models. Moreover, a rigorous formal justification of the ST-CME by Galerkin projection methods is presented.
Mathematical modeling of spatio-temporal population dynamics and application to epidemic spreading
(2021)
Agent based models (ABMs) are a useful tool for modeling spatio-temporal population dynamics, where many details can be included in the model description. Their computational cost though is very high and for stochastic ABMs a lot of individual simulations are required to sample quantities of interest. Especially, large numbers of agents render the sampling infeasible. Model reduction to a metapopulation model leads to a significant gain in computational efficiency, while preserving important dynamical properties. Based on a precise mathematical description of spatio-temporal ABMs, we present two different metapopulation approaches (stochastic and piecewise deterministic) and discuss the approximation steps between the different models within this framework. Especially, we show how the stochastic metapopulation model results from a Galerkin projection of the underlying ABM onto a finite-dimensional ansatz space. Finally, we utilize our modeling framework to provide a conceptual model for the spreading of COVID-19 that can be scaled to real-world scenarios.
When estimating a probability density within the empirical Bayes framework, the non-parametric maximum likelihood estimate (NPMLE) usually tends to overfit the data. This issue is usually taken care of by regularization - a penalization term is subtracted from the marginal log-likelihood before the maximization step, so that the estimate favors smooth solutions, resulting in the so-called maximum penalized likelihood estimation (MPLE).
The majority of penalizations currently in use are rather arbitrary brute-force solutions, which lack invariance under transformation of the parameters(reparametrization) and measurements.
This contradicts the principle that, if the underlying model
has several equivalent formulations, the methods of inductive inference should lead to consistent results. Motivated by this principle and using an information-theoretic point of view, we suggest an entropy-based penalization term that guarantees this kind of invariance. The resulting density estimate can be seen as a generalization of reference priors. Using the reference prior as a hyperprior, on the other hand, is argued to be a poor choice for regularization. We also present an insightful connection between the NPMLE, the cross entropy
and the principle of minimum discrimination information suggesting another method of inference that contains the doubly-smoothed maximum likelihood estimation as a special case.
The urea-urease clock reaction is a pH switch from acid to basic that can turn into a pH oscillator if it occurs inside a suitable open reactor. We numerically study the confinement of the reaction to lipid vesicles, which permit the exchange with an external reservoir by differential transport, enabling the recovery of the pH level and yielding a constant supply of urea molecules. For microscopically small vesicles, the discreteness of the number of molecules requires a stochastic treatment of the reaction dynamics. Our analysis shows that intrinsic noise induces a significant statistical variation of the oscillation period, which increases as the vesicles become smaller.
The mean period, however, is found to be remarkably robust for vesicle sizes down to approximately 200 nm, but the periodicity of the rhythm is gradually destroyed for smaller vesicles. The observed oscillations are explained as a canard-like limit cycle that differs from the wide class of conventional feedback oscillators.
One of the main challenges in molecular dynamics is overcoming the “timescale barrier”, a phrase used to describe that in many realistic molecular systems, biologically important rare transitions occur on timescales that are not accessible to direct numerical simulation, not even on the largest or specifically dedicated supercomputers. This article discusses how to circumvent the timescale barrier by a collection of transfer operator-based techniques that have emerged from dynamical systems theory, numerical mathematics, and machine learning over the last two decades. We will focus on how transfer operators can be used to approximate the dynamical behavior on long timescales, review the introduction of this approach into molecular dynamics, and outline the respective theory as well as the algorithmic development from the early numerics-based methods, via variational reformulations, to modern data-based techniques utilizing and
improving concepts from machine learning. Furthermore, its relation to rare event simulation techniques will be explained, revealing a broad equivalence of variational principles for long-time quantities in MD. The article will mainly take a mathematical perspective and will leave the application to real-world molecular systems to the more than 1000 research articles already written on this subject.
Single molecule fluorescence tracking provides information at nanometer-scale and millisecond-temporal resolution about the dynamics and interaction of individual molecules in a biological environment. While the dynamic behavior of isolated molecules can be characterized well, the quantitative insight is more limited when interactions between two indistinguishable molecules occur. We address this aspect by developing a theoretical foundation for a spectroscopy of interaction times, i.e., the inference of interaction from imaging data. A non-trivial crossover between a power law to an exponential behavior of the distribution of the interaction times is highlighted, together with the dependence of the exponential term upon the microscopic reaction affinity. Our approach is validated with simulated and experimental datasets.
Reaction coordinates (RCs) are indicators of hidden, low-dimensional mechanisms that govern the long-term behavior of high-dimensional stochastic processes. We present a novel and general variational characterization of optimal RCs and provide conditions for their existence. Optimal RCs are minimizers of a certain loss function, and reduced models based on them guarantee a good approximation of the statistical long-term properties of the original high-dimensional process. We show that for slow-fast systems, metastable systems, and other systems with known good RCs, the novel theory reproduces previous insight. Remarkably, for reversible systems, the numerical effort required to evaluate the loss function scales only with the variability of the underlying, low-dimensional mechanism, and not with that of the full system. The theory provided lays the foundation for an efficient and data-sparse computation of RCs via modern machine learning techniques.
CINDy: Conditional gradient-based Identification of Non-linear Dynamics – Noise-robust recovery
(2021)
Governing equations are essential to the study of nonlinear dynamics, often enabling the prediction of previously unseen behaviors as well as the inclusion into control strategies. The discovery of governing equations from data thus has the potential to transform data-rich fields where well-established dynamical models remain unknown. This work contributes to the recent trend in data-driven sparse identification of nonlinear dynamics of finding the best sparse fit to observational data in a large library of potential nonlinear models. We propose an efficient first-order Conditional Gradient algorithm for solving the underlying optimization problem. In comparison to the most prominent alternative algorithms, the new algorithm shows significantly improved performance on several essential issues like sparsity-induction, structure-preservation, noise robustness, and sample efficiency. We demonstrate these advantages on several dynamics from the field of synchronization, particle dynamics, and enzyme chemistry.