[2604.00132] Predicting Wave Reflection and Transmission in Heterogeneous Media via Fourier Operator-Based Transformer Modeling

Computer Science > Machine Learning arXiv:2604.00132 (cs) [Submitted on 31 Mar 2026] Title:Predicting Wave Reflection and Transmission in Heterogeneous Media via Fourier Operator-Based Transformer Modeling Authors:Zhe Bai, Hans Johansen View a PDF of the paper titled Predicting Wave Reflection and Transmission in Heterogeneous Media via Fourier Operator-Based Transformer Modeling, by Zhe Bai and 1 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:We develop a machine learning (ML) surrogate model to approximate solutions to Maxwell's equations in one dimension, focusing on scenarios involving a material interface that reflects and transmits electro-magnetic waves. Derived from high-fidelity Finite Volume (FV) simulations, our training data includes variations of the initial conditions, as well as variations in one material's speed of light, allowing for the model to learn a range of wave-material interaction behaviors. The ML model autoregressively learns both the physical and frequency embeddings in a vision transformer-based framework. By incorporating Fourier transforms in the latent space, the wave number spectra of the solutions aligns closely with the simulation data. Prediction errors exhibit an approximately linear growth over time with a sharp increase at the material interface. Test results show that the ML solution has adequate relative errors below $10\%$ in over $75$ time step rollouts, despite the presence of the discontinuity and unknown material propertie...