用模拟训练的通用模型,零样本预测了真实实验中的湍流混合,解决了长期存在的仿真与实验差距问题。
Emergent Transfer of a Physics Foundation Model from Simulation to Laboratory Turbulence

- 用少量模拟数据微调基础模型,捕捉雷利-泰勒不稳定性核心物理机制
- 零样本迁移至实验数据,预测出与真实实验一致的混合增长率(α≈0.06–0.07)
- 可泛化至未训练的稳定分层场景,证明模型具备跨物理条件的推演能力
物理基础模型能否有效部署于实验室实验,仍是科学机器学习中的开放问题。本文以雷利-泰勒不稳定性(RTI)为测试场景,该现象从桌面流动到超新星爆炸普遍存在,表现为轻流体加速进入重流体时,界面扰动演变为多尺度混沌混合。实验测得的晚期混合增长率 α ≈ 0.06–0.07,约为理想直接数值模拟(DNS)结果 α ≈ 0.02 的三倍,这一差距成因未明。我们对连续动力学基础模型 Walrus 在三个或更少的 DNS 实例上进行微调,成功在长时间演化中恢复关键 RTI 物理特征。将其零样本应用于滑动屏障实验数据,模型脱离了 DNS 类行为,进入实际观测的生长区间,且从未见过任何实验样本。结果表明初始条件在长期仿真实验差距中起关键作用。模型还零样本泛化至训练中未包含的稳定分层状态,正确减缓混合层增长。这些发现表明,基础模型可超越训练数据,预测实验室行为和未见物理情景,为破解长期存在的仿真-实验差异提供数据驱动新路径。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Whether physics foundation models can be usefully deployed on laboratory experiments remains an open question for scientific machine learning (ML). We test this question on the Rayleigh-Taylor instability (RTI), a ubiquitous and demanding fluid instability seen from tabletop flows to supernova explosions, in which small perturbations at a density interface grow into chaotic, multiscale mixing as a lighter fluid accelerates into a heavier one. Standard ML models struggle with RTI, and despite over a century of theoretical, numerical, and experimental work, it carries an unresolved discrepancy between simulation and experiment: the late-time mixing growth rate, $α$, measured in most laboratory experiments ($\sim$ 0.06-0.07), is roughly three times the value from idealized direct numerical simulations (DNS, $\sim$ 0.02). The gap's origin remains debated. These properties make RTI a stringent test for a question that matters well beyond RTI: can foundation models trained only on simulations generalise to sparse, messy, and noisy laboratory settings? We finetune Walrus, a foundation model for continuum dynamics, on three or fewer DNS realizations and recover key RTI physics over long rollouts. Applied zero-shot to sliding-barrier laboratory data, the finetuned model leaves the DNS-like regime and enters the observed growth band, having never seen a single experimental sample. These results provide independent, data-driven evidence that initial conditions play a crucial role in the longstanding sim-experiment gap in $α$. The model also generalises zero-shot to stable stratification, a buoyancy regime absent from training, correctly slowing mixing-layer growth. Together, our results show that foundation models can generalise well beyond their training data, predicting laboratory behavior and unseen physical regimes, opening new ways to probe longstanding simulation-experiment gaps.
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