Identifying Topological Phase Transitions in Experiments Using Manifold Learning.

We demonstrate the identification of topological phase transitions from experimental data using diffusion maps: a nonlocal unsupervised machine learning method. We analyze experimental data from an optical system undergoing a topological phase transition and demonstrate the ability of this approach to identify topological phase transitions even when the data originates from a small part of the system, and does not even include edge states.

Reconstruction of normal forms by learning informed observation geometries from data.

The discovery of physical laws consistent with empirical observations is at the heart of (applied) science and engineering. These laws typically take the form of nonlinear differential equations depending on parameters; dynamical systems theory provides, through the appropriate normal forms, an "intrinsic" prototypical characterization of the types of dynamical regimes accessible to a given model. Using an implementation of data-informed geometry learning, we directly reconstruct the relevant "normal forms": a quantitative mapping from empirical observations to prototypical realizations of the underlying dynamics. Interestingly, the state variables and the parameters of these realizations are inferred from the empirical observations; without prior knowledge or understanding, they parametrize the dynamics intrinsically without explicit reference to fundamental physical quantities.

Data-driven Evolution Equation Reconstruction for Parameter-Dependent Nonlinear Dynamical Systems.

When studying observations of chemical reaction dynamics, closed form equations based on a putative mechanism may not be available. Yet when sufficient data from experimental observations can be obtained, even without knowing what exactly the physical meaning of the parameter settings or recorded variables are, data-driven methods can be used to construct minimal (and in a sense, robust) realizations of the system. The approach attempts, in a sense, to circumvent physical understanding, by building intrinsic "information geometries" of the observed data, and thus enabling prediction without physical/chemical knowledge. Here we use such an approach to obtain evolution equations for a data-driven realization of the original system - in effect, allowing prediction based on the informed interrogation of the agnostically organized observation database. We illustrate the approach on observations of (a) the normal form for the cusp singularity, (b) a cusp singularity for the nonisothermal CSTR, and (c) a random invertible transformation of the nonisothermal CSTR, showing that one can predict even when the observables are not "simply explainable" physical quantities. We discuss current limitations and possible extensions of the procedure.