Title: Harmonized Cone for Feasible and Non-conflict Directions in Training Physics-Informed Neural Networks
Primary area: optimization
Keywords: Physics-Informed Neural Networks, Multi-loss Optimization, Gradient Conflict Resolution, Feasible Directions, Nonconvex Convergence

Abstract: Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs) have emerged as a powerful tool for solving PDEs, yet training is difficult due to a multi-objective loss that couples PDE residuals, initial/boundary conditions, and auxiliary physics terms. Existing remedies often yield infeasible scaling factors or conflicting update directions, resulting in degraded performance. In this paper, we show that training PINNs requires jointly considering feasible scaling factors and a non-conflict direction. Through a geometric analysis of per-loss gradients, we define the $\textit{harmonized cone}$ as the intersection of their primal and dual cones, which characterizes directions that are simultaneously feasible and non-conflicting. Building on this, we propose $HARMONIC$ (HARMONIzed Cone gradient descent), a training procedure that computes updates within the harmonized cone by leveraging the Double Description method to aggregate extreme rays. Theoretically, we establish convergence guarantees in nonconvex settings and prove the existence of a nontrivial harmonized cone. Across standard PDE benchmarks, $HARMONIC$ generally outperforms state-of-the-art methods while ensuring feasible and non-conflict updates.