The success and advancement of machine learning (ML) in fields such as image recognition and natural language processing has lead to the development of novel methods for the solution of problems in physics and engineering.

Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) are a powerful approach for solving problems involving differential equations, yet they often struggle to solve problems with high frequency and/or multi-scale solutions. Finite basis physics-informed neural networks (FBPINNs) improve the performance of PINNs in this regime by combining them with an overlapping domain decomposition approach. In this work, FBPINNs are extended by adding multiple levels of domain decompositions to their solution ansatz, inspired by classical multilevel Schwarz domain decomposition methods (DDMs). Analogous to typical tests for classical DDMs, we assess how the accuracy of PINNs, FBPINNs and multilevel FBPINNs scale with respect to computational effort and solution complexity by carrying out strong and weak scaling tests. Our numerical results show that the proposed multilevel FBPINNs consistently and significantly outperform PINNs across a range of problems with high frequency and multi-scale solutions. Furthermore, as expected in classical DDMs, we show that multilevel FBPINNs improve the accuracy of FBPINNs when using large numbers of subdomains by aiding global communication between subdomains.

In recent years, domain decomposition based preconditioners have become popular tools to solve the Helmholtz equation. Notorious for causing a variety of convergence issues, the Helmholtz equation remains a challenging PDE to solve numerically. Even for simple model problems, the resulting linear system after discretisation becomes indefinite and tailored iterative solvers are required to obtain the numerical solution efficiently. At the same time, the mesh must be kept fine enough in order to prevent numerical dispersion ‘polluting’ the solution [4]. This leads to very large linear systems, further amplifying the need to develop economical solver methodologies.