Approximation Rates in Fréchet Metrics: Barron Spaces, Paley-Wiener Spaces, and Fourier Multipliers

Abstract Operator learning is a recent development in the simulation of partial differential equations by means of neural networks. The idea behind this approach is to learn the behavior of an operator, such that the resulting neural network is an approximate mapping in infinite-dimensional spaces that is capable of (approximately) simulating the solution operator governed by the partial differential equation. In our work, we study some general approximation capabilities for linear differential operators by approximating the corresponding symbol in the Fourier domain. Analogous to the structure of the class of Hörmander symbols, we consider the approximation with respect to a topology that is induced by a sequence of semi-norms. In that sense, we measure the approximation error in terms of a Fréchet metric, and our main result identifies sufficient conditions for achieving a predefined approximation error. We then focus on a natural extension of our main theorem, in which we reduce the assumptions on the sequence of seminorms. Based on existing approximation results for the exponential spectral Barron space, we then present a concrete example of symbols that can be approximated well.