Time Without Timesteps: Simulating Coupled Dynamical Systems via Self-Consistency

The paper introduces a new method for simulating coupled dynamical systems that bypasses traditional time‑stepping. Instead of marching through time, each subsystem is represented by a neural surrogate that maps an entire driving trajectory and initial condition to a full output trajectory. Coupling is achieved by enforcing self‑consistency across these trajectories, turning the simulation into a fixed‑point problem over complete trajectories. Experiments on van der Pol oscillators and Hodgkin‑Huxley neuron networks show that only 4–10 Newton iterations are needed, compared to 1500 steps for a conventional integrator, and that the gradient can be computed without time recursion using GMRES. The spectral radius of the surrogate’s Jacobian predicts convergence, and the implicit gradient remains accurate even when unrolled backpropagation diverges.

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