Data Driven Equation Discovery for Phase-Ordering Dynamics : From Allen Cahn to the Ising Model

Data-driven identification of partial differential equations (PDEs) relies on sparse regression over a candidate library of differential operators, where larger libraries inflate false positives under observation noise and smaller libraries risk missing true terms. We introduce Equivariant Operator Discovery (EqOD), a fully automatic method combining two library reduction mechanisms. When Galilean invariance is detected from trajectory data via a weak-form structural test, EqOD uses the symmetry-reduced library, eliminating terms that our Galilean exclusion result proves to be absent from the governing equation. Otherwise, it applies randomized LASSO stability selection guided by classical false-positive bounds. A residual-based fallback prevents degradation below the full-library baseline. On 8 PDEs at 4 noise levels, EqOD attains $F_1 = 1.000 \pm 0.000$ on Heat at $20\%$ noise, where WF-LASSO obtains $0.475 \pm 0.181$, official PySINDy 2.0 obtains $0.000$, and the WSINDy reimplementation obtains $0.789$. Under the strict criterion that the mean F1 difference exceeds the larger of the two standard deviations, EqOD wins 7 of 32 cells. WF-LASSO wins none, and the remaining 25 cells are ties. Across all 32 cells, EqOD outperforms PySINDy 2.0.0 in 23 of 32 cells, and all 5 PySINDy wins occur on reaction PDEs. External validation on WeakIdent and PINN-SR datasets gives $F_1 = 1.000$ on all 5 clean benchmarks. NLS, 2D, coupled-system, and cylinder-wake extensions are reported. The Galilean library reduction is proved under explicit autonomy and library assumptions. The stability-selection step is motivated by classical false-positive bounds, while formal guarantees for correlated PDE design matrices remain open.

Data-driven discovery of governing equations has advanced significantly in recent years; however, existing methods often struggle in multiscale systems where dynamically significant terms may have small coefficients. Therefore, we propose Balance-Guided SINDy (BG-SINDy) inspired by the principle of dominant balance, which reformulates $\ell_0$-constrained sparse regression as a term-level $\ell_{2,0}$-regularized problem and solves it using a progressive pruning strategy. Terms are ranked according to their relative contributions to the governing equation balance rather than their absolute coefficient magnitudes. Based on this criterion, BG-SINDy alternates between least-squares regression and elimination of negligible terms, thereby preserving dynamically significant terms even when their coefficients are small. Numerical experiments on the Korteweg--de Vries equation with a small dispersion coefficient, a modified Burgers equation with vanishing hyperviscosity, a modified Kuramoto--Sivashinsky equation with multiple small-coefficient terms, and a two-dimensional reaction--diffusion system demonstrate the validity of BG-SINDy in discovering small-coefficient terms. The proposed method thus provides an efficient approach for discovering governing equations that contain small-coefficient terms.

Discovering governing equations from observational data remains a fundamental challenge in scientific modeling, particularly when the underlying mathematical structure is unknown. Traditional sparse identification methods like SINDy excel at discovering parsimonious models but require researchers to specify candidate basis functions a priori, a limitation that often leads to model failure when critical terms are omitted or when systems exhibit unconventional dynamics. Purely symbolic regression approaches offer unlimited flexibility but struggle with noise sensitivity and frequently produce overly complex, unstable equations. We present AutoSINDy, a hybrid Discovery-then-Solve framework that combines the exploratory power of symbolic regression with the robust sparsity-promoting capabilities of SINDy. Our method operates in three stages: (1) PySR-based symbolic regression discovers candidate functional forms from bootstrapped data chunks; (2) a curation pipeline decomposes, expands, and filters these expressions using collinearity analysis to construct a minimal yet comprehensive library; and (3) SINDy identifies sparse governing equations from this custom-tailored library. Extensive experiments across canonical nonlinear systems demonstrate that AutoSINDy consistently recovers ground-truth equations even under high observational noise, achieving a ground-truth recovery rate of 92.8% across all trials. Compared with standard SINDy using enriched libraries and standalone symbolic regression, AutoSINDy achieves higher predictive accuracy, superior generalization to unseen trajectories, and substantially lower symbolic complexity.