Physics-informed traditional and generative Mori-Zwanzig-reduced models for multiscale systems

Reduced-order modeling of high-dimensional dynamical systems is often hindered by closure effects arising from unresolved variables, which can introduce non-Markovian dependence into the resolved dynamics. Motivated by the history-dependent memory term arising in the Mori--Zwanzig formalism, we recast non-Markovian closure modeling as a sequence modeling problem and propose the Mamba-Assisted Closure (MAC) framework. MAC employs a Mamba-based sequence model to predict the closure from the resolved trajectory and couples the learned closure with the reduced-order governing equations through a numerical integrator to advance the resolved variables in time. During training, the selective scan mechanism in Mamba enables efficient parallel sequence processing with linear scaling in sequence length, while autoregressive inference proceeds through recurrent state updates at essentially constant per-step cost. We evaluate MAC on four benchmark systems with complementary characteristics: the viscous Burgers' equation, the chaotic two-scale Lorenz '96 system, the 3-bus DeMarco--Zheng power-grid system, and the dispersive Korteweg--de Vries equation. Across these benchmarks, MAC consistently improves predictive accuracy and long-time rollout stability relative to the comparison models, demonstrating an effective and computationally scalable approach to non-Markovian closure modeling.

While data-driven techniques are powerful tools for reduced-order modeling of systems with chaotic dynamics, great potential remains for leveraging known physics (i.e. a full-order model (FOM)) to improve predictive capability. We develop a hybrid reduced order model (ROM), informed by both data and FOM, for evolving spatiotemporal chaotic dynamics on an invariant manifold whose coordinates are found using an autoencoder. This approach projects the vector field of the FOM onto the invariant manifold; then, this physics-derived vector field is either corrected using dynamic data, or used as a Bayesian prior that is updated with data. In both cases, the neural ordinary differential equation approach is used. We consider simulated data from the Kuramoto-Sivashinsky and complex Ginzburg-Landau equations. Relative to the data-only approach, for scenarios of abundant data, scarce data, and even an incorrect FOM (i.e. erroneous parameter values), the hybrid approach yields substantially improved time-series predictions.

World models -- compressed latent representations of an environment that support action-conditioned prediction and planning -- are typically presented as a product of modern self-supervised learning. This paper argues that the functional anatomy of a world model was independently developed, deployed, and formally analyzed decades earlier in the model-order-reduction (MOR) and control literature, under different names and for a different purpose: the real-time operation of physical systems. We trace the anatomy across three communities. Low-dimensional models of turbulence built on proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) supplied latent dynamics learned from data of a chaotic environment; eigenface methods in early computer vision supplied the encoder-decoder half, including a primitive runtime validity check; and measurement-based POD frameworks for facility thermal control assembled the complete loop -- POD coefficients as latent state, parametric dependence on actuator setpoints as action conditioning, modal reconstruction as decoding, and, critically, a priori analytical error bounds as a verification layer that certified when the model's predictions could be trusted in closed loop. We then examine what each tradition possesses that the other lacks: MOR contributes verification, physical grounding, and extreme data efficiency; learned world models contribute nonlinear representation, transferability, and horizon. We argue that the outstanding obstacle to deploying world models in systems that cannot fail -- power, thermal, process control -- is not predictive fidelity but verifiability, and we outline a research agenda for physics-grounded, verifiable world models that unifies the two lineages.