Approximation properties of neural ODEs

Abstract

We study the approximation properties of neural ordinary differential equations (neural ODEs) in the space of continuous functions. Since a neural ODE requires input and output dimensions to be the same, while input and output dimensions of a continuous function are generally different, we need to embed an input into the latent space of the neural ODE, and to project the output of the neural ODE into the output space. By composing the neural ODE flow map with such embedding and projection operations, we get a shallow neural network whose activation function is defined as the flow map of the neural ODE at the final time of the integration interval. Thus, the study of the approximation properties of neural ODEs leads to the study of the approximation properties of shallow neural networks with a particular choice of activation function. We prove the universal approximation property (UAP) of such shallow neural networks in the space of continuous functions. Furthermore, we investigate the approximation properties of shallow neural networks whose parameters satisfy specific constraints. In particular, we constrain the Lipschitz constant of the neural ODE’s flow map and the norms of the weights to increase the network’s stability. We prove that the UAP holds if we consider either constraint independently. When both are enforced, there is a loss of expressiveness, and we derive approximation bounds that quantify how accurately such a constrained network can approximate a continuous function.

Please cite this paper as:

@article{demarinis2025approximation,
  title={Approximation properties of neural ODEs},
  author={De Marinis, Arturo and Murari, Davide and Celledoni, Elena and Guglielmi, Nicola and Owren, Brynjulf and Tudisco, Francesco},
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.15696},
  year={2025}
}

Keywords: neural ode universal approximation deep learning neural networks Lipschitz constraints