Searching for globally optimal functional forms for interatomic potentials using genetic programming with parallel tempering

"Dividing and Conquering" and "Caching" in Molecular Modeling

Molecular modeling is widely utilized in subjects including but not limited to physics, chemistry, biology, materials science and engineering. Impressive progress has been made in development of theories, algorithms and software packages. To divide and conquer, and to cache intermediate results have been long standing principles in development of algorithms. Not surprisingly, most important methodological advancements in more than half century of molecular modeling are various implementations of these two fundamental principles. In the mainstream classical computational molecular science, tremendous efforts have been invested on two lines of algorithm development. The first is coarse graining, which is to represent multiple basic particles in higher resolution modeling as a single larger and softer particle in lower resolution counterpart, with resulting force fields of partial transferability at the expense of some information loss. The second is enhanced sampling, which realizes "dividing and conquering" and/or "caching" in configurational space with focus either on reaction coordinates and collective variables as in metadynamics and related algorithms, or on the transition matrix and state discretization as in Markov state models. For this line of algorithms, spatial resolution is maintained but results are not transferable. Deep learning has been utilized to realize more efficient and accurate ways of "dividing and conquering" and "caching" along these two lines of algorithmic research. We proposed and demonstrated the local free energy landscape approach, a new framework for classical computational molecular science. This framework is based on a third class of algorithm that facilitates molecular modeling through partially transferable in resolution "caching" of distributions for local clusters of molecular degrees of freedom. Differences, connections and potential interactions among these three algorithmic directions are discussed, with the hope to stimulate development of more elegant, efficient and reliable formulations and algorithms for "dividing and conquering" and "caching" in complex molecular systems.

Machine learning for interatomic potential models

The use of supervised machine learning to develop fast and accurate interatomic potential models is transforming molecular and materials research by greatly accelerating atomic-scale simulations with little loss of accuracy. Three years ago, Jörg Behler published a perspective in this journal providing an overview of some of the leading methods in this field. In this perspective, we provide an updated discussion of recent developments, emerging trends, and promising areas for future research in this field. We include in this discussion an overview of three emerging approaches to developing machine-learned interatomic potential models that have not been extensively discussed in existing reviews: moment tensor potentials, message-passing networks, and symbolic regression.

Identifying models of dielectric breakdown strength from high-throughput data via genetic programming

The identification of models capable of rapidly predicting material properties enables rapid screening of large numbers of materials and facilitates the design of new materials. One of the leading challenges for computational researchers is determining the best ways to analyze large material data sets to identify models that can rapidly predict a given property. In this paper, we demonstrate the use of genetic programming to generate simple models of dielectric breakdown based on 82 representative dielectric materials. We identified the band gap E_g and phonon cut-off frequency ω_max as the two most relevant features, and new classes of models featuring functions of E_g and ω_max were uncovered. The genetic programming approach was found to outperform other approaches for generating models, and we discuss some of the advantages of this approach.

Efficient hybrid evolutionary optimization of interatomic potential models

The lack of adequately predictive atomistic empirical models precludes meaningful simulations for many materials systems. We describe advances in the development of a hybrid, population based optimization strategy intended for the automated development of material specific interatomic potentials. We compare two strategies for parallel genetic programming and show that the Hierarchical Fair Competition algorithm produces better results in terms of transferability, despite a lower training set accuracy. We evaluate the use of hybrid local search and several fitness models using system energies and/or particle forces. We demonstrate a drastic reduction in the computation time with the use of a correlation-based fitness statistic. We show that the problem difficulty increases with the number of atoms present in the systems used for model development and demonstrate that vectorization can help to address this issue. Finally, we show that with the use of this method, we are able to "rediscover" the exact model for simple known two- and three-body interatomic potentials using only the system energies and particle forces from the supplied atomic configurations.