A long-standing goal of science is to accurately solve the Schrödinger equation for large molecular systems. The poor scaling of current quantum chemistry algorithms on classical computers imposes an effective limit of about a few dozen atoms for which we can calculate molecular electronic structure. We present a machine learning (ML) method to break through this scaling limit and make quantum chemistry calculations of very large systems possible. We show that Euclidean Neural Networks can be trained to predict the electron density with high fidelity from limited data. Learning the electron density allows us to train a machine learning model on small systems and make accurate predictions on large ones. We show that this ML electron density model can break through the quantum scaling limit and calculate the electron density of systems of thousands of atoms with quantum accuracy.
A long-standing goal of science is to accurately solve the Schrödinger equation for large molecular systems. The poor scaling of current quantum chemistry algorithms on classical computers imposes an effective limit of about a few dozen atoms for which we can calculate molecular electronic structure. We present a machine learning (ML) method to break through this scaling limit and make quantum chemistry calculations of very large systems possible. We show that Euclidean Neural Networks can be trained to predict the electron density with high fidelity from limited data. Learning the electron density allows us to train a machine learning model on small systems and make accurate predictions on large ones. We show that this ML electron density model can break through the quantum scaling limit and calculate the electron density of systems of thousands of atoms with quantum accuracy.
Machine learning has made significant contributions to the fields of chemistry and materials science, enabling the exploration of vast chemical space through large-scale quantum chemical calculations. These models provide fast and accurate predictions of atomistic chemical properties, but they have limitations when it comes to capturing the electronic degrees of freedom of a molecule. This restricts their application in reactive chemistry and chemical analysis. To address this limitation, we introduce a deep learning framework that predicts the quantum mechanical wavefunction of a molecule in a local basis of atomic orbitals. The wavefunction serves as a foundational representation from which all other ground-state properties can be derived. Our approach maintains complete access to the electronic structure through the wavefunction, while achieving computational efficiency comparable to force-field methods. Moreover, the framework captures quantum mechanics in a form that can be analytically differentiated, allowing for efficient optimization and exploration of chemical systems. We demonstrate the potential of our approach through several examples. By leveraging the predicted wavefunction, we showcase the ability to perform inverse design of molecular structures to target specific electronic property optimizations. This opens exciting avenues for tailoring molecular structures to achieve desired electronic characteristics. Additionally, our framework paves the way for enhanced synergy between machine learning and quantum chemistry, enabling more comprehensive investigations into complex chemical systems.
Solving electronic structure problems represents a promising field of applications for quantum computers. Currently, much effort is spent in devising and optimizing quantum algorithms for near-term quantum processors, with the aim of outperforming classical counterparts on selected problem instances using limited quantum resources. These methods are still expected to feature a runtime preventing quantum simulations of large scale and bulk systems. In this work, we propose a strategy to extend the scope of quantum computational methods to large scale simulations using a machine learning potential trained on quantum simulation data. The challenge of applying machine learning potentials in today’s quantum setting arises from the several sources of noise affecting the quantum computations of electronic energies and forces. We investigate the trainability of a machine learning potential selecting various sources of noise: statistical, optimization, and hardware noise. Finally, we construct the first machine learning potential from data computed on actual IBM Quantum processors for a hydrogen molecule. This already would allow us to perform arbitrarily long and stable molecular dynamics simulations, outperforming all current quantum approaches to molecular dynamics and structure optimization.
The introduction of machine-learning (ML) algorithms to quantum mechanics enables rapid evaluation of otherwise intractable expressions at the cost of prior training on appropriate benchmarks. Many computational bottlenecks in the evaluation of accurate electronic structure theory could potentially benefit from the application of such models, from reducing the complexity of the underlying wave function parameter space to circumventing the complications of solving the electronic Schrödinger equation entirely. Applications of ML to electronic structure have thus far been focused on learning molecular properties (mainly the energy) from geometric representations. While this line of study has been quite successful, highly accurate models typically require a “big data” approach with thousands of train- ing data points. Herein, we propose a general, systematically improvable scheme for wave function-based ML of arbitrary molecular properties, inspired by the underlying equations that govern the canonical approach to computing the properties. To this end, we combine the established ML machinery of the t-amplitude tensor representation with a new reduced density matrix representation. The resulting model provides quantitative accuracy in both the electronic energy and dipoles of small molecules using only a few dozen training points per system.
The introduction of machine-learning (ML) algorithms to quantum mechanics enables rapid evaluation of otherwise intractable expressions at the cost of prior training on appropriate benchmarks. Many computational bottlenecks in the evaluation of accurate electronic structure theory could potentially benefit from the application of such models, from reducing the complexity of the underlying wave function parameter space to circumventing the complications of solving the electronic Schrödinger equation entirely. Applications of ML to electronic structure have thus far been focused on learning molecular properties (mainly the energy) from geometric representations. While this line of study has been quite successful, highly accurate models typically require a “big data” approach with thousands of training data points. Herein, we propose a general, systematically improvable scheme for wave function-based ML of arbitrary molecular properties, inspired by the underlying equations that govern the canonical approach to computing the properties. To this end, we combine the established ML machinery of the t-amplitude tensor representation with a new reduced density matrix representation. The resulting model provides quantitative accuracy in both the electronic energy and dipoles of small molecules using only a few dozen training points per system.
Abstract Accurate molecular force fields are of paramount importance for the efficient implementation of molecular dynamics techniques at large scales. In the last decade, machine learning (ML) methods have demonstrated impressive performances in predicting accurate values for energy and forces when trained on finite size ensembles generated with ab initio techniques. At the same time, quantum computers have recently started to offer new viable computational paradigms to tackle such problems. On the one hand, quantum algorithms may notably be used to extend the reach of electronic structure calculations. On the other hand, quantum ML is also emerging as an alternative and promising path to quantum advantage. Here we follow this second route and establish a direct connection between classical and quantum solutions for learning neural network (NN) potentials. To this end, we design a quantum NN architecture and apply it successfully to different molecules of growing complexity. The quantum models exhibit larger effective dimension with respect to classical counterparts and can reach competitive performances, thus pointing towards potential quantum advantages in natural science applications via quantum ML.
Given access to accurate solutions of the many-electron Schrödinger equation, nearly all chemistry could be derived from first principles.Exact wave functions of interesting chemical systems are out of reach because they are NP-hard to compute in general, but approximations can be found using polynomially scaling algorithms.The key challenge for many of these algorithms is the choice of wave function approximation, or Ansatz, which must trade off between efficiency and accuracy.Neural networks have shown impressive power as accurate practical function approximators and promise as a compact wave-function Ansatz for spin systems, but problems in electronic structure require wave functions that obey Fermi-Dirac statistics.Here we introduce a novel deep learning architecture, the Fermionic neural network, as a powerful wave-function Ansatz for many-electron systems.The Fermionic neural network is able to achieve accuracy beyond other variational quantum Monte Carlo Ansatz on a variety of atoms and small molecules.Using no data other than atomic positions and charges, we predict the dissociation curves of the nitrogen molecule and hydrogen chain, two challenging strongly correlated systems, to significantly higher accuracy than the coupled cluster method, widely considered the most accurate scalable method for quantum chemistry at equilibrium geometry.This demonstrates that deep neural networks can improve the accuracy of variational quantum Monte Carlo to the point where it outperforms other ab initio quantum chemistry methods, opening the possibility of accurate direct optimization of wave functions for previously intractable many-electron systems.