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arXiv:2411.02237

Speak so a physicist can understand you! TetrisCNN for detecting phase transitions and order parameters

Kacper Cybiński, James Enouen, Antoine Georges, Anna Dawid

Published Nov 4, 2024• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Recently, neural networks (NNs) have become a powerful tool for detecting quantum phases of matter. Unfortunately, NNs are black boxes and only identify phases without elucidating their properties. Novel physics benefits most from insights about phases, traditionally extracted in spin systems using spin correlators. Here, we combine two approaches and design TetrisCNN, a convolutional NN with parallel branches using different kernels that detects the phases of spin systems and expresses their essential descriptors, called order parameters, in a symbolic form based on spin correlators. We demonstrate this on the example of snapshots of the one-dimensional transverse-field Ising model taken in various bases. We show also that TetrisCNN can detect more complex order parameters using the example of two-dimensional Ising gauge theory. This work can lead to the integration of NNs with quantum simulators to study new exotic phases of matter.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2411.02237

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Recently, neural networks (NNs) have become a powerful tool for detecting quantum phases of matter. Unfortunately, NNs are black boxes and only identify phases without elucidating their properties. Novel physics benefits most from insights about phases, traditionally extracted in spin systems using spin correlators. Here, we combine two approaches and design TetrisCNN, a convolutional NN with parallel branches using different kernels that detects the phases of spin systems and expresses their essential descriptors, called order parameters, in a symbolic form based on spin correlators. We demonstrate this on the example of snapshots of the one-dimensional transverse-field Ising model taken in various bases. We show also that TetrisCNN can detect more complex order parameters using the example of two-dimensional Ising gauge theory. This work can lead to the integration of NNs with quantum simulators to study new exotic phases of matter.
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Abstract Neural networks (NNs) usually hinder any insight into the reasoning behind their predictions. We demonstrate how influence functions can unravel the black box of NN when trained to predict the phases of the one-dimensional extended spinless Fermi–Hubbard model at half-filling. Results provide strong evidence that the NN correctly learns an order parameter describing the quantum transition in this model. We demonstrate that influence functions allow to check that the network, trained to recognize known quantum phases, can predict new unknown ones within the data set. Moreover, we show they can guide physicists in understanding patterns responsible for the phase transition. This method requires no a priori knowledge on the order parameter, has no dependence on the NN’s architecture or the underlying physical model, and is therefore applicable to a broad class of physical models or experimental data.
Machine learning is capable of discriminating phases of matter, and finding associated phase transitions, directly from large data sets of raw state configurations. In the context of condensed matter physics, most progress in the field of supervised learning has come from employing neural networks as classifiers. Although very powerful, such algorithms suffer from a lack of interpretability, which is usually desired in scientific applications in order to associate learned features with physical phenomena. In this paper, we explore support vector machines (SVMs), which are a class of supervised kernel methods that provide interpretable decision functions. We find that SVMs can learn the mathematical form of physical discriminators, such as order parameters and Hamiltonian constraints, for a set of two-dimensional spin models: the ferromagnetic Ising model, a conserved-order-parameter Ising model, and the Ising gauge theory. The ability of SVMs to provide interpretable classification highlights their potential for automating feature detection in both synthetic and experimental data sets for condensed matter and other many-body systems.
The numerical emulation of quantum systems often requires an exponential number of degrees of freedom which translates to a computational bottleneck. Methods of machine learning have been used in adjacent fields for effective feature extraction and dimensionality reduction of high-dimensional datasets. Recent studies have revealed that neural networks are further suitable for the determination of macroscopic phases of matter and associated phase transitions as well as efficient quantum state representation. In this work, we address quantum phase transitions in quantum spin chains, namely the transverse field Ising chain and the anisotropic XY chain, and show that even neural networks with no hidden layers can be effectively trained to distinguish between magnetically ordered and disordered phases. Our neural network acts to predict the corresponding crossovers finite-size systems undergo. Our results extend to a wide class of interacting quantum many-body systems and illustrate the wide applicability of neural networks to many-body quantum physics.
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Recently, quantum-state representation using artificial neural networks has started to be recognized as a powerful tool. However, due to the black-box nature of machine learning, it is difficult to analyze what machine learns or why it is powerful. Here, by applying one of the simplest neural networks, the restricted Boltzmann machine (RBM), to the ground-state representation of the one-dimensional (1D) transverse-field Ising (TFI) model, we make an attempt to directly analyze the optimized network parameters. In the RBM optimization, a zero-temperature quantum state is mapped onto a finite-temperature classical state of the extended Ising spins that constitute the RBM. We find that the quantum phase transition from the ordered phase to the disordered phase in the 1D TFI model by increasing the transverse field is clearly reflected in the behaviors of the optimized RBM parameters and hence in the finite-temperature phase diagram of the classical RBM Ising system. The present finding of a correspondence between the neural-network parameters and quantum phases suggests that a careful investigation of the neural-network parameters may provide a new route to extracting nontrivial physical insights from the neural-network wave functions.