Searching for Globally Optimal Functional Forms for Inter-Atomic Potentials Using Parallel Tempering and Genetic Programming

dc.creatorSlepoy, A.
dc.creatorThompson, A. P.
dc.creatorPeters, M. D.
dc.date2006-08-18
dc.date.accessioned2026-07-07T07:20:01Z
dc.date.available2026-07-07T07:20:01Z
dc.descriptionWe develop a Genetic Programming-based methodology that enables discovery of novel functional forms for classical inter-atomic force-fields, used in molecular dynamics simulations. Unlike previous efforts in the field, that fit only the parameters to the fixed functional forms, we instead use a novel algorithm to search the space of many possible functional forms. While a follow-on practical procedure will use experimental and {\it ab inito} data to find an optimal functional form for a forcefield, we first validate the approach using a manufactured solution. This validation has the advantage of a well-defined metric of success. We manufactured a training set of atomic coordinate data with an associated set of global energies using the well-known Lennard-Jones inter-atomic potential. We performed an automatic functional form fitting procedure starting with a population of random functions, using a genetic programming functional formulation, and a parallel tempering Metropolis-based optimization algorithm. Our massively-parallel method independently discovered the Lennard-Jones function after searching for several hours on 100 processors and covering a miniscule portion of the configuration space. We find that the method is suitable for unsupervised discovery of functional forms for inter-atomic potentials/force-fields. We also find that our parallel tempering Metropolis-based approach significantly improves the optimization convergence time, and takes good advantage of the parallel cluster architecture.
dc.identifierhttps://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0608078
dc.identifierhttp://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0608078
dc.identifier.urihttp://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/114841
dc.subjectNeural and Evolutionary Computing
dc.subjectArtificial Intelligence
dc.titleSearching for Globally Optimal Functional Forms for Inter-Atomic Potentials Using Parallel Tempering and Genetic Programming
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