arXiv subjects

Yaolong Zhang

Publications and source records attributed to Yaolong Zhang.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Mode-Specific Dynamics of $\text{CO}_2$ Hydrogenation on Copper: The Hidden Role of Molecular Rotation

Catalytic hydrogenation of $\text{CO}_2$ to formate on copper is a key elementary step for $\text{CO}_2$ utilization. Previous experimental and theoretical studies suggested an Eley-Rideal mechanism for this reaction, promoted by bending vibrational excitation, yet direct state resolved evidence remains lacking. Here, we present first-principles dynamical predictions for $\text{CO}_2$ hydrogenation on Cu(111) based on an accurate full-dimensional neural network potential energy surface. Our calculations near-quantitatively reproduce the measured reaction probabilities, including their nozzle-temperature and incidence-energy dependence. Our state-resolved results indicate that while vibrational excitation of the bending mode enhances reactivity, it alone cannot account for the observed reactivity increase with nozzle temperature. Instead, rotational excitation plays a dominant role, mainly attributable to the significant change in anisotropy of the molecular polar orientation as $\text{CO}_2$ accesses the transition state. This mode-specific insight reinforces the hidden role of rotation in surface reactivity, opening new avenues for state-selective control of $\text{CO}_2$ hydrogenation on heterogenous catalysts.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2025

Node-Equivariant Message Passing for Efficient and Accurate Machine Learning Interatomic Potentials

Machine learned interatomic potentials, particularly equivariant message-passing (MP) models, have demonstrated high fidelity in representing first-principles data, revolutionizing computational studies in materials science, biophysics, and catalysis. However, these equivariant MP models still incur substantial computational and memory needs due to their expensive tensor product operations over edge space, significantly limiting their applicability in large-scale or long-time simulations. In this work, we propose a node-equivariant MP (NEMP) framework that performs equivariant operations between the central node and a virtual summed node encoding structure information of its neighbors. Crucially, NEMP maintains comparable or even superior accuracy across diverse test systems-including molecules, extended systems, and universal potential benchmarks-while achieving 1-2 orders of magnitude reduction in memory and computational costs compared to edge equivariant MP models. In fact, NEMP reaches computational efficiency comparable to that of local descriptor-based models, and enabling previously inaccessible large-scale simulations.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2025

The Evolution of Machine Learning Potentials for Molecules, Reactions and Materials

Recent years have witnessed the fast development of machine learning potentials (MLPs) and their widespread applications in chemistry, physics, and material science. By fitting discrete ab initio data faithfully to continuous and symmetry-preserving mathematical forms, MLPs have enabled accurate and efficient atomistic simulations in a large scale from first principles. In this review, we provide an overview of the evolution of MLPs in the past two decades and focus on the state-of-the-art MLPs proposed in the last a few years for molecules, reactions, and materials. We discuss some representative applications of MLPs and the trend of developing universal potentials across a variety of systems. Finally, we outline a list of open challenges and opportunities in the development and applications of MLPs.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2024

SchrödingerNet: A Universal Neural Network Solver for The Schrödinger Equation

Recent advances in machine learning have facilitated numerically accurate solution of the electronic Schrödinger equation (SE) by integrating various neural network (NN)-based wavefunction ansatzes with variational Monte Carlo methods. Nevertheless, such NN-based methods are all based on the Born-Oppenheimer approximation (BOA) and require computationally expensive training for each nuclear configuration. In this work, we propose a novel NN architecture, SchrödingerNet, to solve the full electronic-nuclear SE by defining a loss function designed to equalize local energies across the system. This approach is based on a translationally, rotationally and permutationally symmetry-adapted total wavefunction ansatz that includes both nuclear and electronic coordinates. This strategy not only allows for an efficient and accurate generation of a continuous potential energy surface at any geometry within the well-sampled nuclear configuration space, but also incorporates non-BOA corrections, through a single training process. Comparison with benchmarks of atomic and small molecular systems demonstrates its accuracy and efficiency.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2024

Efficient Sampling for Machine Learning Electron Density and Its Response in Real Space

Electron density is a fundamental quantity, which can in principle determine all ground state electronic properties of a given system. Although machine learning (ML) models for electron density based on either an atom-centered basis or a real-space grid have been proposed, the demand for the number of high-order basis functions or grid points is enormous. In this work, we propose an efficient grid-point sampling strategy that combines a targeted sampling favoring large density and a screening of grid points associated with linearly independent atomic features. This new sampling strategy is integrated with a field-induced recursively embedded atom neural network model to develop a real-space grid-based ML model for electron density and its response to an electric field. This approach is applied to a QM9 molecular dataset, a H2O/Pt(111) interfacial system, and an Au(100) electrode under an electric field. The number of training points is found much smaller than previous models, when yielding comparably accurate predictions for the electron density of the entire grid. The resultant machine learned electron density model enables us to properly partition partial charge onto each atom and analyze the charge variation upon proton transfer in the H2O/Pt(111) system. The machined learned electronic response model allows us to predict charge transfer and the electrostatic potential change induced by an electric field in an Au(100) electrode.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2024

A Simple and Efficient Equivariant Message Passing Neural Network Model for Non-Local Potential Energy Surface

Machine learning potentials have become increasingly successful in atomistic simulations. Many of these potentials are based on an atomistic representation in a local environment, but an efficient description of non-local interactions that exceed a common local environment remains a challenge. Herein, we propose a simple and efficient equivariant model, EquiREANN, to effectively represent non-local potential energy surface. It relies on a physically inspired message passing framework, where the fundamental descriptors are linear combination of atomic orbitals, while both invariant orbital coefficients and the equivariant orbital functions are iteratively updated. We demonstrate that this EquiREANN model is able to describe the subtle potential energy variation due to the non-local structural change with high accuracy and little extra computational cost than an invariant message passing model. Our work offers a generalized approach to create equivariant message passing adaptations of other advanced local many-body descriptors.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2024

Benchmarking of machine learning interatomic potentials for reactive hydrogen dynamics at metal surfaces

Simulations of chemical reaction probabilities in gas surface dynamics require the calculation of ensemble averages over many tens of thousands of reaction events to predict dynamical observables that can be compared to experiments. At the same time, the energy landscapes need to be accurately mapped, as small errors in barriers can lead to large deviations in reaction probabilities. This brings a particularly interesting challenge for machine learning interatomic potentials, which are becoming well-established tools to accelerate molecular dynamics simulations. We compare state-of-the-art machine learning interatomic potentials with a particular focus on their inference performance on CPUs and suitability for high throughput simulation of reactive chemistry at surfaces. The considered models include polarizable atom interaction neural networks (PaiNN), recursively embedded atom neural networks (REANN), the MACE equivariant graph neural network, and atomic cluster expansion potentials (ACE). The models are applied to a dataset on reactive molecular hydrogen scattering on low-index surface facets of copper. All models are assessed for their accuracy, time-to-solution, and ability to simulate reactive sticking probabilities as a function of the rovibrational initial state and kinetic incidence energy of the molecule. REANN and MACE models provide the best balance between accuracy and time-to-solution and can be considered the current state-of-the-art in gas-surface dynamics. PaiNN models require many features for the best accuracy, which causes significant losses in computational efficiency. ACE models provide the fastest time-to-solution, however, models trained on the existing dataset were not able to achieve sufficiently accurate predictions in all cases.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2023

Universal Machine Learning for the Response of Atomistic Systems to External Fields

Machine learned interatomic interaction potentials have enabled efficient and accurate molecular simulations of closed systems. However, external fields, which can greatly change the chemical structure and/or reactivity, have been seldom included in current machine learning models. This work proposes a universal field-induced recursively embedded atom neural network (FIREANN) model, which integrates a pseudo field vector-dependent feature into atomic descriptors to represent system-field interactions with rigorous rotational equivariance. This "all-in-one" approach correlates various response properties like dipole moment and polarizability with the field-dependent potential energy in a single model, very suitable for spectroscopic and dynamics simulations in molecular and periodic systems in the presence of electric fields. Especially for periodic systems, we find that FIREANN can overcome the intrinsic multiple-value issue of the polarization by training atomic forces only. These results validate the universality and capability of the FIREANN method for efficient first-principles modeling of complicated systems in strong external fields.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2022

REANN: A PyTorch-based End-to-End Multi-functional Deep Neural Network Package for Molecular, Reactive and Periodic Systems

In this work, we present a general purpose deep neural network package for representing energies, forces, dipole moments, and polarizabilities of atomistic systems. This so-called recursively embedded atom neural network model takes both advantages of the physically inspired atomic descriptor based neural networks and the message-passing based neural networks. Implemented in the PyTorch framework, the training process is parallelized on both CPU and GPU with high efficiency and low memory, in which all hyperparameters can be optimized automatically. We demonstrate the state-of-the-art accuracy, high efficiency, scalability, and universality of this package by learning not only energies (with or without forces), but also dipole moment vectors and polarizability tensors, in various molecular, reactive, and periodic systems. An interface between a trained model and LAMMPs is provided for large scale molecular dynamics simulations. We hope that this open-source toolbox will allow future method development and applications of machine learned potential energy surfaces and quantum-chemical properties of molecules, reactions, and materials.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2021

Learning Dipole Moments and Polarizabilities

Machine learning of scalar molecular properties such as potential energy has enabled widespread applications. However, there are relatively few machine learning models targeting directional properties, including permanent and transition dipole (multipole) moments, as well as polarizability. These properties are essential to determine intermolecular forces and molecular spectra. In this chapter, we review machine learning models for these tensorial properties, with special focus on how to encode the rotational equivariance into these models by taking a similar form as the physical definition of these properties. You will then learn how to use an embedded atom neural network model to train dipole moments and polarizabilities of a representative molecule. The methodology discussed in this chapter can be extended to learn similar or higher-rank tensorial properties, such as magnetic dipole moments, non-adiabatic coupling vectors, and hyperpolarizabilities.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2021

Physically Motivated Recursively Embedded Atom Neural Networks: Incorporating Local Completeness and Nonlocality

Recent advances in machine-learned interatomic potentials largely benefit from the atomistic representation and locally invariant many-body descriptors. It was however recently argued that including three- (or even four-) body features is incomplete to distinguish specific local structures. Utilizing an embedded density descriptor made by linear combinations of neighboring atomic orbitals and realizing that each orbital coefficient physically depends on its own local environment, we propose a recursively embedded atom neural network model. We formally prove that this model can efficiently incorporate complete many-body correlations without explicitly computing high-order terms. This model not only successfully addresses challenges regarding local completeness and nonlocality in representative systems, but also provides an easy and general way to update local many-body descriptors to have a message-passing form without changing their basic structures.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2020

Determining the effect of hot electron dissipation on molecular scattering experiments at metal surfaces

Nonadiabatic effects that arise from the concerted motion of electrons and atoms at comparable energy and time scales are omnipresent in thermal and light-driven chemistry at metal surfaces. Excited (hot) electrons can measurably affect molecule-metal reactions by contributing to state-dependent reaction probabilities. Vibrational state-to-state scattering of NO on Au(111) has been one of the most studied examples in this regard, providing a testing ground for developing various nonadiabatic theories. This system is often cited as the prime example for the failure of electronic friction theory, a very efficient model accounting for dissipative forces on metal-adsorbed molecules due to the creation of hot electrons in the metal. However, the exact failings compared to experiment and their origin from theory are not established for any system, because dynamic properties are affected by many compounding simulation errors of which the quality of nonadiabatic treatment is just one. We use a high-dimensional machine learning representation of electronic structure theory to minimize errors that arise from quantum chemistry. This allows us to perform a comprehensive quantitative analysis of the performance of nonadiabatic molecular dynamics in describing vibrational state-to-state scattering of NO on Au(111) and compare directly to adiabatic results. We find that electronic friction theory accurately predicts elastic and single-quantum energy loss, but underestimates multi-quantum energy loss and overestimates molecular trapping at high vibrational excitation. Our analysis reveals that multi-quantum energy loss can potentially be remedied within friction theory, whereas the overestimation of trapping constitutes a genuine breakdown of electronic friction theory. Addressing this overestimation for dynamic processes in catalysis and surface chemistry will require more sophisticated theories.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2020

Accelerating Atomistic Simulations with Piecewise Machine Learned Ab Initio Potentials at Classical Force Field-like Cost

Machine learning methods have nowadays become easy-to-use tools for constructing high-dimensional interatomic potentials with ab initio accuracy. Although machine learned interatomic potentials are generally orders of magnitude faster than first-principles calculations, they remain much slower than classical force fields, at the price of using more complex structural descriptors. To bridge this efficiency gap, we propose an embedded atom neural network approach with simple piecewise switching function based descriptors, resulting in a favorable linear scaling with the number of neighbor atoms. Numerical examples validate that this piecewise machine learning model can be over an order of magnitude faster than various popular machine learned potentials with comparable accuracy for both metallic and covalent materials, approaching the speed of the fastest embedded atom method (i.e. several μs/atom per CPU core). The extreme efficiency of this approach promises its potential in first-principles atomistic simulations of very large systems and/or in long timescale.

physics.comp-ph↗

arXiv2020

Efficient and Accurate Simulations of Vibrational and Electronic Spectra with Symmetry-Preserving Neural Network Models for Tensorial Properties

Machine learning has revolutionized the high-dimensional representations for molecular properties such as potential energy. However, there are scarce machine learning models targeting tensorial properties, which are rotationally covariant. Here, we propose tensorial neural network (NN) models to learn both tensorial response and transition properties, in which atomic coordinate vectors are multiplied with scalar NN outputs or their derivatives to preserve the rotationally covariant symmetry. This strategy keeps structural descriptors symmetry invariant so that the resulting tensorial NN models are as efficient as their scalar counterparts. We validate the performance and universality of this approach by learning response properties of water oligomers and liquid water, and transition dipole moment of a model structural unit of proteins. Machine learned tensorial models have enabled efficient simulations of vibrational spectra of liquid water and ultraviolet spectra of realistic proteins, promising feasible and accurate spectroscopic simulations for biomolecules and materials.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2020

Automatically growing global reactive neural network potential energy surfaces: a trajectory free active learning strategy

An efficient and trajectory-free active learning method is proposed to automatically sample data points for constructing globally accurate reactive potential energy surfaces (PESs) using neural networks (NNs). Although NNs do not provide the predictive variance as the Gaussian process regression does, we can alternatively minimize the negative of the squared difference surface (NSDS) given by two different NN models to actively locate the point where the PES is least confident. A batch of points in the minima of this NSDS can be iteratively added into the training set to improve the PES. The configuration space is gradually and globally covered with no need to run classical trajectory (or equivalently molecular dynamics) simulations. Through refitting the available analytical PESs of H3 and OH3 reactive systems, we demonstrate the efficiency and robustness of this new strategy, which enables fast convergence of the reactive PESs with respect to the number of points in terms of quantum scattering probabilities.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2019

Symmetry-Adapted High Dimensional Neural Network Representation of Electronic Friction Tensor of Adsorbates on Metals

Nonadiabatic effects in chemical reaction at metal surfaces, due to excitation of electron-hole pairs, stand at the frontier of the studies of gas-surface reaction dynamics. However, the first principles description of electronic excitation remains challenging. In an efficient molecular dynamics with electronic friction (MDEF) method, the nonadiabatic couplings are effectively included in a so-called electronic friction tensor (EFT), which can be computed from first-order time-dependent perturbation theory (TDPT) in terms of density functional theory (DFT) orbitals. This second-rank tensor depends on adsorbate position and features a complicated transformation with regard to the intrinsic symmetry operations of the system. In this work, we develop a new symmetry-adapted neural network representation of EFT, based on our recently proposed embedded atom neural network (EANN) framework. Inspired by the derivation of the nonadiabatic coupling matrix, we represent the tensorial friction by the first and second derivatives of multiple outputs of NNs with respect to atomic Cartesian coordinates. This rigorously preserves the positive semidefiniteness, directional property, and correct symmetry-equivariance of EFT. Unlike previous methods, our new approach can readily include both molecular and surface degrees of freedom, regardless of the type of surface. Tests on the H2+Ag(111) system show that this approach yields an accurate, efficient, and continuous representation of EFT, making it possible to perform large scale TDPT-based MDEF simulations to study both adiabatic and nonadiabatic energy dissipation in a unified framework.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2019

Strong Vibrational Relaxation of NO Scattered from Au(111): Importance of an Accurate Adiabatic Potential Energy Surface

Experimental observations of multi-quantum relaxation of highly vibrationally excited NO scattering from Au(111) are a benchmark for the breakdown of Born-Oppenheimer approximation in molecule-surface systems. This remarkable vibrational inelasticity was long thought to be almost exclusively mediated by electron transfer; but, no theories have quantitatively reproduced various experimental data. This was suggested to be due to errors in the adiabatic potential energy surface (PES) used in those studies. Here, we investigate electronically adiabatic molecular dynamics of this system with a globally accurate high dimensional PES, newly developed with neural networks from first principles. The NO vibrational energy loss is much larger than that on earlier adiabatic PES. Additionally, the translational inelasticity and translational energy dependence of vibrational inelasticity are also more accurately reproduced. There is reason to be optimistic that electronically nonadiabatic theories using this adiabatic PES as a starting point might accurately reproduce experimental results on this important system.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2019

Embedded Atom Neural Network Potentials: Efficient and Accurate Machine Learning with a Physically Inspired Representation

We propose a simple, but efficient and accurate machine learning (ML) model for developing high-dimensional potential energy surface. This so-called embedded atom neural network (EANN) approach is inspired by the well-known empirical embedded atom method (EAM) model used in condensed phase. It simply replaces the scalar embedded atom density in EAM with a Gaussian-type orbital based density vector, and represents the complex relationship between the embedded density vector and atomic energy by neural networks. We demonstrate that the EANN approach is equally accurate as several established ML models in representing both big molecular and extended periodic systems, yet with much fewer parameters and configurations. It is highly efficient as it implicitly contains the three-body information without an explicit sum of the conventional costly angular descriptors. With high accuracy and efficiency, EANN potentials can vastly accelerate molecular dynamics and spectroscopic simulations in complex systems at ab initio level.

physics.chem-ph↗