Waveflow: boundary-conditioned normalizing flows applied to fermionic wavefunctions

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Thiede, Luca, Sun, Chong, Aspuru-Guzik, Alán
Format: Preprint
Published: 2022
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author Thiede, Luca
Sun, Chong
Aspuru-Guzik, Alán
author_facet Thiede, Luca
Sun, Chong
Aspuru-Guzik, Alán
contents An efficient and expressive wavefunction ansatz is key to scalable solutions for complex many-body electronic structures. While Slater determinants are predominantly used for constructing antisymmetric electronic wavefunction ansätze, this construction can result in limited expressiveness when the targeted wavefunction is highly complex. In this work, we introduce Waveflow, an innovative framework for learning many-body fermionic wavefunctions using boundary-conditioned normalizing flows. Instead of relying on Slater determinants, Waveflow imposes antisymmetry by defining the fundamental domain of the wavefunction and applying necessary boundary conditions. A key challenge in using normalizing flows for this purpose is addressing the topological mismatch between the prior and target distributions. We propose using O-spline priors and I-spline bijections to handle this mismatch, which allows for flexibility in the node number of the distribution while automatically maintaining its square-normalization property. We apply Waveflow to a one-dimensional many-electron system, where we variationally minimize the system's energy using variational quantum Monte Carlo (VQMC). Our experiments demonstrate that Waveflow can effectively resolve topological mismatches and faithfully learn the ground-state wavefunction.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2211_14839
institution arXiv
publishDate 2022
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Waveflow: boundary-conditioned normalizing flows applied to fermionic wavefunctions
Thiede, Luca
Sun, Chong
Aspuru-Guzik, Alán
Machine Learning
Computational Physics
An efficient and expressive wavefunction ansatz is key to scalable solutions for complex many-body electronic structures. While Slater determinants are predominantly used for constructing antisymmetric electronic wavefunction ansätze, this construction can result in limited expressiveness when the targeted wavefunction is highly complex. In this work, we introduce Waveflow, an innovative framework for learning many-body fermionic wavefunctions using boundary-conditioned normalizing flows. Instead of relying on Slater determinants, Waveflow imposes antisymmetry by defining the fundamental domain of the wavefunction and applying necessary boundary conditions. A key challenge in using normalizing flows for this purpose is addressing the topological mismatch between the prior and target distributions. We propose using O-spline priors and I-spline bijections to handle this mismatch, which allows for flexibility in the node number of the distribution while automatically maintaining its square-normalization property. We apply Waveflow to a one-dimensional many-electron system, where we variationally minimize the system's energy using variational quantum Monte Carlo (VQMC). Our experiments demonstrate that Waveflow can effectively resolve topological mismatches and faithfully learn the ground-state wavefunction.
title Waveflow: boundary-conditioned normalizing flows applied to fermionic wavefunctions
topic Machine Learning
Computational Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.14839