High-order Equivariant Flow Matching for Density Functional Theory Hamiltonian Prediction

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Kim, Seongsu, Kim, Nayoung, Kim, Dongwoo, Ahn, Sungsoo
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866914107139031040
author Kim, Seongsu
Kim, Nayoung
Kim, Dongwoo
Ahn, Sungsoo
author_facet Kim, Seongsu
Kim, Nayoung
Kim, Dongwoo
Ahn, Sungsoo
contents Density functional theory (DFT) is a fundamental method for simulating quantum chemical properties, but it remains expensive due to the iterative self-consistent field (SCF) process required to solve the Kohn-Sham equations. Recently, deep learning methods are gaining attention as a way to bypass this step by directly predicting the Hamiltonian. However, they rely on deterministic regression and do not consider the highly structured nature of Hamiltonians. In this work, we propose QHFlow, a high-order equivariant flow matching framework that generates Hamiltonian matrices conditioned on molecular geometry. Flow matching models continuous-time trajectories between simple priors and complex targets, learning the structured distributions over Hamiltonians instead of direct regression. To further incorporate symmetry, we use a neural architecture that predicts SE(3)-equivariant vector fields, improving accuracy and generalization across diverse geometries. To further enhance physical fidelity, we additionally introduce a fine-tuning scheme to align predicted orbital energies with the target. QHFlow achieves state-of-the-art performance, reducing Hamiltonian error by 71% on MD17 and 53% on QH9. Moreover, we further show that QHFlow accelerates the DFT process without trading off the solution quality when initializing SCF iterations with the predicted Hamiltonian, significantly reducing the number of iterations and runtime.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_18817
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle High-order Equivariant Flow Matching for Density Functional Theory Hamiltonian Prediction
Kim, Seongsu
Kim, Nayoung
Kim, Dongwoo
Ahn, Sungsoo
Computational Physics
Artificial Intelligence
Density functional theory (DFT) is a fundamental method for simulating quantum chemical properties, but it remains expensive due to the iterative self-consistent field (SCF) process required to solve the Kohn-Sham equations. Recently, deep learning methods are gaining attention as a way to bypass this step by directly predicting the Hamiltonian. However, they rely on deterministic regression and do not consider the highly structured nature of Hamiltonians. In this work, we propose QHFlow, a high-order equivariant flow matching framework that generates Hamiltonian matrices conditioned on molecular geometry. Flow matching models continuous-time trajectories between simple priors and complex targets, learning the structured distributions over Hamiltonians instead of direct regression. To further incorporate symmetry, we use a neural architecture that predicts SE(3)-equivariant vector fields, improving accuracy and generalization across diverse geometries. To further enhance physical fidelity, we additionally introduce a fine-tuning scheme to align predicted orbital energies with the target. QHFlow achieves state-of-the-art performance, reducing Hamiltonian error by 71% on MD17 and 53% on QH9. Moreover, we further show that QHFlow accelerates the DFT process without trading off the solution quality when initializing SCF iterations with the predicted Hamiltonian, significantly reducing the number of iterations and runtime.
title High-order Equivariant Flow Matching for Density Functional Theory Hamiltonian Prediction
topic Computational Physics
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.18817