Intrinsic Dimensionality of Molecular Properties

Fuente: arXiv
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autori principali: Banjafar, Ali, von Rudorff, Guido Falk
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866908431807414272
author Banjafar, Ali
von Rudorff, Guido Falk
author_facet Banjafar, Ali
von Rudorff, Guido Falk
contents Chemical space which encompasses all stable compounds is unfathomably large and its dimension scales linearly with the number of atoms considered. The success of machine learning methods suggests that many physical quantities exhibit substantial redundancy in that space, lowering their effective dimensionality. A low dimensionality is favorable for machine learning applications, as it reduces the required number of data points. It is unknown however, how far the dimensionality of physical properties can be reduced, how this depends on the exact physical property considered, and how accepting a model error can help further reducing the dimensionality. We show that accepting a modest, nearly negligible error leads to a drastic reduction in independent degrees of freedom. This applies to several properties such as the total energy and frontier orbital energies for a wide range of neutral molecules with up to 20 atoms. We provide a method to quantify an upper bound for the intrinsic dimensionality given a desired accuracy threshold by inclusion of all continuous variables in the molecular Hamiltonian including the nuclear charges. We find the intrinsic dimensionality to be remarkably stable across molecules, i.e. it is a property of the underlying physical quantity and the number of atoms rather than a property of an individual molecular configuration and therefore highly transferable between molecules. The results suggest that the feature space of state-of-the-art molecular representations can be compressed further, leaving room for more data efficient and transferable models.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_02480
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Intrinsic Dimensionality of Molecular Properties
Banjafar, Ali
von Rudorff, Guido Falk
Chemical Physics
Chemical space which encompasses all stable compounds is unfathomably large and its dimension scales linearly with the number of atoms considered. The success of machine learning methods suggests that many physical quantities exhibit substantial redundancy in that space, lowering their effective dimensionality. A low dimensionality is favorable for machine learning applications, as it reduces the required number of data points. It is unknown however, how far the dimensionality of physical properties can be reduced, how this depends on the exact physical property considered, and how accepting a model error can help further reducing the dimensionality. We show that accepting a modest, nearly negligible error leads to a drastic reduction in independent degrees of freedom. This applies to several properties such as the total energy and frontier orbital energies for a wide range of neutral molecules with up to 20 atoms. We provide a method to quantify an upper bound for the intrinsic dimensionality given a desired accuracy threshold by inclusion of all continuous variables in the molecular Hamiltonian including the nuclear charges. We find the intrinsic dimensionality to be remarkably stable across molecules, i.e. it is a property of the underlying physical quantity and the number of atoms rather than a property of an individual molecular configuration and therefore highly transferable between molecules. The results suggest that the feature space of state-of-the-art molecular representations can be compressed further, leaving room for more data efficient and transferable models.
title Intrinsic Dimensionality of Molecular Properties
topic Chemical Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.02480