Learning to shine: Neuroevolution enables optical control of phase transitions

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Agrawal, Sraddha, Whitelam, Stephen, Darancet, Pierre
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Agrawal, Sraddha
Whitelam, Stephen
Darancet, Pierre
author_facet Agrawal, Sraddha
Whitelam, Stephen
Darancet, Pierre
contents We address the problem of active optical steering of structural phase transitions in solids. We demonstrate that existing reinforcement learning approaches can derive optimal time-dependent electric fields in optically-driven dissipative classical systems far beyond the harmonic regime, enabling the stabilization of non-thermal structural phases. Our approach relies on experimentally extractable metrics of the phase-space evolution and physically-interpretable Fourier Neural Network surrogates of the time-dependent electric field. Using first-principles simulations, we demonstrate the stabilization of a symmetric phase in bismuth through impulsive Raman scattering under continuous and pulsed light sources in the presence of dissipation. Importantly, the method is gradient-free, which enables optimization loops based solely on experimental data, such as the measures of half-periods of oscillations in transient spectroscopy. Our framework thus provides a practical route for controlling non-equilibrium structural dynamics with light, opening pathways to stabilize hidden and metastable phases in quantum materials.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_03895
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Learning to shine: Neuroevolution enables optical control of phase transitions
Agrawal, Sraddha
Whitelam, Stephen
Darancet, Pierre
Materials Science
We address the problem of active optical steering of structural phase transitions in solids. We demonstrate that existing reinforcement learning approaches can derive optimal time-dependent electric fields in optically-driven dissipative classical systems far beyond the harmonic regime, enabling the stabilization of non-thermal structural phases. Our approach relies on experimentally extractable metrics of the phase-space evolution and physically-interpretable Fourier Neural Network surrogates of the time-dependent electric field. Using first-principles simulations, we demonstrate the stabilization of a symmetric phase in bismuth through impulsive Raman scattering under continuous and pulsed light sources in the presence of dissipation. Importantly, the method is gradient-free, which enables optimization loops based solely on experimental data, such as the measures of half-periods of oscillations in transient spectroscopy. Our framework thus provides a practical route for controlling non-equilibrium structural dynamics with light, opening pathways to stabilize hidden and metastable phases in quantum materials.
title Learning to shine: Neuroevolution enables optical control of phase transitions
topic Materials Science
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.03895