Essentially No Energy Barrier Between Independent Fermionic Neural Quantum State Minima

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Dai, David D., Soljačić, Marin
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Dai, David D.
Soljačić, Marin
author_facet Dai, David D.
Soljačić, Marin
contents Neural quantum states (NQS) have proven highly effective in representing quantum many-body wavefunctions, but their loss landscape remains poorly understood and debated. Here, we demonstrate that the NQS loss landscape is more benign and similar to conventional deep learning than previously thought, exhibiting mode connectivity: independently trained NQS are connected by paths in parameter space with essentially no energy barrier. To construct these paths, we develop GeoNEB, a path optimizer integrating efficient stochastic reconfiguration with the nudged elastic band method for constructing minimum energy paths. For the strongly interacting six-electron quantum dot modeled by a $1.6$M-parameter Psiformer, we find two independent minima with expected energy barrier $\sim10^{-5}$ times smaller than the system's overall energy scale and $\sim10^{-3}$ times smaller than the linear path's barrier. The path respects physical symmetry in addition to achieving low energy, with the angular momentum remaining well quantized throughout. Our work is the first to construct optimized paths between independently trained NQS, and it suggests that the NQS loss landscape may not be as pathological as once feared.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_06939
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Essentially No Energy Barrier Between Independent Fermionic Neural Quantum State Minima
Dai, David D.
Soljačić, Marin
Disordered Systems and Neural Networks
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
Strongly Correlated Electrons
Computational Physics
Quantum Physics
Neural quantum states (NQS) have proven highly effective in representing quantum many-body wavefunctions, but their loss landscape remains poorly understood and debated. Here, we demonstrate that the NQS loss landscape is more benign and similar to conventional deep learning than previously thought, exhibiting mode connectivity: independently trained NQS are connected by paths in parameter space with essentially no energy barrier. To construct these paths, we develop GeoNEB, a path optimizer integrating efficient stochastic reconfiguration with the nudged elastic band method for constructing minimum energy paths. For the strongly interacting six-electron quantum dot modeled by a $1.6$M-parameter Psiformer, we find two independent minima with expected energy barrier $\sim10^{-5}$ times smaller than the system's overall energy scale and $\sim10^{-3}$ times smaller than the linear path's barrier. The path respects physical symmetry in addition to achieving low energy, with the angular momentum remaining well quantized throughout. Our work is the first to construct optimized paths between independently trained NQS, and it suggests that the NQS loss landscape may not be as pathological as once feared.
title Essentially No Energy Barrier Between Independent Fermionic Neural Quantum State Minima
topic Disordered Systems and Neural Networks
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
Strongly Correlated Electrons
Computational Physics
Quantum Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.06939