Active learning for photonic crystals

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Lopez, Ryan, Loh, Charlotte, Dangovski, Rumen, Soljačić, Marin
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
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author Lopez, Ryan
Loh, Charlotte
Dangovski, Rumen
Soljačić, Marin
author_facet Lopez, Ryan
Loh, Charlotte
Dangovski, Rumen
Soljačić, Marin
contents Active learning for photonic crystals explores the integration of analytic approximate Bayesian last layer neural networks (LL-BNNs) with uncertainty-driven sample selection to accelerate photonic band gap prediction. We employ an analytic LL-BNN formulation, corresponding to the infinite Monte Carlo sample limit, to obtain uncertainty estimates that are strongly correlated with the true predictive error on unlabeled candidate structures. These uncertainty scores drive an active learning strategy that prioritizes the most informative simulations during training. Applied to the task of predicting band gap sizes in two-dimensional, two-tone photonic crystals, our approach achieves up to a 2.7x reduction on average in required training data compared to a random sampling baseline while maintaining predictive accuracy. The efficiency gains arise from concentrating computational resources on high uncertainty regions of the design space rather than sampling uniformly. Given the substantial cost of full band structure simulations, especially in three dimensions, this data efficiency enables rapid and scalable surrogate modeling. Our results suggest that analytic LL-BNN based active learning can substantially accelerate topological optimization and inverse design workflows for photonic crystals, and more broadly, offers a general framework for data efficient regression across scientific machine learning domains.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_16287
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Active learning for photonic crystals
Lopez, Ryan
Loh, Charlotte
Dangovski, Rumen
Soljačić, Marin
Optics
Materials Science
Machine Learning
Applied Physics
Active learning for photonic crystals explores the integration of analytic approximate Bayesian last layer neural networks (LL-BNNs) with uncertainty-driven sample selection to accelerate photonic band gap prediction. We employ an analytic LL-BNN formulation, corresponding to the infinite Monte Carlo sample limit, to obtain uncertainty estimates that are strongly correlated with the true predictive error on unlabeled candidate structures. These uncertainty scores drive an active learning strategy that prioritizes the most informative simulations during training. Applied to the task of predicting band gap sizes in two-dimensional, two-tone photonic crystals, our approach achieves up to a 2.7x reduction on average in required training data compared to a random sampling baseline while maintaining predictive accuracy. The efficiency gains arise from concentrating computational resources on high uncertainty regions of the design space rather than sampling uniformly. Given the substantial cost of full band structure simulations, especially in three dimensions, this data efficiency enables rapid and scalable surrogate modeling. Our results suggest that analytic LL-BNN based active learning can substantially accelerate topological optimization and inverse design workflows for photonic crystals, and more broadly, offers a general framework for data efficient regression across scientific machine learning domains.
title Active learning for photonic crystals
topic Optics
Materials Science
Machine Learning
Applied Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.16287