Enabling ab initio geometry optimization of strongly correlated systems with transferable deep quantum Monte Carlo

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Szabó, P. Bernát, Schätzle, Zeno, Noé, Frank
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Szabó, P. Bernát
Schätzle, Zeno
Noé, Frank
author_facet Szabó, P. Bernát
Schätzle, Zeno
Noé, Frank
contents A faithful description of chemical processes requires exploring extended regions of the molecular potential energy surface (PES), which remains challenging for strongly correlated systems. Transferable deep-learning variational Monte Carlo (VMC) offers a promising route by efficiently solving the electronic Schrödinger equation jointly across molecular geometries at consistently high accuracy, yet its stochastic nature renders direct exploration of molecular configuration space nontrivial. Here, we present a framework for highly accurate ab initio exploration of PESs that combines transferable deep-learning VMC with a cost-effective estimation of energies, forces, and Hessians. By continuously sampling nuclear configurations during VMC optimization of electronic wave functions, we obtain transferable descriptions that achieve zero-shot chemical accuracy within chemically relevant distributions of molecular geometries. Throughout the subsequent characterization of molecular configuration space, the PES is evaluated only sparsely, with local approximations constructed by estimating VMC energies and forces at sampled geometries and aggregating the resulting noisy data using Gaussian process regression. Our method enables accurate and efficient exploration of complex PES landscapes, including structure relaxation, transition-state searches, and minimum-energy pathways, for both ground and excited states. This opens the door to studying bond breaking, formation, and large structural rearrangements in systems with pronounced multi-reference character.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_25381
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Enabling ab initio geometry optimization of strongly correlated systems with transferable deep quantum Monte Carlo
Szabó, P. Bernát
Schätzle, Zeno
Noé, Frank
Chemical Physics
Machine Learning
Computational Physics
A faithful description of chemical processes requires exploring extended regions of the molecular potential energy surface (PES), which remains challenging for strongly correlated systems. Transferable deep-learning variational Monte Carlo (VMC) offers a promising route by efficiently solving the electronic Schrödinger equation jointly across molecular geometries at consistently high accuracy, yet its stochastic nature renders direct exploration of molecular configuration space nontrivial. Here, we present a framework for highly accurate ab initio exploration of PESs that combines transferable deep-learning VMC with a cost-effective estimation of energies, forces, and Hessians. By continuously sampling nuclear configurations during VMC optimization of electronic wave functions, we obtain transferable descriptions that achieve zero-shot chemical accuracy within chemically relevant distributions of molecular geometries. Throughout the subsequent characterization of molecular configuration space, the PES is evaluated only sparsely, with local approximations constructed by estimating VMC energies and forces at sampled geometries and aggregating the resulting noisy data using Gaussian process regression. Our method enables accurate and efficient exploration of complex PES landscapes, including structure relaxation, transition-state searches, and minimum-energy pathways, for both ground and excited states. This opens the door to studying bond breaking, formation, and large structural rearrangements in systems with pronounced multi-reference character.
title Enabling ab initio geometry optimization of strongly correlated systems with transferable deep quantum Monte Carlo
topic Chemical Physics
Machine Learning
Computational Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.25381