Machine Learning applied to solving Nuclear Many-body Problems

Morten Hjorth-Jensen [1, 2]

[1] Department of Physics and Astronomy and FRIB/NSCL Laboratory, Michigan State University, USA
[2] Department of Physics and Center for Computing in Science Education, University of Oslo, Norway

IAEA AI Technical Meeting: Nuclear Physics Working Group, October 25-29, 2021












What is this talk about?

The main aim is to give you a short introduction to how we can use Machine Learning methods to solve quantum mechanical many-body problems. And why this could be of interest.

Thanks to Jane Kim (MSU), Julie Butler (MSU), Vilde Flugsrud (UiO), Even Nordhagen (UiO), Alessandro Lovato (ANL).











More material

More in depth notebooks and lecture notes are at

  1. Making a professional Monte Carlo code for quantum mechanical simulations http://compphysics.github.io/ComputationalPhysics2/doc/LectureNotes/_build/html/vmcdmc.html
  2. From Variational Monte Carlo to Boltzmann Machines http://compphysics.github.io/ComputationalPhysics2/doc/LectureNotes/_build/html/boltzmannmachines.html
  3. Nuclear Talent course on Machine Learning in Nuclear Experiment and Theory, June 22 - July 3, 2020
  4. Machine Learning course
Feel free to try them out and please don't hesitate to ask if something is unclear.











Why? Basic motivation

How can we avoid the dimensionality curse? Many possibilities

  1. smarter basis functions
  2. resummation of specific correlations
  3. stochastic sampling of high-lying states (stochastic FCI, CC and SRG/IMSRG)
  4. many more
Machine Learning and Quantum Computing hold also great promise in tackling the ever increasing dimensionalities. A hot new field is Quantum Machine Learning, see for example the recent textbook by Maria Schuld and Francesco Petruccione. Here we will focus on Machine Learning.











What are the basic ingredients?

Almost every problem in ML and data science starts with the same ingredients:

We seek to minimize the function \( \mathcal{C} (\mathbf{x}, f(\mathbf{\alpha})) \) by finding the parameter values which minimize \( \mathcal{C} \). This leads to various minimization algorithms. It may surprise many, but at the heart of all machine learning algortihms there is an optimization problem.











Quantum Monte Carlo Motivation

Basic steps

Choose a trial wave function \( \psi_T(\boldsymbol{R}) \). $$ P(\boldsymbol{R},\boldsymbol{\alpha})= \frac{\left|\psi_T(\boldsymbol{R},\boldsymbol{\alpha})\right|^2}{\int \left|\psi_T(\boldsymbol{R},\boldsymbol{\alpha})\right|^2d\boldsymbol{R}}. $$ This is our model, or likelihood/probability distribution function (PDF). It depends on some variational parameters \( \boldsymbol{\alpha} \). The approximation to the expectation value of the Hamiltonian is now $$ \langle E[\boldsymbol{\alpha}] \rangle = \frac{\int d\boldsymbol{R}\Psi^{\ast}_T(\boldsymbol{R},\boldsymbol{\alpha})H(\boldsymbol{R})\Psi_T(\boldsymbol{R},\boldsymbol{\alpha})} {\int d\boldsymbol{R}\Psi^{\ast}_T(\boldsymbol{R},\boldsymbol{\alpha})\Psi_T(\boldsymbol{R},\boldsymbol{\alpha})}. $$











Running the codes

You can find the codes for the simple two-electron case at http://compphysics.github.io/ComputationalPhysics2/doc/LectureNotes/_build/html/boltzmannmachines.html.

The trial wave function is based on the product of a Slater determinant with either only Hermitian polynomials or Gaussian orbitals, with and without a Pade-Jastrow factor (PJ).











Energy as function of iterations, \( N=2 \) electrons















Onebody densities \( N=6 \), \( \hbar\omega=1.0 \) a.u.















Onebody densities \( N=6 \), \( \hbar\omega=0.1 \) a.u.















Onebody densities \( N=30 \), \( \hbar\omega=1.0 \) a.u.















Onebody densities \( N=30 \), \( \hbar\omega=0.1 \) a.u.















Or using Deep Learning Neural Networks

Machine Learning and the Deuteron by Kebble and Rios and Variational Monte Carlo calculations of \( A\le 4 \) nuclei with an artificial neural-network correlator ansatz by Adams et al. Nuclei with up to \( A=6 \) nucleons with artificial neural network wave functions, by Gnech et al

Adams et al: $$ \begin{align} H_{LO} &=-\sum_i \frac{{\vec{\nabla}_i^2}}{2m_N} +\sum_{i < j} {\left(C_1 + C_2\, \vec{\sigma_i}\cdot\vec{\sigma_j}\right) e^{-r_{ij}^2\Lambda^2 / 4 }} \nonumber\\ &+D_0 \sum_{i < j < k} \sum_{\text{cyc}} {e^{-\left(r_{ik}^2+r_{ij}^2\right)\Lambda^2/4}}\,, \label{_auto1} \end{align} $$

where \( m_N \) is the mass of the nucleon, \( \vec{\sigma_i} \) is the Pauli matrix acting on nucleon \( i \), and \( \sum_{\text{cyc}} \) stands for the cyclic permutation of \( i \), \( j \), and \( k \). The low-energy constants \( C_1 \) and \( C_2 \) are fit to the deuteron binding energy and to the neutron-neutron scattering length











Replacing the Jastrow factor with Neural Networks

An appealing feature of the ANN ansatz is that it is more general than the more conventional product of two- and three-body spin-independent Jastrow functions $$ \begin{align} |\Psi_V^J \rangle = \prod_{i < j < k} \Big( 1-\sum_{\text{cyc}} u(r_{ij}) u(r_{jk})\Big) \prod_{i < j} f(r_{ij}) | \Phi\rangle\,, \label{_auto2} \end{align} $$ which is commonly used for nuclear Hamiltonians that do not contain tensor and spin-orbit terms. The above function is replaced by a four-layer Neural Network.















Conclusions and where do we stand

© 1999-2021, Morten Hjorth-Jensen. Released under CC Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 license