Atomic cluster expansion for quantum-accurate large-scale simulations of carbon

Abstract: We present an atomic cluster expansion (ACE) for carbon that improves over available classical and machine learning potentials. The ACE is parameterized from an exhaustive set of important carbon structures at extended volume and energy range, computed using density functional theory (DFT). Rigorous validation reveals that ACE predicts accurately a broad range of properties of both crystalline and amorphous carbon phases while being several orders of magnitude more computationally efficient than available machine learning models. We demonstrate the predictive power of ACE on three distinct applications, brittle crack propagation in diamond, evolution of amorphous carbon structures at different densities and quench rates and nucleation and growth of fullerene clusters under high pressure and temperature conditions.