Global Universal Scaling and Ultra-Small Parameterization in Machine Learning Interatomic Potentials with Super-Linearity

Abstract: Using ML to construct interatomic interactions and thus potential energy surface (PES) has become a common strategy for materials design and simulations. However, those current models of machine learning interatomic potential (MLIP) provide no relevant physical constrains, and thus may owe intrinsic out-of-domain difficulty which underlies the challenges of model generalizability and physical scalability. Here, by incorporating physics-informed Universal-Scaling law and nonlinearity-embedded interaction function, we develop a Super-linear MLIP with both Ultra-Small parameterization and greatly expanded expressive capability, named SUS2-MLIP. Due to the global scaling rooting in universal equation of state (UEOS), SUS2-MLIP not only has significantly-reduced parameters by decoupling the element space from coordinate space, but also naturally outcomes the out-of-domain difficulty and endows the potentials with inherent generalizability and scalability even with relatively small training dataset. The nonlinearity-enbeding transformation for interaction function expands the expressive capability and make the potentials super-linear. The SUS2-MLIP outperforms the state-of-the-art MLIP models with its exceptional computational efficiency especially for multiple-element materials and physical scalability in property prediction. This work not only presents a highly-efficient universal MLIP model but also sheds light on incorporating physical constraints into artificial-intelligence-aided materials simulation.