Active learning strategies for atomic cluster expansion models

Abstract: The atomic cluster expansion (ACE) was proposed recently as a new class of data-driven interatomic potentials with a formally complete basis set. Since the development of any interatomic potential requires a careful selection of training data and thorough validation, an automation of the construction of the training dataset as well as an indication of a model's uncertainty are highly desirable. In this work, we compare the performance of two approaches for uncertainty indication of ACE models based on the D-optimality criterion and ensemble learning. While both approaches show comparable predictions, the extrapolation grade based on the D-optimality (MaxVol algorithm) is more computationally efficient. In addition, the extrapolation grade indicator enables an active exploration of new structures, opening the way to the automated discovery of rare-event configurations. We demonstrate that active learning is also applicable to explore local atomic environments from large-scale MD simulations.