E3STO: Orbital Inspired SE(3)-Equivariant Molecular Representation for Electron Density Prediction

Abstract: Electron density prediction stands as a cornerstone challenge in molecular systems, pivotal for various applications such as understanding molecular interactions and conducting precise quantum mechanical calculations. However, the scaling of density functional theory (DFT) calculations is prohibitively expensive. Machine learning methods provide an alternative, offering efficiency and accuracy. We introduce a novel SE(3)-equivariant architecture, drawing inspiration from Slater-Type Orbitals (STO), to learn representations of molecular electronic structures. Our approach offers an alternative functional form for learned orbital-like molecular representation. We showcase the effectiveness of our method by achieving SOTA prediction accuracy of molecular electron density with 30-70\% improvement over other work on Molecular Dynamics data.