David Pfau Profile picture
Nov 28, 2022 9 tweets 5 min read Read on X
OK, this website still seems to be working…so…time to share our latest preprint!

Very pleased to be able to share this one: is attention all you need to solve the Schrödinger equation? arxiv.org/abs/2211.13672
For the last several years, numerous groups have shown that neural networks can make calculations in quantum chemistry much more accurate - FermiNet, PauliNet, etc. We wrote a review article about it here:
Most work since then has only made small tweaks to these basic neural network antazes. Instead, we tried to reinvent neural network ansatzes from the ground up. The result is a model we call the Psiformer: basically, a Transformer encoder designed for quantum chemistry. Image
Most impressively, the bigger the system size, the bigger the improvement with the Psiformer relative to the FermiNet. On the largest system we looked at, the benzene dimer (84 electrons!) the Psiformer with VMC is more accurate than the FermiNet with *diffusion* Monte Carlo! Image
I really never thought I’d be an “attention is all you need” guy, but at least in this case, it seems like neural network ansatzes using self-attention are a clear improvement over prior models, and present a path to unprecedented accuracy in quantum chemical calculations.
This was work led by Ingrid von Glehn and in collaboration with @exp_n. For those at #NeurIPS2022, I’ll be speaking about this and other topics on deep learning and quantum chemistry at the #ML4PhysicalSciences workshop on Saturday!
God dammit, threading is broken. This website really is not doing well. I meant to include one more tweet showing that the Psiformer is more accurate than FermiNet on all the systems from the original FermiNet paper: Image
*ansatzes, not antazes. What's an antaze?

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More from @pfau

May 12, 2023
Very pleased to share our latest paper, and the first by our student Tonny Lou, showing how the FermiNet can be used to study the Fermi gas, a model system for superconductors and superfluids! arxiv.org/abs/2305.06989
The Fermi gas is a model system in condensed matter physics that falls about halfway between a Bose-Einstein condensate and a conventional superconductor. It’s made out of electrons, but electrons of opposite spin have a local *attractive* force, unlike the usual Coulomb force. Image
This attractive force causes electrons to pair up into a coherent quantum state called a “Cooper pair”. In conventional superconductors, this attraction is caused by vibrations in the material itself, though here we don’t assume anything about what causes the attraction. Image
Read 11 tweets
Dec 13, 2022
And there you have it. 2 MJ laser energy in, 3 MJ fusion energy out. A sputnik moment for fusion research. The shot heard round the world.

energy.gov/articles/doe-n…
These milestones can often be hard to parse, because the definition of "energy in" can vary quite wildly for inertial (laser) confinement fusion.
If your definition of "energy in" is just X-rays that actually end up on the capsule itself, that milestone was achieved in 2014 (yielding just 14 kJ of energy) nytimes.com/2014/02/13/sci…
Read 6 tweets
Oct 22, 2022
@KordingLab Continue? It never drove it in the first place.
@KordingLab Do you think the people who came up with Transformers ever read a single neuroscience paper? Or ADAM? You're all just talking to yourselves and pretending you're contributing. It's embarrassing.
@KordingLab While I stand by the basic point I was trying to make here, this tweet was definitely more inflammatory than it needed to be. I sent it off late at night without much thought, and I apologize if I offended anyone.
Read 5 tweets
Feb 16, 2022
OK, this is one I’ve been waiting to share for a *long* time – the first ever demonstration of deep reinforcement learning on a nuclear fusion research device! nature.com/articles/s4158…
Nuclear fusion is the holy grail of clean energy - abundant fuel, small footprint, runs 24/7, zero meltdown risk or long-lasting waste. But despite 70 years of work, it has yet to become a reality. It is more familiar from science fiction than real life.
The most mature approach, magnetic confinement fusion, works by compressing a plasma in a donut-shaped magnetic bottle called a tokamak. Keeping this plasma stable is incredibly complex - plasma is a 3D self-organizing fluid that must be contained at incredibly high temperatures.
Read 12 tweets
Feb 13, 2022
2014: Integrated information theory can't be correct - if it were, matrix multiplication would be conscious.

2021: Maybe matrix multiplication is conscious?
For context (at least for the first one): scottaaronson.blog/?p=1799
I genuinely wish the discourse around this issue today were even half as informed and substantive as that blog post.
Read 5 tweets
Jun 4, 2021
Alright, if we're doing U.F.O. discourse now, I'm going to place my bet on what's going on: it's some kind of coherent plasma structure shot out of the Sun as part of a coronal mass ejection.

nytimes.com/2021/06/03/us/…
One of the most well-documented U.F.O. sightings in recent years was the "Tic Tac Incident" of November 10, 2004. You can read about it here: nymag.com/intelligencer/…
Literally the day before, an absolutely *massive* geomagnetic storm hit earth due to a coronal mass ejection (CME). The aurora was visible as far south as Flagstaff, Arizona. spaceweather.com/archive.php?vi…
Read 9 tweets

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