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We propose a generative model-based framework for learning collective variables (CVs) that faithfully capture the individual metastable states of the fulldimensional molecular dynamics (MD) systems. Unlike most existing approaches based on various feature extraction strategies, the new framework transfers the exhausting efforts of feature selection into a generative task of reconstructing the full-dimensional probability density function (PDF) from a set of CVs under a prior distribution with pre-assigned local maxima. By pairing the CVs with a set of auxiliary Gaussian random variables, we seek an invertible mapping that recovers the full-dimensional PDF and meanwhile, preserves the correspondence between the metastable states of the MD space and individual local maxima of the prior distribution. Through identifying the metastable states within MD space that are generally unknown and imposing the correspondence between the two spaces, the constructed CVs retain clear physical interpretations and provide kinetic insight for the molecular systems on the collective scale. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method with the alanine dipeptide in the aqueous environment. The constructed CVs faithfully capture the essential metastable states of the full MD systems, which show good agreement with kinetic properties such as the transition from the ballistic to the plateau regime for the mean square displacement.
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This content will become publicly available on May 31, 2026
Consensus-based adaptive sampling and approximation for high-dimensional energy landscapes
We present a consensus-based framework that unifies phase space exploration with posterior-residual-based adaptive sampling for surrogate construction in high-dimensional energy landscapes. Unlike standard approximation tasks where sampling points can be freely queried, systems with complex energy landscapes such as molecular dynamics (MD) do not have direct access to arbitrary sampling regions due to the physical constraints and energy barriers; the surrogate construction further relies on the dynamical exploration of phase space, posing a significant numerical challenge. We formulate the problem as a minimax optimization that jointly adapts both the surrogate approximation and residual-enhanced sampling. The construction of free energy surfaces (FESs) for high-dimensional collective variables (CVs) of MD systems is used as a motivating example to illustrate the essential idea. Specifically, the maximization step establishes a stochastic interacting particle system to impose adaptive sampling through both exploitation of a Laplace approximation of the max-residual region and exploration of uncharted phase space via temperature control. The minimization step updates the FES surrogate with the new sample set. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the present approach for biomolecular systems with up to 30 CVs. While we focus on the FES construction, the developed framework is general for efficient surrogate construction for complex systems with high-dimensional energy landscapes.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2143739
- PAR ID:
- 10610893
- Publisher / Repository:
- arXivorg
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- arXivorg
- ISSN:
- 2331-8422
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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