Scaling Field-Theoretic Simulation for Multicomponent Mixtures with Neural Operators

Multicomponent polymer mixtures are ubiquitous in biological self-organization but are notoriously difficult to study computationally. Plagued by both slow single molecule relaxation times and slow equilibration within dense mixtures, molecular dynamics simulations are typically infeasible at the spatial scales required to study the stability of mesophase structure. Polymer field theories offer an attractive alternative, but analytical calculations are only tractable for mean-field theories and nearby perturbations, constraints that become especially problematic for fluctuation-induced effects such as coacervation. Here, we show that a recently developed technique for obtaining numerical solutions to partial differential equations based on operator learning, neural operators, lends itself to a highly scalable training strategy by parallelizing per-species operator maps. We illustrate the efficacy of our approach on six-component mixtures with randomly selected compositions and that it significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art pseudospectral integrators for field-theoretic simulations, especially as polymer lengths become long.

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Publication Details

Journal
Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation
Published
2025-04-01
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jctc.5c00102
Primary Topic
Model Reduction and Neural Networks
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

Scaling Field-Theoretic Simulation for Multicomponent Mixtures with Neural Operators

Steven Dunne, Clay H. Batton, Grant M. Rotskoff, Xiang Li et al.
Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation
Model Reduction and Neural Networks
article

Scaling Field-Theoretic Simulation for Multicomponent Mixtures with Neural Operators

Steven Dunne, Clay H. Batton, Grant M. Rotskoff, Xiang Li, Emmit K. Pert
article en

Abstract

Multicomponent polymer mixtures are ubiquitous in biological self-organization but are notoriously difficult to study computationally. Plagued by both slow single molecule relaxation times and slow equilibration within dense mixtures, molecular dynamics simulations are typically infeasible at the spatial scales required to study the stability of mesophase structure. Polymer field theories offer an attractive alternative, but analytical calculations are only tractable for mean-field theories and nearby perturbations, constraints that become especially problematic for fluctuation-induced effects such as coacervation. Here, we show that a recently developed technique for obtaining numerical solutions to partial differential equations based on operator learning, neural operators, lends itself to a highly scalable training strategy by parallelizing per-species operator maps. We illustrate the efficacy of our approach on six-component mixtures with randomly selected compositions and that it significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art pseudospectral integrators for field-theoretic simulations, especially as polymer lengths become long.

Journal of Chemical Theory and ComputationVol. 21(8)
Stanford University (US)
Basic Energy Sciences
Affordable and clean energy
Openalex Percentile: Top 95%
Model Reduction and Neural Networks
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Scaling Field-Theoretic Simulation for Multicomponent Mixtures with Neural Operators — Steven Dunne, Clay H. Batton, et al. · Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation (2025) | TGRS Research Map | TGRS