Studying the dynamical behavior of a system often depends on characterizing how it transitions between long-lived states. Because such transitions are rare, observing them usually requires specialized...
The article reviews modern machine learning techniques for estimating the committor and related kinetic statistics from molecular dynamics simulations. It emphasizes self‑supervised methods that solve the underlying dynamical equations instead of relying on labeled data, and unifies various approaches—generator‑based PDEs, variational principles, Markov state models, dynamical Galerkin approximation, and neural networks—under a common operator framework. The review also discusses practical guidance for handling non‑Markovian effects, sampling strategies, and outlines future research directions such as connections to reinforcement learning and generative modeling.
By Jonathan Weare, Aaron R. Dinner
arXiv:2607. 15682v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Sampling from an unnormalized Boltzmann density requires proposals that move probability mass globally while retaining enough path-probability information for statistical correction.
By Moxian Qian
arXiv:2606. 04100v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Machine learning interatomic potentials (MLIPs) enable efficient and accurate atomistic simulations but depend critically on the quality and diversity of the training data.
By Joanna Zou, Fraser Birks, Dallas Foster, Youssef Marzouk
arXiv:2606. 27361v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Efficient sampling of molecular systems at thermodynamic equilibrium is a hallmark challenge in statistical physics.
By Danyal Rehman, Charlie B. Tan, Yoshua Bengio, Avishek Joey Bose, Alexander Tong
arXiv:2608. 13800v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Transition path sampling (TPS) aims to efficiently generate rare molecular transition trajectories between metastable states and is essential for understanding biomolecular mechanisms.
By Jingqian Liu, Yu-Hsiang Wang, Yanru Qu, Ge Liu
Path sampling methods generate ensembles of reactive trajectories connecting metastable states, but extracting mechanistic insight from these data remains nontrivial. We introduce Flux Matching, a framework that learns two complementary objects directly from reactive trajectory data: a current velocity $u(z)$, whose streamlines trace the dominant reaction pathways, and a scalar potential $h(z)$, obtained from a weighted Helmholtz-Hodge decomposition of the reactive current, that serves as a data-driven reaction coordinate.
Efficient sampling of molecular systems at thermodynamic equilibrium is a hallmark challenge in statistical physics. This challenge has driven the development of Boltzmann Generators (BGs), which allow rapid generation of uncorrelated equilibrium samples by combining a generative model with exact likelihoods and an importance sampling correction.
arXiv:2608. 14076v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Transition-state (TS) structures define the energetic barriers and mechanistic pathways of elementary chemical reactions, yet their identification remains computationally demanding because conventional saddle-point searches require expensive quantum-mechanical calculations.
By Kaipeng Zeng, Wenxi Zhai, Shengrui Xu, Jie Zhao, Bowen Li, Shiyue Wang, Junchi Yan, Tong Zhu
ChemBART is a BART‑based language model trained on holistic reaction expressions (Reactant > Reagent > Product) using a mask‑filling objective. It can solve diverse chemical tasks such as precursor/reagent generation, temperature‑yield regression, and property classification, and it is integrated with Monte Carlo tree search to design multi‑step synthesis routes. The model’s predictions were experimentally validated, yielding shorter synthetic pathways with over 20 % higher yield than literature benchmarks.
By Kenan Li, Yijian Zhang, Jin Wang, Haipeng Gan, Zeying Sun, Xiaoguang Lei, Hao Dong
arXiv:2602. 13136v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Template-free retrosynthesis methods treat the task as black-box sequence generation, limiting learning efficiency, while semi-template approaches rely on rigid reaction libraries that constrain generalization.
By Chenguang Wang, Zihan Zhou, Lei Bai, Tianshu Yu
arXiv:2605.06140v3 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: Generative modeling of physical systems, such as molecules, requires learning distributions that are invariant under global symmetries, such...
By Samir Darouich, Vinh Tong, Llu\'is Pastor-P\'erez, Tanja Bien, Loay Mualem, Mathias Niepert