A Recipe for Charge Density Prediction
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Abstract (arXiv)
In density functional theory, charge density is the core attribute of atomic systems from which all chemical properties can be derived. Machine learning methods are promising in significantly accelerating charge density prediction, yet existing approaches either lack accuracy or scalability. We propose a recipe that can achieve both. In particular, we identify three key ingredients: (1) representing the charge density with atomic and virtual orbitals (spherical fields centered at atom/virtual coordinates); (2) using expressive and learnable orbital basis sets (basis function for the spherical fields); and (3) using high-capacity equivariant neural network architecture. Our method achieves state-of-the-art accuracy while being more than an order of magnitude faster than existing methods. Furthermore, our method enables flexible efficiency-accuracy trade-offs by adjusting the model/basis sizes.
Key facts. Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 29 of its 69 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 29 May 2024.
Builds on
29 of 69 references.
References · 29
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17 more
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Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2024: 1; 2025: 2; 2026: 5.
8 papers.
- 2025ELECTRA: A Cartesian Network for 3D Charge Density Prediction with Floating Orbitalscited by 9
- 2025Towards A Transferable Acceleration Method for Density Functional Theorycited by 2
- 2026Global Plane Waves From Local Gaussians: Periodic Charge Densities in a Blinkcited by 1
- 2026ED-DiT: Physics-Guided Diffusion Pretraining for Transferable Molecular Representations from Electron Densitycited by 1
- 2024E3STO: Orbital Inspired SE(3)-Equivariant Molecular Representation for Electron Density Predictioncited by 0
- 2026Multitask learning with semiempirical orbital charges enables sample-efficient MLIPscited by 0
- 2026Neural-Network Solutions to Real-Space Charge Density and Generalizationcited by 0
- 2026Complete Neural Electronic Initialization Accelerates Materials DFTcited by 0
- 2026Complete Neural Electronic Initialization Accelerates Materials DFT18 Sep 2026
- 2026Neural-Network Solutions to Real-Space Charge Density and Generalization14 Sep 2026
- 2026ED-DiT: Physics-Guided Diffusion Pretraining for Transferable Molecular Representations from Electron Density4 Aug 2026
- 2026Multitask learning with semiempirical orbital charges enables sample-efficient MLIPs22 May 2026
- 2026Global Plane Waves From Local Gaussians: Periodic Charge Densities in a Blink27 Jan 2026
- 2025Towards A Transferable Acceleration Method for Density Functional Theory30 Sep 2025
- 2025ELECTRA: A Cartesian Network for 3D Charge Density Prediction with Floating Orbitals11 Mar 2025
- 2024E3STO: Orbital Inspired SE(3)-Equivariant Molecular Representation for Electron Density Prediction8 Oct 2024