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107 records · Page 6

A fast multi-fidelity method with uncertainty quantification for complex data correlations: Application to vortex-induced vibrations of marine risers

Here we develop a fast multi-fidelity modeling method for very complex correlations between high- and low-fidelity data by working in modal space to extract the proper correlation function. We apply this method to infer the amplitude of motion of a flexible marine riser in cross-flow, subject to vortex-induced vibrations (VIV). VIV are driven by an absolute instability in the flow, which imposes a frequency (Strouhal) law that requires a matching with the impedance of the structure; this matching is easily achieved because of the rapid parametric variation of the added mass force. As a result, the wavenumber of the riser spatial response is within narrow bands of uncertainty. Hence, an error in wavenumber prediction can cause significant phase-related errors in the shape of the amplitude of response along the riser, rendering correlation between low- and high-fidelity data very complex. Working in modal space as outlined herein, dense data from low-fidelity data, provided by the semi-empirical computer code VIVA, can correlate in modal space with few high-fidelity data, obtained from experiments or fully-resolved CFD simulations, to correct both phase and amplitude and provide predictions that agree very well overall with the correct shape of the amplitude response. We also quantify the uncertainty in the prediction using Bayesian modeling and exploit this uncertainty to formulate an active learning strategy for the best possible location of the sensors providing the high fidelity measurements.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Simulating transient heat transfer in graphene at finite Knudsen number via the Boltzmann transport equation and molecular dynamics

The phonon Boltzmann transport equation (BTE) with the relaxation time approximation (RTA) scattering model is used to calculate transient temperature profiles in graphene, and the results are compared to analogous molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. For the BTE calculations, the phonon dispersion relation and frequency-dependent scattering rates are obtained from a combination of MD data and semi-empirical power-law expressions for the normal and Umklapp phonon lifetimes. The dimensions and initial temperature conditions of graphene are varied to study the size and temperature dependence of thermal transport physics at the mesoscopic scale. Good quantitative agreement to within 5% is found between the BTE and MD results, over a wide range of temperatures and lengthscales of the temperature variation in the graphene sheet. Small differences are attributed to the inaccuracy of the RTA as applied to graphene, and to neglecting four-phonon scattering in the BTE simulations. The present results may further understanding in applications such as the transient heating of nanoelectronics.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Effects of Chlorine Capture and a Proposed Density Law on the Reactivity of Plutonium Solution Systems

During fissionable material processing, all normal and credible abnormal conditions must remain safely subcritical. Nuclear Criticality Safety (NCS) uses a number of methods to determine subcriticality, one of which is the use of neutron transport codes such as MCNP6. In order to create models for use with MCNP6, both the geometry and materials in fissionable material processes must be known, or assumptions must be made and quantified for the impact to bias. One of the systems with a significant amount of bias due to material modeling assumptions is in the area of aqueous plutonium processing. These solutions are typically plutonium nitrate solutions or plutonium chloride solutions, which are modeled as fictitious plutonium metal-water mixtures because little is known about the actual density of the solution and there is no current predictive capability approved for use at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) for modeling them. This research is currently underway to fill the gap and develop an algorithm for use with MCNP6 to model the density of plutonium chloride solutions. The method is to be validated with experimental data for density, and also validated with critical experiments using MCNP6. Note that the Chlorine Worth Study (CWS) was performed in December 2021 to help bridge the gap in chlorine data for critical experiments, and is currently awaiting International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project (ICSBEP) review. This study was performed by LANL at the National Criticality Experiments Research Center (NCERC) at the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS). Additional information regarding this experiment may currently be found in LA-UR- 22-29180. Additionally, the Chemistry-Actinide Analytical Chemistry (C-AAC) at LANL has performed a number of solution density measurements for PuCl 3 -HC 1 -H 2 O, allowing for such data be used to create a semi-empirical density via the Pitzer method. The published dataset for the measurements is documented in LA-UR-22-25454. This method has already been tested successfully for aqueous plutonium nitrate solutions in SCALE. Current solution density measurements exist of plutonium concentrations of 0-~142g/L, all at 2M HC1, at temperatures 20-40°C. Additional data was taken for HC1-corrected density values, which essentially mimics the data for a pure PuCl x -water solution. The calculations in this report aim to support the current research by demonstrating the difference in system reactivity for the current modeling method when compared to the new proposed modeling with a density law implementation, which is being written as a Python tool to be used with MCNP6.

38 RADIATION CHEMISTRY, RADIOCHEMISTRY, AND NUCLEA↗

HydraGNN_Predictive_GFM_2026 - Ensemble of predictive graph foundation models for atomistic materials modeling

This release contains data and parameters of HydraGNN-based graph foundation models trained as a result of the work published in the pre-print "Exascale Multi-Task Graph Foundation Models for Imbalanced, Multi-Fidelity Atomistic Data" by M. Lupo Pasini et al. (https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.15380). We jointly train on 16 open first-principles datasets (544+ million structures covering 85+ elements) using a multi-task architecture with per-dataset heads and a scalable ADIOS2/DDStore data pipeline. On Frontier, we execute six large-scale DeepHyper hyperparameter optimization campaigns in FP64 and promote the top-performing message-passing models to sustained 2,048-node training, yielding a PaiNN-based lead model. The version of HydraGNN used to generate the outputs provided in this release is HydraGNN v5.0 (https://github.com/ORNL/HydraGNN/releases/tag/v5.0) The list of datasets used for the training of the graph foundation model is the following: 1) Alexandria [1] 2) ANI1x [2] 3) MPTrj [3] 4) Open Catalyst 2020 (OC20) [4] 5) Open Catalyst 2022 (OC22) [5] 6) Open Catalyst 2025 (OC25) [6] 7) Open Direct ir Capture 2023 (ODAC23) [7] 8) Open Materials 2024 (OMat24) [8] 9) Open Molecules 2025 (OMol25) [9] 10) OMol25-neutral (subset of OMol25 that contains only molecules with zero total charge) 11) OMol25-non-neutral (subset of OMol25 that contains only molecules with non-zero total charge) 12) Open Polymers 2026 (OPoly2026) [10] 13) Nabla2DFT [11] 14) QCML [12] 15) QM7X [reference 13] 16) transition1x [14] Dataset references: [1] J. Schmidt et al., “A dataset of 175k stable and metastable materials calculated with the PBEsol and SCAN functionals,” Scientific Data, vol. 9, p. 64, 2022. [2] J. S. Smith et al., “The ANI-1ccx and ANI-1x data sets, coupled-cluster and density functional theory properties for molecules,” Scientific Data, vol. 7, p. 134, 2020. [Online]. Available: https: //www.nature.com/articles/s41597-020-0473-z [3] A. Jain et al., “Commentary: The Materials Project: A materials genome approach to accelerating materials innovation,” APL Materials, vol. 1, no. 1, p. 011002, 07 2013. [Online]. Available: https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4812323 [4] L. Chanussot et al., “Open catalyst 2020 (oc20) dataset and community challenges,” ACS Catalysis, vol. 11, no. 10, pp. 6059–6072, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://doi.org/10.1021/acscatal.0c04525 [5] K. Tran et al., “Open catalyst 2022 (oc22) dataset and challenges for oxidation electrocatalysts,” ACS Catalysis, vol. 13, no. 5, pp. 3066–3084, 2023. [Online]. Available: https://doi.org/10.1021/acscatal.2c05426 [6] S. J. Sahoo et al., “The open catalyst 2025 (oc25) dataset and models for solid-liquid interfaces,” arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.17862, 2025. [Online]. Available: https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.17862 [7] A. Sriram et al., “The open DAC 2023 dataset and challenges for sorbent discovery in direct air capture,” ACS Central Science, vol. 10, no. 5, pp. 923–941, 2024. [8] L. Barroso-Luque et al., “Open materials 2024 (omat24) inorganic materials dataset and models,” 2024. [Online]. Available: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.12771 [9] D. S. Levine et al., “The open molecules 2025 (OMol25) dataset, evaluations, and models,” 2025. [Online]. Available: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.08762 [10] D. S. Levine et al., The open polymers 2026 (OPoly26) dataset and evaluations,” arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.23117, 2025. [Online]. Available: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.23117 [11] K. Khrabrov et al., “Nabla2dft: A universal quantum chemistry dataset of drug-like molecules and a benchmark for neural network potentials,” in NeurIPS 2024 Datasets and Benchmarks Track, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://openreview.net/forum?id=ElUrNM9U8c [12] S. Ganscha et al., “The QCML dataset, quantum chemistry reference data from 33.5M DFT and 14.7B semi-empirical calculations,” Scientific Data, vol. 12, p. 406, 2025. [13] J. Hoja et al., “QM7-X, a comprehensive dataset of quantum-mechanical properties spanning the chemical space of small organic molecules,” Scientific Data, vol. 8, p. 43, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-021-00812-2 [14] M. Schreiner et al., “Transition1x - a dataset for building generalizable reactive machine learning potentials,” Scientific Data, vol. 9, p. 779, 2022. The folder "datasets_ADIOS2_format" contains the set of pre-processed datasets in Adaptable I/O System (ADIOS) format (https://www.exascaleproject.org/research-project/adios/) that have been used for the development and training of GFMs in this work. The "datasets_ADIOS2_format" directory contains 2 sub-directories, one for the version "v1" of the datasets and one for the version "v2" of the datasets. The version "v1" of the datasets provides values of the total energy as they are extracted from the original data as it was released by the respective institutions. The version "v2" of the datasets provides values of the energy that have been realigned. The realignment was performed by training a linear regression model that predicts the total energy as a function of the chemical composition of the atomistic structure, and then subtract such prediction from the original value of the total energy. Both folders "v1" and "v2" contain 16 sub-directories, each corresponding to an ADIOS2-formatted dataset The folder "DeepHyper-results" contains the configurational files and model's parameters for all the 186 HPO trials that were successfully completed by the scalable hyperparameter optimization (HPO) runs on Frontier. The content of the folder "DeepHyper-results" I structured as follows: 1) task-list.txt: list of mpnn name, jobid, and deephyper task id 2) gfm_${MPNN}_${JOBID}_0.${TASKID}: run directory with checkpoint files 3) gfm_${MPNN}: deephyper summary directory (*.csv) for each specific MPNN type 4) deephyper-experiment-${JOBID}: output and error logs for each job The file "deephyper-sorted.csv" contains the details of each HydraGNN model built and tested by HPO, obtained by merging the (*.csv) filed from each HPO run executed. Out of all the HPO trials, we selected 10 to continue the training of the respective HydraGNN models. Due to limited computational budget available in the LRN070 allocation we could not complete the training till convergence for all these 10 selected models. The folder "models" contains multiple sub-folders, one per each HydraGNN model trained. Each model sub-folder contains the parameters of each HydraGNN model, with multiple checkpoint-restarts. The list of sub-folders are as follows: 1) multidataset_hpo-BEST1-fp64 2) multidataset_hpo-BEST2-fp64 3) multidataset_hpo-BEST3-fp64 4) multidataset_hpo-BEST4-fp64 5) multidataset_hpo-BEST5-fp64 6) multidataset_hpo-BEST6-fp64 7) multidataset_hpo-BEST7-fp64 8) multidataset_hpo-BEST8-fp64 9) multidataset_hpo-BEST9-fp64 10) multidataset_hpo-BEST10-fp64 Within each one of these folders, additional auxiliary log files are provided with descriptions about how the training proceeded. The lead PaiNN-model is contained inside "multidataset_hpo-BEST6-fp64". The file "mlp_branch_weights" contains the parameters of the multi-layer perceptron (MLP) used to reconcile the predictions of the 16 output decoding heads of the HydragNN architectures. The MLP takes in input the chemical composition of the atomistic structure and predicts averaging weights to linearly mix the predictions of each output decoding head toward consolidating them into a single one. The folder "1.1billion-structure-inference" contains 1.1 billion atomistic structures randomly generated. Each structures is associated with energy and forces predicted with the lead-PaiNN model combined with the MLP model for reconciliation of the multi-branch predictions generated by the 16 output decoding heads. The folder "1.1billion-structure-inference" contains 9,300 (*.tar.gz) subdirectories, one per Frontier compute node used to execute the inference at exascale. Once uncompressed, each (*.tar.gz) subdirectory contains an ADIOS2 (*.bp) file container, where each atomistic structure is stored as a PyTorch-Geometric Data object. The file "export_dataset_environment_variables.sh" contains the environment variables that need to be set before running the HydraGNN code to reproduce the results provided in this dataset release. The code that can be used to load the ADIOS2 files, load HydraGNN models, and run inference is available at: https://github.com/ORNL/HydraGNN/releases/tag/v5.0

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Introducing the embedded random phase approximation: H 2 dissociative adsorption on Cu(111) as an exemplar

The random phase approximation (RPA) as a means of treating electron correlation recently has been shown to outperform standard density functional theory (DFT) approximations in a variety of cases. However, the computational cost of the RPA is substantially more than DFT, especially when aiming to study extended surfaces. Properly accounting for sufficient surface ensemble size, Brillouin zone sampling, and vacuum separation of periodic images in standard periodic-planewave-based DFT code raises the cost to achieve converged results. Here, we show that sub-system embedding schemes enable use of the RPA for modeling heterogeneous reactions at reduced computational cost. Further, we explore two different embedded RPA (emb-RPA) approaches, periodic emb-RPA and cluster emb-RPA. We use the (experimentally and theoretically) well-studied H 2 dissociative adsorption on Cu(111) as our exemplar, and first perform full periodic RPA calculations as a benchmark. The full RPA results match well the semi-empirical barrier fit to experimental observables and others derived from high-level computations, e.g., from recent embedded n-electron valence second order perturbation theory [Zhao et al., J. Chem. Theory Comput. 16(11), 7078–7088 (2020)] and quantum Monte Carlo [Doblhoff-Dier et al., J. Chem. Theory Comput. 13(7), 3208–3219 (2017)] simulations. Among the two emb-RPA approaches tested, the cluster emb-RPA accurately reproduces the energy profile (maximum error of 50 meV along the reaction pathway) while reducing the computational cost by approximately two orders of magnitude. We therefore expect that the embedded cluster approach will enable wider RPA implementation in heterogeneous catalysis.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Explanation and Application of the Evolving Contact Traction Fields in Shallow Foundation Systems

The present paper provides a qualitative discussion of the evolution of contact traction fields beneath rigid shallow foundations resting on granular materials. A phenomenological similarity is recognized in the measured contact traction fields of rigid footings and at the bases of sandpiles. This observation leads to the hypothesis that the stress distributions are brought about by the same physical phenomena, namely the development of arching effects through force chains and mobilized intergranular friction. A set of semi-empirical equations are suggested for the normal and tangential components of this contact traction based on past experimental measurements and phenomenological assumptions of frictional behaviors at the foundation system scale. These equations are then applied to the prescribed boundary conditions for the analysis of the settlement, resistance, and stress fields in supporting granular materials beneath the footing. A parametric sensitivity study is performed on the proposed modelling method, highlighting solutions to the boundary-value problems in an isotropic, homogeneous elastic half-space.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Material Identification Using Dual Energy X-ray Absorptiometry

Two implementations of dual energy X-ray absorptiometry were studied to identify materials using X-ray attenuation data taken with the Digital Radiography and Computed Tomography (DRCT) systems that were developed for the Recovered Chemical Materiel Directorate (RCMD). Maitrejean et al.’s approach utilizes eigen effects through Principal Component Analysis, while Osipov et al.’s approach proposed a physics-based method. Both approaches approximate mass attenuation coefficients of materials as a linear combination of basis functions (eigen effects) or physics-based equations. A set of coefficients {a 1 , a 2 , a 3 } or {B, D} were found by parameter optimization in EXCEL Solver. The identification parameters, {$\frac{a_{2}}{a_{1}}$, $\frac{a_{3}}{a_{1}}$} or estimated effective atomic number $\hat{Z}$ from {B, D}, were calculated to identify material of an aluminum 8 step wedge and a steel 8 step wedge in X-ray radiography images taken by a DRCT system. Maitrejean et al.’s approach was unable to provide reliable $\frac{a_{3}}{a_{1}}$ ratio values for identification of materials. Osipov et al.’s approach was found to be more robust in identify materials with a semi-empirical formula derived from test results in this study.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Data-Driven Reduced-Order Modeling of Convective Heat Transfer in Porous Media

This work presents a data-driven Reduced-Order Model (ROM) for parametric convective heat transfer problems in porous media. The intrusive Proper Orthogonal Decomposition aided Reduced-Basis (POD-RB) technique is employed to reduce the porous medium formulation of the incompressible Reynolds-Averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) equations coupled with heat transfer. Instead of resolving the exact flow configuration with high fidelity, the porous medium formulation solves a homogenized flow in which the fluid-structure interactions are captured via volumetric flow resistances with nonlinear, semi-empirical friction correlations. A supremizer approach is implemented for the stabilization of the reduced fluid dynamics equations. The reduced nonlinear flow resistances are treated using the Discrete Empirical Interpolation Method (DEIM), while the turbulent eddy viscosity and diffusivity are approximated by adopting a Radial Basis Function (RBF) interpolation-based approach. The proposed method is tested using a 2D numerical model of the Molten Salt Fast Reactor (MSFR), which involves the simulation of both clean and porous medium regions in the same domain. For the steady-state example, five model parameters are considered to be uncertain: the magnitude of the pumping force, the external coolant temperature, the heat transfer coefficient, the thermal expansion coefficient, and the Prandtl number. For transient scenarios, on the other hand, the coastdown-time of the pump is the only uncertain parameter. The results indicate that the POD-RB-ROMs are suitable for the reduction of similar problems. The relative L2 errors are below 3.34% for every field of interest for all cases analyzed, while the speedup factors vary between 54 (transient) and 40,000 (steady-state).

German, Péter (ORCID:0000000307285283)↗

Automated Fitting of a Semi-empirical Multiphase Equation of State for Carbon

The equation of state (EOS) of carbon is important in high explosive, geophysical, and inertial confinement fusion applications. Within the semi-empirical Sesame framework, the EOS of each phase is represented by a sum of cold, vibrational, and thermal electronic Helmholtz free energy contributions. Each phase has ~5-10 independent parameters that are adjusted to reproduce single-phase data (e.g., thermal expansion, isothermal compression) as well as experimentally- and computationally- derived phase boundaries. Manual calibration of the full multiphase EOS is arduous. We present our progress in development of automated EOS parameterization based on minimization of an objective function. Here, this function encodes deviation of model EOS results from experimental/computational benchmarks. Optimization is implemented as a combination of global (particle swarm) and local optimization techniques.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Attached Jet Velocity Profiles in Mixing Tanks

Free jets have been studied in detail over much of the last century, but the theory for offset and attached jets remains incomplete. Attached jets differ from free jets in that they lose momentum to nearby surfaces, attenuating their velocities. The velocity profiles of free circular jets are nearly Gaussian, with quantitative mathematical descriptions derived from first principles by Goertler and Tollmien (Rajaratnam, 1976). In contrast, mathematical descriptions of three-dimensional attached jets from circular nozzles remain much less mature. Agelin-Chaab and Tachie (2011) used particle imaging velocimetry of a three-dimensional attached jet to show that the scaled velocity decays with scaled distance from the nozzle with a power law exponent between -1.15 and -1.21, which is larger in magnitude than that of a free jet. However, quantitative analytical expressions for the velocity profiles of attached jets similar to those of free jets remain elusive. This paper addresses this critical gap. Here we evaluate the velocity profiles of three-dimensional offset jets emerging from circular nozzles that that become attached jets. These jets lose momentum due to interactions with nearby surfaces and are important to evaluating flows in mixing vessels and to suspending solids and trapped gases in radioactive waste tanks. Despite the importance of attached jets, prior insight has been purely experimental, limited to overly simplistic analytical models, or restricted to computationally expensive computational fluid dynamics case studies. We compare the expression of Verhoff (1963) to experimental results to find reasonable quantitative agreement. As stated by Agelin-Chaab and Tachie (2011), “detailed velocity measurements of 3D offset jets are rare.” Such remains the case. This study adds to the literature by providing information at two additional Reynolds numbers (1.43 106 and 1.87 106) and evaluating simple but accurate expressions for velocity profiles. These Reynolds numbers are an order of magnitude higher than prior reports. The semi-empirical stream wise velocity profile perpendicular to the surface proposed by Verhoff (1963) is in approximate agreement with these velocity profiles, which is surprising because these attached jets are three-dimensional instead of two-dimensional as evaluated by Verhoff. However, additional work is necessary to fully describe these profiles quantitatively.

jet, attached jet, offset jet↗

Effect of spatial distribution of polymer fibers on preventing spalling of UHPC at high temperatures

Polypropylene (PP) fibers are commonly used for the prevention of thermal spalling of ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC). In this work, the effect of fiber distribution on permeability and spalling resistance is investigated and an analytical model for permeability at 150 °C is proposed. This model, considering the parameters like fiber dimensions, dosage, and percolation, is based on Kozeny-Carman equation. It was found that the percolation of the interconnecting fiber network resulted in a significant increase in permeability of UHPC. X-ray tomography data on the three-dimensional spatial distribution of fibers reiterated that fiber aspect ratio and dosage (and fiber number density) were critical in increasing the fiber connectivity (percolation). It was also found that a vapor permeability of larger than 0.6 × 10{sup −16} m{sup 2} at 150 °C could eliminate spalling. Further, based on a semi-empirical approach, aspect ratio between 300 and 600 was recommended for spalling prevention with a fiber dosage of 0.3–0.4 vol%.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

ORNL_AISD-Ex: Quantum chemical prediction of UV/Vis absorption spectra for over 10 million organic molecules

We performed calculations of electronic excitation energies and associated oscillator strengths based on the time-dependent density-functional tight-binding (TD-DFTB) method [1]. The SMILES (Simplified molecular-input line-entry system) strings of the molecules from the AISD HOMO-LUMO database [2] were converted to a 3D atomistic structure and stored in a PDB file after preliminary geometry optimization using the Merck Molecular Force Field (MMFF94) in RDKit [3,4]. The primary information stored in the PDB file archive consists of Cartesian coordinates for each atom of the molecule in their 3D location in space, along with summary information about the structure, sequence, and experiment. We then performed molecular geometry optimization using the density-functional tight-binding (DFTB) method [5] in the electronic ground state, followed by single-point excited states calculations, as described below. We note that, since RDKit employs a random choice for the generation of molecular conformers, the molecular geometries obtained in this dataset could be different from the ones that were generated when the AISD HOMO-LUMO dataset was generated. The computed excitation energies and associated oscillator strengths can be converted to predict UV/Vis absorption spectra, where excitation energies correspond to absorption peak positions, and oscillator strengths are a good measure of the probability of absorption of visible or UV light in transitions between electronic ground and excited states. The conversion of SMILES strings to 3D Cartesian coordinates of fully DFTB-optimized molecules was successful for 10,502,904 out of 10,502,917 molecules. For these molecules, both geometry optimizations and excited states calculations were successful. The DFTB calculations did not complete for 13 molecules of the original AISD HOMO-LUMO dataset. We still provide information about the geometry of these molecules. The molecules are diverse for chemical compositions (which span 5 non-hydrogen elements: oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, fluorine, sulfur) and molecular size (the smallest molecule contains 5 non-hydrogen atoms, and the largest molecule contains 71 non-hydrogen atoms). The DFTB method [5] is an approximation to density functional theory (DFT), utilizing a minimal basis set in conjunction with a two-center approximation to the electronic Hamiltonian and overlap matrix elements. The DFTB total energy is the sum of an electronic and a repulsive energy contribution, and their calculation requires optimized electronic parameters and diatomic repulsive potential energy functions. All DFTB calculations were performed using the DFTB+ code [6] (version 21.2) and the wrapper for DFTB+ in the Atomic Simulation Environment (ASE) (version 3.22.1) [7], which performed an internal conversion of Cartesian coordinates from PDB to the .gen file format. For the geometry optimizations on the electronic ground state potential energy surface of the molecules, we have chosen the third-order DFTB (DFTB3) method [5c] and employed the matching 3ob set of electronic parameters and repulsive potentials [8]. The empirical γ-damping for hydrogen bond correction, and Grimme's D3 empirical dispersion correction with Becke-Johnson damping (D3(BJ)) [9] dispersion correction was included to improve the description of non-covalent interactions. For excited states single-point energy calculations, we employed the TD-DFTB method in conjunction with the DFTB2 method [5b] and the matching mio [5b,10] and halorg [11] parameter sets. We opted to request the simultaneous calculation of 50 excited states for singlet transition to investigate sufficient number of excited states, based on linear response theory using the Casida equation [Ref: T. A. Niehaus, S. Suhai, F. Della Sala, P Lugli, M. Elstner, G. Seifert, and Th. Frauenheim. Tight-binding approach to time-dependent density-functional response theory. Phys. Rev. B, 63:085108, 2001] and the ARPACK diagonalizer [R. B. Lehoucq, D. C. Sorensen, and C. Yang. Arpack users guide: Solution of large-scale eigenvalue problems by implicitly restarted arnoldi methods, 1997. 46, 51]. The dataset contains 1001 tar.gz files. Tar files are named as “ornl_aisd_ex_1.tar.gz†through “ornl_aisd_ex_1000.tar.gzâ€. Additionally, the 13 failed molecules are in “ornl_aisd_ex_unprocessed.tar.gzâ€. Except for the tar files listed below, each tar file contains 10,500 molecules. Tar files numbered 34, 121, 128, 352, 360, 429, 495, 509, 518, 627, 676, 668, and 862 contain 10,499 molecules each. The last tar file numbered 1000 contains 13,417 molecules. The total size of the uncompressed dataset is over 283 Gigabytes. The code for calculating the electronic excitation energies and statistical analysis of the dataset is provided at the following GitLab repository: https://github.com/ORNL/Analysis-of-Large-Scale-Molecular-Datasets-with-Python Calculating the UV spectrum of a molecule requires performing 3 main operations: 1. Converting the smiles string representation of a molecule into a geometric structure where each atom is assigned XYZ coordinates. The geometric structure is written to the file smiles.pdb. 2. Using smiles.pdb to compute the relaxed geometry of the molecule, which corresponds with the position of the atoms at the position of equilibrium at the ground state. This generates the files band.out, detailed.out, and geo_end.gen. 3. Using geo_end.gen to calculate the UV spectrum of the molecule which is written into the file EXC.DAT. Every molecule in the dataset has its own directory. The files contained in each molecule directory are as follows: 1. geo_end.gen 2. detailed.out 3. band.out 4. EXC.DAT 5. smiles.pdb REFERENCES [1] Niehaus, T. A.; Suhai, S.; Della Salla, F.; Lugli, P.; Elstner, M.; Seifert, G.; Frauenheim, Th. Tight-binding approach to time-dependent density-functional response theory. Phys. Rev. B, 2001, 63, 085108/1-9. [2] Blanchard, A.; Gounley, J.; Metha, K.; Yoo, P.; Irle, S. AISD HOMO-LUMO. DOI: 10.13139/ORNLNCCS/1869409 [3] RDKit: Cheminformatics and Machine Learning Software. 2013, [http://www.rdkit.org] [4] Tosco, P.; Stiefl, N. and Landrum, G. Bringing the MMFF force field to the RDKit: implementation and validation. J Cheminform. 2014, 6, 1–4. [5] a) Porezag, D.; Frauenheim, T.; Kohler, T.; Seifert, G.; Kaschner, Construction of tight-binding-like potentials on the basis of density-functional theory: Application to carbon, R. Phys. Rev. B 1995, 51, 12947-12957; b) Elstner, M.; Porezag, D.; Jungnickel, G.; Elsner, J.; Haugk, M.; Frauenheim, Th.; Suhai, S.; Seifert, G.; Phys. Rev. B 1998, 58, 7260-7268; c) Gaus, M.; Cui, Q.; Elstner, M. DFTB3: Extension of the Self-Consistent-Charge Density-Functional Tight-Binding Method (SCC-DFTB), J. Chem. Theory Comput. 2011, 7, 931-948; d) Cui, Q.; Elstner, M. Density functional tight binding: values of semi-empirical methods in an ab initio era, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 2014, 16, 14368-14377. [6] Hourahine, B. et al. DFTB+, a software package for efficient approximate density functional theory based atomistic simulations, J. Chem. Phys. 2020, 152, 124101/1-19. [7] Larsen, A. H. et al. The atomic simulation environment—a Python library for working with atoms. J. Phys.: Cond. Matter 2017, 29, 273002. [8] Kubillus, M.; Kubar, T.; Gaus, M.; Rezac, J.; Elstner, M. Parameterization of the DFTB3 Method for Br, Ca, Cl, F, I, K, and Na in Organic and Biological Systems, J. Chem. Theory Comput. 2015, 11, 332-342. [9] Brandenburg, J. G.; Grimme, S. Accurate Modeling of Organic Molecular Crystals by Dispersion-Corrected Density Functional Tight Binding (DFTB), J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 2014, 5, 1785−1789. [10] a) Niehaus, T. A.; Elstner, M.; Frauenheim, Th.; Suhai, S. Application of an approximate density-functional method to sulfur containing compounds. J. Mol. Struct.: THEOCHEM 2001, 541, 185-94; b) Elstner, M.; Hobza, P.; Frauenheim, Th.; Suhai, S.; Kaxiras, E. Hydrogen bonding and stacking interactions of nucleic acid base pairs: A density-functional-theory based treatment. J. Chem. Phys. 2001, 114, 5149-55. [11] Kubar, T.; Bodrog, Z.; Gaus, M.; Köhler, C.; Aradi, B.; Frauenheim, Th.; Elstner, M. Parametrization of the SCC-DFTB Method for Halogens. J. Chem. Theory Comput. 2013, 9, 2939-49.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Kβ X-ray Emission Spectra Analysis Using Bayesian Optimization

The Kβ X-ray emission spectrum of 3 d transition metals is rich with electronic and structural information due to strong exchange interactions with the valence shell of the metal, and has become crucial for understanding their spin and oxidation states. The spectrum is commonly treated using crystal-field multiplet theory, a semi-empirical theory that uses tunable parameters to control the strength of the effects present in X-ray emission spectroscopy (XES). However, determining the experimental values of these parameters remains a challenge. We present a methodology that applies Bayesian optimization to crystal-field multiplet theory to determine parameter values. The algorithm is tested on the X-ray emission spectra of a collection of Mn, Co, and Ni oxides. We are able to find optimal values for the four most impactful parameters: Slater−Condon reduction factors F dd , F pd , and G pd , and crystal field splitting 10 Dq . The algorithm produces significantly improved accuracy compared to current analysis methods, and probes interparameter dependencies by modeling the error landscape. This advancement enhances XES analysis by offering an approach of obtaining quantitative electronic structural information on 3 d transition metal valence shells, facilitating applications across various scientific fields.

Bayesian optimization↗

Scaling Ensembles of Data-Intensive Quantum Chemical Calculations for Millions of Molecules

Deep learning models are efficient computational tools that can accelerate the inverse design of molecules with desired functional properties by generating predictions at a fraction of the time required by traditional quantum chemical approaches. To ensure that a model maintains accuracy and transferability across broad regions of the chemical space explored during the inverse design, it must be trained on massively large volumes of simulation data. This requires running large-scale ensemble quantum chemical calculations on high-performance computing (HPC) systems for data collection. However, the efficient execution of such large ensemble calculations and the management of large volumes of output data require tools that can judiciously utilize computational resources and manage metadata overhead on the file system. Therefore, we present a high-performance, scalable, ensemble management framework for performing data-intensive quantum chemical electronic structure calculations for organic molecules. This framework provides abstractions to plug different ab initio, first principles, and first principles-based semi-empirical methods and executes them efficiently at large scale on HPC systems. It dynamically distributes tasks to resources and uses tiered storage for managing large collections of files. We employed this framework to process over ten million organic molecules and generate open-source datasets that provide UV-vis absorption spectra by running time-dependent density-functional tight-binding calculations. It is the largest database containing molecular optical spectra that were simulated with quantum chemical methods in a consistent manner.

Mehta, Kshitij↗

Importance of van der Waals interactions for ab initio studies of topological insulators

We investigate the lattice and electronic structures of the bulk and surface of the prototypical layered topological insulators Bi 2 Se 3 and Bi 2 Te 3 using ab initio density functional methods, and systematically compare the results of different methods of including van der Waals (vdW) interactions. We show that the methods utilizing semi-empirical energy corrections yield accurate descriptions of these materials, with the most precise results obtained by properly accounting for the long-range tail of the vdW interactions. The bulk lattice constants, distances between quintuple layers and the Dirac velocity of the topological surface states (TSS) are all in excellent agreement with experiment. In Bi 2 Te 3 , hexagonal warping of the energy dispersion leads to complex spin textures of the TSS at moderate energies, while in Bi 2 Se 3 these states remain almost perfectly helical away from the Dirac point, showing appreciable signs of hexagonal warping at much higher energies, above the minimum of the bulk conduction band. Furthermore, our results establish a framework for unified and systematic self-consistent first principles calculations of topological insulators in bulk, slab and interface geometries, and provides the necessary first step toward ab initio modeling of topological heterostructures.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

A Semi-Empirical Density Law for Ternary, Homogeneous PuCl 3 /HCl/H 2 O Solutions

Nuclear material operations pose unique hazards that are not encountered in other chemical, energy, or manufacturing industries. One of these hazards is the potential for a nuclear criticality accident when handling fissile isotopes such as 235 U and 239 Pu. These hazards are particularly high when fissile material is dissolved in solution as the neutron behaviors of the system can change rapidly with the physical and chemical changes accessible in solution. Current estimates of solution density used for criticality safety are outdated and hinder fissile material handling. Developing new estimates for these safety calculations requires experimental characterization and the derivation of empirical density models. We have derived a density law describing PuCl 3 /HCl/H 2 O solutions from experimental data characterizing solution density. Density data was treated using a Pitzer-derived eight-parameter equation, defining density as a function of analyte concentrations, temperature, and interactions between these variables. The model is predictive across the concentration and temperature ranges from which it was derived. The potential effects of varying oxidation states of plutonium, which are easily accessible in aqueous media, on the bulk solution density of the ternary system were also investigated. The resulting Pitzer-derived density law was applied to a nuclear criticality safety model, and the impact of the experimental characterization of solution density relative to previous estimates was demonstrated to be significant and suggest that the current approach to estimating density in nuclear criticality safety calculations may lead to overly conservative controls.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

XMP gas-rich dwarfs in nearby voids: results of BTA spectroscopy

We present the second part of results of the ongoing project aimed at searching for and studying eXtremely Metal-Poor (XMP) – adopted as those with Z gas ≲ Z ⊙ /30, or with 12+log (O/H) ≲ 7.21 dex - very gas-rich blue dwarfs in voids. They were first identified in the course of the ‘unbiased’ study of the galaxy population in the nearby Lynx–Cancer void. These very rare and unusual galaxies seem to be the best proxies of so-called Very Young Galaxies (VYGs) defined recently in model simulations by Tweed et al. To date, for 16 pre-selected void XMP candidates, using the Big Telescope Alt-azimuth (BTA), the SAO 6-m telescope, we have obtained spectra suitable for the determination of O/H. For majority of the observed galaxies, the principal line [O iii] λ4363 , used for the direct classical T e method of O/H determination, is undetected. Therefore, to estimate O/H, we use a new ‘strong-lines’ method by Izotov et al. This appears to be the most accurate empirical O/H estimator for the range of 12+log (O/H) ≲ 7.4–7.5. For objects with higher O/H, we use the semi-empirical method by Izotov & Thuan with our modification accounting for variance of the excitation parameter O 32 . Six of those 16 candidates are found, with confidence, to be XMP dwarfs. In addition, eight studied galaxies are less metal-poor, with 12+log (O/H) = 7.24–7.33, and these can also fall into the category of VYG candidates. Taking into account our recently published work and the previously known (nine prototype galaxies) XMP gas-rich void objects, the new findings increase the number of this type of galaxy known to date to a total of 19.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗