{"id":1150087,"date":"2025-09-18T13:29:20","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T20:29:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/?post_type=msr-research-item&p=1150087"},"modified":"2026-02-05T08:43:03","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T16:43:03","slug":"understanding-multi-fidelity-training-of-machine-learned-force-fields","status":"publish","type":"msr-research-item","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/understanding-multi-fidelity-training-of-machine-learned-force-fields\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding multi-fidelity training of machine-learned force-fields"},"content":{"rendered":"

Effectively leveraging data from multiple quantum-chemical methods is essential for building machine-learned force fields (MLFFs) that are applicable to a wide range of chemical systems. This study systematically investigates two multi-fidelity training strategies, pre-training\/fine-tuning and multi-headed training, to elucidate the mechanisms underpinning their success. We identify key factors driving the efficacy of pre-training followed by fine-tuning, but find that internal representations learned during pre-training are inherently method-specific, requiring adaptation of the model backbone during fine-tuning. Multi-headed models offer an extensible alternative, enabling simultaneous training on multiple fidelities. We demonstrate that a multi-headed model learns method-agnostic representations that allow for accurate predictions across multiple label sources. While this approach introduces a slight accuracy compromise compared to sequential fine-tuning, it unlocks new cost-efficient data generation strategies and paves the way towards developing universal MLFFs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Effectively leveraging data from multiple quantum-chemical methods is essential for building machine-learned force fields (MLFFs) that are applicable to a wide range of chemical systems. This study systematically investigates two multi-fidelity training strategies, pre-training\/fine-tuning and multi-headed training, to elucidate the mechanisms underpinning their success. 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