Issue 6, 2025

Exploring noncollinear magnetic energy landscapes with Bayesian optimization

Abstract

The investigation of magnetic energy landscapes and the search for ground states of magnetic materials using ab initio methods like density functional theory (DFT) is a challenging task. Complex interactions, such as superexchange and spin–orbit coupling, make these calculations computationally expensive and often lead to non-trivial energy landscapes. Consequently, a comprehensive and systematic investigation of large magnetic configuration spaces is often impractical. We approach this problem by utilizing Bayesian optimization, an active machine learning scheme that has proven to be efficient in modeling unknown functions and finding global minima. Using this approach we can obtain the magnetic contribution to the energy as a function of one or more spin canting angles with relatively small numbers of DFT calculations. To assess the capabilities and the efficiency of the approach we investigate the noncollinear magnetic energy landscapes of selected materials containing 3d, 5d and 5f magnetic ions: Ba3MnNb2O9, LaMn2Si2, β-MnO2, Sr2IrO4, UO2, Ba2NaOsO6 and kagome RhMn3. By comparing our results to previous ab initio studies that followed more conventional approaches, we observe significant improvements in efficiency.

Graphical abstract: Exploring noncollinear magnetic energy landscapes with Bayesian optimization

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Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
21 Dec 2024
Accepted
20 May 2025
First published
24 May 2025
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

Digital Discovery, 2025,4, 1639-1650

Exploring noncollinear magnetic energy landscapes with Bayesian optimization

J. Baumsteiger, L. Celiberti, P. Rinke, M. Todorović and C. Franchini, Digital Discovery, 2025, 4, 1639 DOI: 10.1039/D4DD00402G

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