# 5.1. Parameterization of a Lennard-Jones Engine for Argon¶

This example shows a minimal ParAMS worfklow. In it, a set of Lennard-Jones (LJ) parameters $$\boldsymbol{x}_0$$ will be fitted to atomic forces, which have been previously computed with a different set of (reference) LJ parameters. After the fitting procedure, the fitted parameters $$\boldsymbol{x}^*$$ should be close to the reference.

The following will be covered in the example:
• Generation of reference data
• Setting up and starting an optimization
• Evaluation of the results
These things will not be discussed:
• Generation of the Job Collection and Training Set

## 5.1.1. Understanding and running the example¶

This example’s script is located in \$AMSHOME/scripting/scm/params/examples/LJ_Ar/run.py, the parent directory should have the following structure

LJ_Ar
├── _prepare.py
├── engines.yaml
├── jobcollection.yaml
├── run.py
└── trainingset.yaml


with the three *.yaml files being textual representations of the Engine Collection, Job Collection and Data Set classes. In run.py, the first lines load the respective objects:

## Load the YAML files:
jc = JobCollection('jobcollection.yaml') # Stores the jobs
ec = EngineCollection('engines.yaml') # Stores the settings of any AMS Engine
ts = DataSet('trainingset.yaml') # Stores the properties we want to fit


If you open the trainingset.yaml with a text reader, you will notice that it is missing reference data. The following gets a plams.Settings instance representing our reference LJ engine from the entry titled LJ_Reference in our engines.yaml:

## Get the reference engine settings from ec:
ref_settings = ec['LJ_Reference'].settings
### Note that alternatively, we could also just construct the settings
# ref_settings = Settings()
# ref_settings.input.lennardjones.eps  = 3.67e-4
# ref_settings.input.lennardjones.rmin = 3.4


We will use the settings to calculate the reference property values $$P(R)$$ (forces in this example) in the next step. To do this, we need to run all jobs in our job collection with the reference engine’s settings ref_settings first:

## Calculate the reference values
### Our training entries do not any reference values assigned to them,
### Before we can start the optimization, we need to provide these.
### The following calculates all jobs stored in jc with the
### engine settings stored in ref_settings:
jobresults = jc.run(ref_settings)
assert all(r.ok() for r in jobresults.values()), 'Calculation of reference jobs failed' # Check if everything is fine


After the jobs have been calculated, the results are passed to the Data Set instance to extract and store the forces:

## We can now add the results to the training set:
ts.calculate_reference(jobresults)
### If wanted, we can store the ts to disk.
### This will also store all reference data that was missing previously.
### If a DataSet with reference data is loaded, re-calculating the
### reference will not be necessary anymore:
# ts.store('trainingset_reference.yaml')


Define the engine that we would like to parameterize:

## The engine we want to parameterize
### Every Engine that can be parameterized has a Parameter Interface:
params = LennardJonesParams()
### We can view all current parameter names, values and ranges with:
# print(params.names)
# print(params.x)
# print(params.range)
### We can select which parameters to optimize with the is_active property:
# assert len(params.active) == 2
# params['eps'].is_active = False # Setting this will not optimize Epsilon
# assert len(params.active) == 1


As well as a suitable optimizer:

### Define an optimizer for the optimization task
o = CMAOptimizer(sigma=0.1, popsize=10, minsigma=5e-4) # Sample 10 points at ech epoch with a std dev of 0.1, stop when sigma < 5e-4


Callbacks are optional. We include these for to limit the computational time and allow us to track the optimization procedure:

## Callbacks allow further control of the optimization procedure
### Here, we would like to print some information about the optimization
### to disk (Logger) and stop the optimization after 2min (Timeout)
callbacks = [Logger(), Timeout(60*2)]


After that, the optimization can be started with:

## Start the optimization process
### A JobCollection, DataSet, ParameterInterface and Optimizer are required
### for every optimization. Many more settings are optional (see documentation)
opt = Optimization(jc, ts, params, o, callbacks=callbacks)
opt.summary()  # Prints a summary of the instance
opt.optimize() # Start the fitting


You can now execute the script with amspython params.py. It should produce an output similar to:

Initial parameters are
Epsilon: 3.00e-04
R_min:   3.00e+00
Will try to optimize until
Epsilon: 3.67e-04
R_min:   3.40e+00
.
.
.
Optimization done after 0:01:29
Final fitness function value is f(x)=1.377e-16

Parameter optimization done!
Optimized parameters are:
Epsilon: 3.67e-04
R_min:   3.40e+00

The best parameters are stored in the 'opt' folder']
You can now plot any *.dat file generated in the 'opt' folder with params plot.

Running the script again will remove the 'opt' folder.


Note that due to the partially random sampling of CMA-ES, your results may vary.

## 5.1.2. Evaluating the Optimization¶

You should now have an additional folder opt in your example’s directory with the following structure:

opt/
├── data
│   ├── contributions
│   │   └── trainingset
│   └── predictions
│       └── trainingset
├── plams_workdir
├── summary.txt
├── trainingset_best_params
└── trainingset_history.dat


The path opt/trainingset_best_params always stores the best parameters on disk. The opt/*history.dat contains all parameter vectors sampled during the optimization and the respective fitness function value. We can plot the history by typing

>>> params plot trainingset_history.dat
Saved plot to './trainingset_history.png'


in a terminal after changing to the opt directory. The resulting image will be a plot of the evaluation number against the fitness function value and will look similar to this:

Note

Because the LJ Engine only has two parameters (Epsilon and R_min), we can visualize the whole search space. If gnuplot is installed on your system, you can use the following script to generate an interactive 2d plot:

set logscale z
set xl "Epsilon"
set yl "R_{min}"
set zl "Loss Function Value" rotate by 90
set format x "%.0te%L"
set format z "10^{%L}"
set grid
splot 'trainingset_history.dat' u 3:4:2 pt 7 ps .4
pause -1


The resulting figure should look similar to:

The data folder contains other useful information about the optimization, which is further subdivided into contributions, and predictions. Inside the predictions directory you can find data files that print the reference and predicted values of each training set entry each time an improved parameter set is found. The name of each data file is constructed from the evaluation number and the respective loss function value at that evaluation, additionally splitted by the different extractors used used in the training set. such that the resulting file name is ‘EVALNUM_fx_FXVALUE_EXTRACTOR.dat’.

Important

The generation of all *.dat files does not happen automatically. For this functionality, the Logger callback has to be passed to the Optimization class.

Any of the data files can be plotted. Change directory into data/predictions/trainingset and plot with

>>> params plot 000000_*
Saved plot to './000000_fx_XXX.png'


The resulting figure depicts how close the (weighted) atomic forces $$\hat{y}$$, as computed with the the initial parameters $$\boldsymbol{x}_0$$, are to the reference values $$y$$:

As a contrast, calling params plot without a filename (which is shorthand for plotting the most recent *.dat file in the directory) will produce the same plot for the last evaluated parameter set:

Note

You can plot any *.dat file with params plot PATH. When PATH is a directory, the most recent file will be plotted. Leaving out the PATH argument will try and plot in the current directory. For more information about plotting type params plot -h in your terminal.

The data files in the contributions directory contain contribution of every data set entry to the overall fitness function value.

## 5.1.3. Modifying the example¶

The script contains a lot of comments and suggestions on what else can be done at every step.

Here are a few more: