Sebastiano Pilati

Dr. Sebastiano Pilati

orcid

Research Focus & Metrics

Academic Career Length

22Years (2005-Present)

(Calculated once Scilit publication data is synced: current year − year of first publication + 1)

Representative Publications

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1 June 2022 in Electronic Structure
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
HKH J Kulik
H J Kulik
THThomas Hammerschmidt
Thomas Hammerschmidt
JSJ Schmidt
J Schmidt
SBS Botti
S Botti
MMM A L Marques
M A L Marques
LGL M Ghiringhelli
L M Ghiringhelli
In recent years, we have been witnessing a paradigm shift in computational materials science. In fact, traditional methods, mostly developed in the second half of the XXth century, are being complemented, extended, and sometimes even completely replaced by faster, simpler, and often more accurate approaches. The new approaches, that we collectively label by machine learning, have their origins in the fields of informatics and artificial intelligence, but are making rapid inroads in all other branches of science. With this in mind, this Roadmap article, consisting of multiple contributions from experts across the field, discusses the use of machine learning in materials science, and share perspectives on current and future challenges in problems as diverse as the prediction of materials properties, the construction of force-fields, the development of exchange correlation functionals for density-functional theory, the solution of the many-body problem, and more. In spite of the already numerous and exciting success stories, we are just at the beginning of a long path that will reshape materials science for the many challenges of the XXIth century.

22 January 2008 in Physical Review Letters
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Journal Article
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SPSebastiano Pilati
Sebastiano Pilati
SGS. Giorgini
S. Giorgini
We investigate the phase diagram of asymmetric two-component Fermi gases at zero temperature as a function of polarization and interaction strength. The equations of state of the uniform superfluid and normal phase are determined using quantum Monte Carlo simulations. We find three different mixed states, where the superfluid and the normal phase coexist in equilibrium, corresponding to phase separation between (a) the polarized superfluid and the fully polarized normal gas, (b) the polarized superfluid and the partially polarized normal gas, and (c) the unpolarized superfluid and the partially polarized normal gas.

16 July 2010 in Physical Review Letters
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Journal Article
Closed access
SPSebastiano Pilati
Sebastiano Pilati
GBG. Bertaina
G. Bertaina
SGS. Giorgini
S. Giorgini
MTMatthias Troyer
Matthias Troyer
We investigate the phase diagram of a two-component repulsive Fermi gas at T=0 by means of quantum Monte~Carlo simulations. Both purely repulsive and resonant attractive model potentials are considered in order to analyze the limits of the universal regime where the details of interatomic forces can be neglected. The equation of state of both balanced and unbalanced systems is calculated as a function of the interaction strength and the critical density for the onset of ferromagnetism is determined. The energy of the strongly polarized gas is calculated and parametrized in terms of the physical properties of repulsive polarons, which are relevant for the stability of the fully ferromagnetic state. Finally, we analyze the phase diagram in the interaction-polarization plane under the assumption that only phases with homogeneous magnetization can be produced.

27 May 2011 in Physical Review Letters
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Journal Article
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SNS. Nascimbène
S. Nascimbène
NNN. Navon
N. Navon
SPSebastiano Pilati
Sebastiano Pilati
FCF. Chevy
F. Chevy
SGS. Giorgini
S. Giorgini
CSC. Salomon
C. Salomon
We measure the magnetic susceptibility of a Fermi gas with tunable interactions in the low-temperature limit and compare it to quantum Monte Carlo calculations. Experiment and theory are in excellent agreement and fully compatible with the Landau theory of Fermi liquids. We show that these measurements shed new light on the nature of the excitations of the normal phase of a strongly interacting Fermi gas.

9 April 2008 in Physical Review Letters
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SPSebastiano Pilati
Sebastiano Pilati
SGS. Giorgini
S. Giorgini
NPN. Prokof’eV
N. Prokof’eV
We calculate the superfluid transition temperature of homogeneous interacting Bose gases in three and two spatial dimensions using large-scale path integral Monte Carlo simulations (with up to N=105 particles). In 3D we investigate the limits of the universal critical behavior in terms of the scattering length alone by using different models for the interatomic potential. We find that this type of universality sets in at small values of the gas parameter na3≲10−4. This value is different from the estimate na3≲10−6 for the validity of the asymptotic expansion in the limit of vanishing na3. In 2D we study the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition of a gas with hard-core interactions. For this system we find good agreement with the classical lattice |ψ|4 model up to very large densities. We also explain the origin of the existing discrepancy between previous studies of the same problem.

28 May 2020 in Physical Review E
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BMBenjamin Alexander Peter McNaughton
Benjamin Alexander Peter McNaughton
MMM. V. Milošević
M. V. Milošević
Andrea PeraliAndrea Perali
Andrea Perali
SPSebastiano Pilati
Sebastiano Pilati
The autoregressive neural networks are emerging as a powerful computational tool to solve relevant problems in classical and quantum mechanics. One of their appealing functionalities is that, after they have learned a probability distribution from a dataset, they allow exact and efficient sampling of typical system configurations. Here we employ a neural autoregressive distribution estimator (NADE) to boost Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulations of a paradigmatic classical model of spin-glass theory, namely, the two-dimensional Edwards-Anderson Hamiltonian. We show that a NADE can be trained to accurately mimic the Boltzmann distribution using unsupervised learning from system configurations generated using standard MCMC algorithms. The trained NADE is then employed as smart proposal distribution for the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm. This allows us to perform efficient MCMC simulations, which provide unbiased results even if the expectation value corresponding to the probability distribution learned by the NADE is not exact. Notably, we implement a sequential tempering procedure, whereby a NADE trained at a higher temperature is iteratively employed as proposal distribution in a MCMC simulation run at a slightly lower temperature. This allows one to efficiently simulate the spin-glass model even in the low-temperature regime, avoiding the divergent correlation times that plague MCMC simulations driven by local-update algorithms. Furthermore, we show that the NADE-driven simulations quickly sample ground-state configurations, paving the way to their future utilization to tackle binary optimization problems.