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Machine (Deep) Learning for physicists 2023-24

Module Convenor: Rudo Roemer (Warwick University)

  • Times: Mondays 16-17 UK/17-18 EU and Wednesdays 16-17 UK/17-18 EU
  • 1st (online) lecture: Wednesday, January 10th, 2023
  • Course duration: MPAGS + CY Cergy-Paris Universite, 5 weeks lectures, 5 weeks project work

Join Zoom Meeting (Meeting ID: 664 1612 4414, Passcode: 977255), Slack discussion room

Lecture slides, Warwick Data Repository, Google Colaboratory

The course is for interested students of the Midlands Physics Alliance Graduate School and the CY Cergy-Paris Universite M2-level Postgraduate course 2023-24.

Machine learning and deep learning are statistical analysis techniques that use strategies of artificial intelligence to characterize complex data and extract deep information. In recent years, these techniques have begun to be used not only in traditional computer science test cases, but also in real world applications as well as, more recently, in areas of advanced physics. In condensed matter systems, such techniques have been shown to give useful insight into Ising and spin ice models [1], low dimensional topological systems [2], strongly correlated systems [3], as well as random two- and three-dimensional topological and non-topological systems [4]. It is probably fair to say that machine and deep learning may become standard statistical analysis tools in the future.

In this short course, we want to understand some of the basic principles underlying the recent successes of the DL approach to data analysis. We will do so in a hands-on manner, following up our theoretical understanding with examples using state-of-the-art DL packages such as Keras, FastAI, TensorFlow and PyTorch. In doing so, we will use Jupyter notebooks as frontend to Python. Participants are assumed to have their own DL platform at hand (see here for how I installed mine), although mostly modern laptop resources should be sufficient.

[1] J. Carrasquilla and R. G. Melko: Nature Physics 13 (2017) 431;  A. Tanaka and A. Tomiya: Journal of the Physical Society of Japan 86 (2017) 063001.

[2] Y. Zhang and E.-A. Kim: Phys. Rev. Lett. 118 (2017) 216401; P. Zhang, H. Shen, and H. Zhai: arXiv:1708.09401 (2017).

[3] G. Carleo and M. Troyer: Science 355 (2017) 602; P. Broecker, J. Carrasquilla, R. G. Melko, and S. Trebst: Scientific Reports 7 (2017) 8823; K. Ch’ng, J. Carrasquilla, R. G. Melko, and E. Khatami: Phys. Rev. X 7 (2017) 031038; L. Li, T. E. Baker, S. R. White, and K. Burke: Phys. Rev. B 94 (2016) 245129; E. P. van Nieuwenburg, Y.-H. Liu, and S. D. Huber: Nature Physics 13 (2017) 435; L. Huang and L. Wang: Phys. Rev. B 95 (2017) 035105; F. Schindler, N. Regnault, and T. Neupert: Phys. Rev. B 95 (2017) 45134; H. Saito: Journal of the Physical Society of Japan 86 (2017) 093001; H. Saito and M. Kato: arXiv:1709.05468 (2017); H. Fujita, Y. Nakagawa, S. Sugiura, and M. Oshikawa: arXiv:1705.05372 (2017).

[4] T. Ohtsuki and T. Ohtsuki: Journal of the Physical Society of Japan 85 (2016) 123706; T. Ohtsuki and T. Ohtsuki: Journal of the Physical Society of Japan 86 (2017) 044708. N. Yoshioka, Y. Akagi, and H. Katsura: arXiv:1709.05790 (2017)

Further literature

Please have a look at the .bib file that I use for the lecture notes. It contains many more entries than those actually cited in the lecture notes.