Divide-and-conquer potentials enable scalable and accurate predictions of forces and energies in atomistic systems

In committee of experts strategies, small datasets are extracted from a larger one and utilised for the training of multiple models. These models' predictions are then carefully weighted so as to obtain estimates which are dominated by the model(s) that are most informed in each domain of the data manifold. Here, we show how this divide-and-conquer philosophy provides an avenue in the making of machine learning potentials for atomistic systems, which is general across systems of different natures and efficiently scalable by construction. We benchmark this approach on various datasets and demonstrate that divide-and-conquer linear potentials are more accurate than their single model counterparts, while incurring little to no extra computational cost. A divide-and-conquer strategy - where small datasets are extracted from a larger one and utilised to train multiple models, which are then carefully combined for prediction - provides an avenue for accurate machine learning potentials.