Enhanced Climbing Image Nudged Elastic Band method with Hessian Eigenmode Alignment

DOI

<p>Accurate determination of transition states is central to an understanding of reaction kinetics. Double-endpoint methods where both initial and final states are specified, such as the climbing image nudged elastic band (CI-NEB), identify the minimum energy path between the two and thereby the saddle point on the energy surface that is relevant for the given transition, thus providing an estimate of the transition state within the harmonic approximation of transition state theory. Such calculations can, however, incur high computational costs and may suffer stagnation on exceptionally flat or rough energy surfaces. Conversely, methods that only require specification of an initial set of atomic coordinates, such as the minimum mode following (MMF) method, offer efficiency but can converge on saddle points that are not relevant for transition of interest. Here, we present an adaptive hybrid algorithm that dynamically switches between the CI-NEB with the MMF method so as to get faster convergence to the relevant saddle point. The method is benchmarked for the Baker-Chan (BC) saddle point test set using the PET-MAD machine-learned potential as well as 59 transitions of a heptamer island on Pt(111) from the OptBench benchmark set. A Bayesian analysis of the performance shows a median change in energy and force calculations of -46% [95% CrI: -55%, -37%] relative to CI-NEB for the BC set, while a 28\% reduction is found for the transitions of the heptamer island. These results establish this hybrid method as a highly effective tool for high-throughput automated chemical discovery of atomic rearrangements.</p> <p> </p> <p>This record provides the reproduction data, transition state search logs, and statistical models for the Replica Optimization of Nudged Elastic Bands (RONEB) algorithm. It includes the complete outputs to accompany the Github repository of scripts which support the manuscript.</p>

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.24435/materialscloud:fw-wq
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2601.12630
Related Identifier https://github.com/HaoZeke/nebmmf_repro
Related Identifier https://archive.materialscloud.org/communities/mcarchive
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.24435/materialscloud:ym-my
Metadata Access https://archive.materialscloud.org/oai2d?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_dc&identifier=oai:materialscloud.org:87pg1-1a967
Provenance
Creator Goswami, Rohit; Gunde, Miha; Jónsson, Hannes
Publisher Materials Cloud
Contributor Goswami, Rohit
Publication Year 2026
Rights info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess; Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode
OpenAccess true
Contact archive(at)materialscloud.org
Representation
Language English
Resource Type info:eu-repo/semantics/other
Format application/x-xz; text/markdown
Discipline Materials Science and Engineering