Extracting Critical Exponent by Finite-Size Scaling with Convolutional Neural Networks

Abstract

Machine learning has been successfully applied to identify phases and phase transitions in condensed matter systems. However, quantitative characterization of the critical fluctuations near phase transitions is lacking. In this study we propose a finite-size scaling approach based on a convolutional neural network and analyze the critical behavior of a quantum Hall plateau transition. The localization length critical exponent learned by the neural network is consistent with the value obtained by conventional approaches. We show that the general-purposed method can be used to extract critical exponents in models with drastically different physics and input data, such as the two-dimensional Ising model and 4-state Potts model.