We develop an electronic-temperature dependent interatomic potential Φ(T e ) for unexcited and laser-excited silicon. The potential is designed to reproduce ab initio molecular dynamics simulations by requiring force-and energy matching for each time step. Φ(T e ) has a simple and flexible analytical form, can describe all relevant interactions and is applicable for any kind of boundary conditions (bulk, thin films, clusters). Its overall shape is automatically adjusted by a self-learning procedure, which finally finds the global minimum in the parameter space. We show that Φ(T e ) can reproduce all thermal and nonthermal features provided by ab initio simulations. We apply the potential to simulate laser-excited Si nanoparticles and find critical damping of their breathing modes due to nonthermal melting. arXiv:1812.08595v1 [cond-mat.mtrl-sci]
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