  We apply a global sensitivity method, the Hilbert-Schmidt independence
criterion (HSIC), to the reparameterization of a Zn/S/H ReaxFF force field to
identify the most appropriate parameters for reparameterization. Parameter
selection remains a challenge in this context as high dimensional optimizations
are prone to overfitting and take a long time, but selecting too few parameters
leads to poor quality force fields. We show that the HSIC correctly and quickly
identifies the most sensitive parameters, and that optimizations done using a
small number of sensitive parameters outperform those done using a higher
dimensional reasonable-user parameter selection. Optimizations using only
sensitive parameters: 1) converge faster, 2) have loss values comparable to
those found with the naive selection, 3) have similar accuracy in validation
tests, and 4) do not suffer from problems of overfitting. We demonstrate that
an HSIC global sensitivity is a cheap optimization pre-processing step that has
both qualitative and quantitative benefits which can substantially simplify and
speedup ReaxFF reparameterizations.
