  We present a deep reinforcement learning framework where a machine agent is
trained to search for a policy to generate a ground state for the square ice
model by exploring the physical environment. After training, the agent is
capable of proposing a sequence of local moves to achieve the goal. Analysis of
the trained policy and the state value function indicates that the ice rule and
loop-closing condition are learned without prior knowledge. We test the trained
policy as a sampler in the Markov chain Monte Carlo and benchmark against the
baseline loop algorithm. This framework can be generalized to other models with
topological constraints where generation of constraint-preserving states is
difficult.

Disordered Systems and Neural Networks;Statistical Mechanics