CMP Journal 2025-07-23
Statistics
Nature: 25
Nature Materials: 1
Nature Nanotechnology: 1
Nature Reviews Materials: 1
Nature Reviews Physics: 1
Physical Review Letters: 13
Physical Review X: 1
arXiv: 66
Nature
Pre-rRNA spatial distribution and functional organization of the nucleolus
Original Paper | Cellular imaging | 2025-07-22 20:00 EDT
Yu-Hang Pan, Lin Shan, Yu-Yao Zhang, Zheng-Hu Yang, Yuan Zhang, Shi-Meng Cao, Xiao-Qi Liu, Jun Zhang, Li Yang, Ling-Ling Chen
The multi-layered nucleolus serves as the primary site of ribosome biogenesis1,2, where successive maturation of small (SSU)3,4 and large (LSU)5 ribosomal subunit precursors occur. However, the spatio-functional relationship between pre-rRNA processing and nucleolar substructures and how this adapts to changing cellular physiological demands have remained incompletely understood6,7. Here, our spatiotemporal analyses revealed a compartment-specific ribosomal subunit processing in human nucleoli, with SSU processomes maintained in fibrillar center/dense fibrillar component/periphery dense fibrillar component (FC/DFC/PDFC) domains while LSU pre-rRNAs largely transited to PDFC/granular component (GC) regions. Slow proliferating cells exhibited unexpected 5’ external transcribed space (5’ ETS)-centered SSU processing impairment, accompanied by FC/DFC structural remodeling and retarded SSU outflux. Direct 5’ ETS processing perturbation at least partially recapitulated these FC/DFC alterations, supporting the functional interdependence between SSU processing and nucleolar architecture. Notably, anamniote bipartite nucleoli with merged FC/DFC compartments8,9 exhibited distinct 5’ ETS distribution and slower pre-rRNA flux compared to multi-layered nucleoli in amniotes. Introducing a FC/DFC interface to bipartite nucleoli enhanced processing efficiency, indicating that evolutionary emergence of nested FC/DFC may have optimized pre-rRNA processing. Collectively, depicting the spatiotemporal distribution of pre-rRNAs revealed an essential role of 5’ ETS-centered SSU processing in maintaining nucleolar substructures and suggested a possible evolutionary advantage of the multi-layered structure in amniotes.
Cellular imaging, RNA metabolism
Nanobody therapy rescues behavioural deficits of NMDA receptor hypofunction
Original Paper | Antibody fragment therapy | 2025-07-22 20:00 EDT
Mathieu Oosterlaken, Angelina Rogliardo, Tatiana Lipina, Pierre-André Lafon, Mireille Elodie Tsitokana, Mathilde Keck, Héloïse Cahuzac, Pierre Prieu-Sérandon, Séverine Diem, Cécile Derieux, Célia Camberlin, Chrystel Lafont, Damien Meyer, Patrick Chames, Franck Vandermoere, Philippe Marin, Laurent Prézeau, Denis Servent, Ali Salahpour, Amy J. Ramsey, Carine Bécamel, Jean-Philippe Pin, Julie Kniazeff, Philippe Rondard
There is an urgent need for efficient and innovative therapies to treat brain disorders such as psychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases. Immunotherapies have proved to be efficient in many medical areas, but have not been considered to treat brain diseases due to the poor brain penetration of immunoglobulins1,2. Here we developed a bivalent biparatopic antibody, made of two camelid heavy-chain antibodies (called nanobodies)3, one binding to, and the other potentiating the activity of, homodimeric metabotropic glutamate receptor 2. We show that this bivalent nanobody, given peripherally, reaches the brain and corrects cognitive deficits in two preclinical mouse models with endophenotypes resulting from NMDA receptor hypofunction. Notably, these in vivo effects last for at least 7 days after a single intraperitoneal injection and are maintained after subchronic treatment. Our results establish a proof of concept that nanobodies can target brain receptors, and pave the way for nanobody-based therapeutic strategies for the treatment of brain disorders.
Antibody fragment therapy, Blood-brain barrier, Neurological disorders, Neurotransmitters, Schizophrenia
Three-step biosynthesis of salicylic acid from benzoyl-CoA in plants
Original Paper | Plant hormones | 2025-07-22 20:00 EDT
Yanan Liu, Lu Xu, Mingsong Wu, Jingjie Wang, Dan Qiu, Jiameng Lan, Junxing Lu, Yang Zhang, Xin Li, Yuelin Zhang
Salicylic acid (SA) is the active ingredient in willow bark that has been used for anti-inflammation and pain relief for centuries. Aspirin, a derivative of SA, is the most widely used medication in human history. SA also acts as a key plant defence hormone1,2,3,4. Although SA was known to be produced from chorismate in the model plant Arabidopsis5,6, how it is biosynthesized in plant families outside Brassicaceae remains unclear. Here we report the identification of a conserved pathway for SA biosynthesis in seed plants. Using Nicotiana benthamiana as a model, we identified three key steps for the biosynthesis of SA. First, ligation of benzoyl coenzyme A (CoA) and benzyl alcohol by benzoyl-CoA:benzyl alcohol benzoyl transferase (BEBT) gives rise to benzyl benzoate, which is then hydroxylated by benzyl benzoate oxidase (BBO) to produce benzyl salicylate. Subsequent cleavage of benzyl salicylate by benzyl salicylate hydrolase (BSH) yields SA. Notably, genes encoding these three enzymes are present in a broad range of plants, and the genes from dicots such as willow, poplar and soybean as well as the monocot rice can complement the phenotype of SA-deficient mutants of N. benthamiana. Moreover, knockout analysis of the Oryza sativa OsBEBT, OsBBO and OsBSH genes reveals that they are required for SA biosynthesis in rice. Our findings suggest that the SA biosynthesis pathway is highly conserved in plants.
Plant hormones, Plant immunity, Secondary metabolism
Complex genetic variation in nearly complete human genomes
Original Paper | Genome informatics | 2025-07-22 20:00 EDT
Glennis A. Logsdon, Peter Ebert, Peter A. Audano, Mark Loftus, David Porubsky, Jana Ebler, Feyza Yilmaz, Pille Hallast, Timofey Prodanov, DongAhn Yoo, Carolyn A. Paisie, William T. Harvey, Xuefang Zhao, Gianni V. Martino, Mir Henglin, Katherine M. Munson, Keon Rabbani, Chen-Shan Chin, Bida Gu, Hufsah Ashraf, Stephan Scholz, Olanrewaju Austine-Orimoloye, Parithi Balachandran, Marc Jan Bonder, Haoyu Cheng, Zechen Chong, Jonathan Crabtree, Mark Gerstein, Lisbeth A. Guethlein, Patrick Hasenfeld, Glenn Hickey, Kendra Hoekzema, Sarah E. Hunt, Matthew Jensen, Yunzhe Jiang, Sergey Koren, Youngjun Kwon, Chong Li, Heng Li, Jiaqi Li, Paul J. Norman, Keisuke K. Oshima, Benedict Paten, Adam M. Phillippy, Nicholas R. Pollock, Tobias Rausch, Mikko Rautiainen, Yuwei Song, Arda Söylev, Arvis Sulovari, Likhitha Surapaneni, Vasiliki Tsapalou, Weichen Zhou, Ying Zhou, Qihui Zhu, Michael C. Zody, Ryan E. Mills, Scott E. Devine, Xinghua Shi, Michael E. Talkowski, Mark J. P. Chaisson, Alexander T. Dilthey, Miriam K. Konkel, Jan O. Korbel, Charles Lee, Christine R. Beck, Evan E. Eichler, Tobias Marschall
Diverse sets of complete human genomes are required to construct a pangenome reference and to understand the extent of complex structural variation. Here we sequence 65 diverse human genomes and build 130 haplotype-resolved assemblies (median continuity of 130 Mb), closing 92% of all previous assembly gaps1,2 and reaching telomere-to-telomere status for 39% of the chromosomes. We highlight complete sequence continuity of complex loci, including the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), SMN1/SMN2, NBPF8 and AMY1/AMY2, and fully resolve 1,852 complex structural variants. In addition, we completely assemble and validate 1,246 human centromeres. We find up to 30-fold variation in α-satellite higher-order repeat array length and characterize the pattern of mobile element insertions into α-satellite higher-order repeat arrays. Although most centromeres predict a single site of kinetochore attachment, epigenetic analysis suggests the presence of two hypomethylated regions for 7% of centromeres. Combining our data with the draft pangenome reference1 significantly enhances genotyping accuracy from short-read data, enabling whole-genome inference3 to a median quality value of 45. Using this approach, 26,115 structural variants per individual are detected, substantially increasing the number of structural variants now amenable to downstream disease association studies.
Genome informatics, Genomics, Immunogenetics, Structural variation
NNMT inhibition in cancer-associated fibroblasts restores antitumour immunity
Original Paper | Cancer microenvironment | 2025-07-22 20:00 EDT
Janna Heide, Agnes J. Bilecz, Samarjit Patnaik, Maria Francesca Allega, Leonhard Donle, Kaiting Yang, Ethan Teich, Yan Li, Qiaoshan Lin, Ke Kong, Li Liu, Tae Gyun Yang, Ken Chih-Chien Cheng, Jonathan H. Shrimp, Quinlin M. Hanson, Min Shen, Hongmao Sun, Hardik Shah, Lisa Schweizer, Katarzyna Zawieracz, Andrea Olland, Andre White, Robert K. Suto, Razzaq Alhunayan, Medine Taşdemir, Noa Longman, Hua Liang, Matthias Mann, Gordon M. Stott, Matthew D. Hall, Simon Schwörer, Ralph R. Weichselbaum, András Piffkó, Ernst Lengyel
Cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) have a pivotal cancer-supportive role, yet CAF-targeted therapies are lacking1,2. Here, using spatial transcriptomics and single-cell RNA sequencing, we investigate the role of nicotinamide N-methyltransferase (NNMT) in high-grade serous ovarian cancer. Mechanistically, NNMT-induced H3K27me3 hypomethylation drives complement secretion from CAFs, attracting immunosuppressive myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) to the tumour. Nnmt knockout in immunocompetent mice impairs tumour growth in syngeneic ovarian, breast and colon tumour models through enhanced CD8+ T cell activation. Using high-throughput screening, we develop a potent and specific NNMT inhibitor that reduces the tumour burden and metastasis in multiple mouse cancer models and restores immune checkpoint blockade efficacy by decreasing CAF-mediated recruitment of MDSCs and reinvigorating CD8+ T cell activation. Our findings establish NNMT as a central CAF regulator and a promising therapeutic target to mitigate immunosuppression in the tumour microenvironment.
Cancer microenvironment, Drug discovery and development, Ovarian cancer, Tumour immunology
Humoral determinants of checkpoint immunotherapy
Original Paper | Immunotherapy | 2025-07-22 20:00 EDT
Yile Dai, Lilach Aizenbud, Kai Qin, Matthew Austin, Jillian R. Jaycox, Joseph Cunningham, Eric Y. Wang, Lin Zhang, Suzanne Fischer, Sean M. Carroll, Helen van Aggelen, Yuval Kluger, Kevan C. Herold, Leon Furchtgott, Harriet M. Kluger, Aaron M. Ring
Although the role of cellular immunity in checkpoint immunotherapy (CPI) for cancer is well established1,2, the effect of antibody-mediated humoral immunity is comparably underexplored. Here we used rapid extracellular antigen profiling3 to map the autoantibody reactome within a cohort of 374 patients with cancer treated with CPIs and 131 healthy control participants for autoantibodies to 6,172 extracellular and secreted proteins (the ‘exoproteome’). Globally, patients with cancer treated with CPIs had diverse autoreactivities that were elevated relative to control individuals but changed minimally with treatment. Autoantibody signatures in patients treated with CPI strikingly distinguished them from healthy individuals. Although associations of specific autoantibodies with immune-related adverse events were sparse, we detected numerous individual autoantibodies that were associated with greatly altered odds ratios for response to therapy. These included autoantibodies to immunomodulatory proteins, such as cytokines, growth factors and immunoreceptors, as well as tumour surface proteins. Functional evaluation of several autoantibody responses indicated that they neutralized the activity of their target proteins, which included type I interferons (IFN-I), IL-6, OSM, TL1A, and BMPR1A and BMPR2. Modelling the effects of autoantibodies to IFN-I and TL1A in preclinical mouse tumour models resulted in enhanced CPI efficacy, consistent with their effects in patients. In conclusion, these findings indicate that autoantibodies to the exoproteome modify CPI responses and highlight therapeutically actionable pathways that can be exploited to augment immunotherapy.
Immunotherapy, Interferons, Tumour immunology
Precisely defining disease variant effects in CRISPR-edited single cells
Original Paper | Functional genomics | 2025-07-22 20:00 EDT
Yuriy Baglaenko, Zepeng Mu, Michelle Curtis, Hafsa M. Mire, Vidyashree Jayanthi, Majd Al Suqri, Cassidy Liu, Ryan Agnew, Aparna Nathan, Annelise Yoo Mah-Som, David R. Liu, Gregory A. Newby, Soumya Raychaudhuri
Genetic studies have identified thousands of individual disease-associated non-coding alleles, but the identification of the causal alleles and their functions remains a critical bottleneck1. CRISPR-Cas editing has enabled targeted modification of DNA to introduce and test disease alleles. However, the combination of inefficient editing, heterogeneous editing outcomes in individual cells and nonspecific transcriptional changes caused by editing and culturing conditions limits the ability to detect the functional consequences of disease alleles2,3. To overcome these challenges, we present a multi-omic single-cell sequencing approach that directly identifies genomic DNA edits, assays the transcriptome and measures cell-surface protein expression. We apply this approach to investigate the effects of gene disruption, deletions in regulatory regions, non-coding single-nucleotide polymorphism alleles and multiplexed editing. We identify the effects of individual single-nucleotide polymorphisms, including the state-specific effects of an IL2RA autoimmune variant in primary human T cells. Multimodal functional genomic single-cell assays, including DNA sequencing, enable the identification of causal variation in primary human cells and bridge a crucial gap in our understanding of complex human diseases.
Functional genomics, Gene regulation in immune cells, High-throughput screening, RNA sequencing, Transcriptomics
Triassic diapsid shows early diversification of skin appendages in reptiles
Original Paper | Herpetology | 2025-07-22 20:00 EDT
Stephan N. F. Spiekman, Christian Foth, Valentina Rossi, Cristina Gascó Martín, Tiffany S. Slater, Orla G. Bath Enright, Kathleen N. Dollman, Giovanni Serafini, Dieter Seegis, Léa Grauvogel-Stamm, Maria E. McNamara, Hans-Dieter Sues, Rainer R. Schoch
Complex integumentary appendages such as avian feathers and mammalian hair play a principal role in tetrapod evolution, with critical functions in insulation, sensation, display and flight. Although feathers and hair originated in the stem-lineages of birds and mammals, respectively1,2, their underlying gene regulatory network has much deeper amniote roots3. The early evolution of amniote integumentary appendages, however, remains poorly understood because of the absence of fossil evidence. Here we present Mirasaura grauvogeli, a small-sized diapsid from the Middle Triassic epoch (about 247 million years ago) with a distinctive crest formed by elongate integumentary appendages extending serially along its back, similar to those of the poorly understood Triassic reptile Longisquama4,5,6,7. Despite its superficially bird-like skull, Mirasaura is not closely related to avemetatarsalians but instead belongs to the exclusively Triassic reptilian clade Drepanosauromorpha8. Melanosomes preserved in its integumentary appendages are consistent in geometry with melanosomes of feathers but not those of reptilian skin or mammalian hair. Nevertheless, the morphology of the integumentary appendages and phylogenetic placement of Mirasaura indicate that they are not structurally homologous to feathers or other integumentary appendages in living amniotes. Our findings show that complex integumentary appendages are not restricted to avemetatarsalians and mammaliaforms among amniotes and evolved in a lineage basal to all extant reptiles, challenging our understanding of the evolution of the reptilian integument.
Herpetology, Palaeontology, Phylogenetics
Magnon spectroscopy in the electron microscope
Original Paper | Characterization and analytical techniques | 2025-07-22 20:00 EDT
Demie Kepaptsoglou, José Ángel Castellanos-Reyes, Adam Kerrigan, Júlio Alves do Nascimento, Paul M. Zeiger, Khalil El hajraoui, Juan Carlos Idrobo, Budhika G. Mendis, Anders Bergman, Vlado K. Lazarov, Ján Rusz, Quentin M. Ramasse
The miniaturization of transistors is approaching its limits owing to challenges in heat management and information transfer speed1. To overcome these obstacles, emerging technologies such as spintronics2 are being developed, which make use of the electron’s spin as well as its charge. Local phenomena at interfaces or structural defects will greatly influence the efficiency of spin-based devices, making the ability to study spin-wave propagation at the nanoscale and atomic scale a key challenge3,4. The development of high-spatial-resolution tools to investigate spin waves, also called magnons, at relevant length scales is thus essential to understand how their properties are affected by local features. Here we detect bulk THz magnons at the nanoscale using scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM). By using high-resolution electron energy-loss spectroscopy with hybrid-pixel electron detectors, we overcome the challenges posed by weak signals to map THz magnon excitations in a thin NiO nanocrystal. Advanced inelastic electron scattering simulations corroborate our findings. These results open new avenues for detecting magnons and exploring their dispersions and their modifications arising from nanoscale structural or chemical defects. This marks a milestone in magnonics and presents exciting opportunities for the development of spintronic devices.
Characterization and analytical techniques, Magnetic properties and materials
A gut sense for a microbial pattern regulates feeding
Original Paper | Feeding behaviour | 2025-07-22 20:00 EDT
Winston W. Liu, Naama Reicher, Emily Alway, Laura E. Rupprecht, Peter Weng, Chloe Schaefgen, Marguerita E. Klein, Jorge A. Villalobos, Carlos Puerto-Hernandez, Yolanda Graciela Kiesling Altún, Amanda Carbajal, José Alfredo Aguayo-Guerrero, Alam Coss, Atharva Sahasrabudhe, Polina Anikeeva, Alan de Araujo, Avnika Bali, Guillaume de Lartigue, Elvi Gil-Lievana, Ranier Gutierrez, Edward A. Miao, John F. Rawls, M. Maya Kaelberer, Diego V. Bohórquez
To coexist with its resident microorganisms, the host must have a sense to adjust its behaviour in response to them. In the intestine, a sense for nutrients transduced to the brain through neuroepithelial circuits guides appetitive choices1,2,3,4,5. However, a sense that allows the host to respond in real time to stimuli arising from resident gut microorganisms remains to be uncovered. Here we show that in the mouse colon, the ubiquitous microbial pattern flagellin–a unifying feature across phyla6–stimulates Toll-like receptor 5 (TLR5) in peptide YY (PYY)-labelled colonic neuropod cells. This stimulation leads to PYY release onto NPY2R vagal nodose neurons to regulate feeding. Mice lacking TLR5 in these cells eat more and gain more weight than controls. We found that flagellin does not act on the nerve directly. Instead, flagellin stimulates neuropod cells from the colonic lumen to reduce feeding through a gut-brain sensory neural circuit. Moreover, flagellin reduces feeding independent of immune responses, metabolic changes or the presence of gut microbiota. This sense enables the host to adjust its behaviour in response to a molecular pattern from its resident microorganisms. We call this sense at the interface of the biota and the brain the neurobiotic sense7.
Feeding behaviour, Peripheral nervous system
Integrated biotechnological and AI innovations for crop improvement
Review Paper | Agricultural genetics | 2025-07-22 20:00 EDT
Guotian Li, Linna An, Wanneng Yang, Lei Yang, Tong Wei, Jiawei Shi, Jianglin Wang, John H. Doonan, Kabin Xie, Alisdair R. Fernie, Evans S. Lagudah, Rod A. Wing, Caixia Gao
Crops provide food, clothing and other important products for the global population. To meet the demands of a growing population, substantial improvements are required in crop yield, quality and production sustainability. However, these goals are constrained by various environmental factors and limited genetic resources. Overcoming these limitations requires a paradigm shift in crop improvement by fully leveraging natural genetic diversity alongside biotechnological approaches such as genome editing and the heterologous expression of designed proteins, coupled with multimodal data integration. In this Review, we provide an in-depth analysis of integrated uses of omics technologies, genome editing, protein design and high-throughput phenotyping, in crop improvement, supported by artificial intelligence-enabled tools. We discuss the emerging applications and current challenges of these technologies in crop improvement. Finally, we present a perspective on how elite alleles generated through these technologies can be incorporated into the genomes of existing and de novo domesticated crops, aided by a proposed artificial intelligence model. We suggest that integrating these technologies with agricultural practices will lead to a new revolution in crop improvement, contributing to global food security in a sustainable manner.
Agricultural genetics, Genetic engineering, Machine learning, Molecular engineering in plants, Protein design
Contextualizing ancient texts with generative neural networks
Original Paper | Computer science | 2025-07-22 20:00 EDT
Yannis Assael, Thea Sommerschield, Alison Cooley, Brendan Shillingford, John Pavlopoulos, Priyanka Suresh, Bailey Herms, Justin Grayston, Benjamin Maynard, Nicholas Dietrich, Robbe Wulgaert, Jonathan Prag, Alex Mullen, Shakir Mohamed
Human history is born in writing. Inscriptions are among the earliest written forms, and offer direct insights into the thought, language and history of ancient civilizations. Historians capture these insights by identifying parallels–inscriptions with shared phrasing, function or cultural setting–to enable the contextualization of texts within broader historical frameworks, and perform key tasks such as restoration and geographical or chronological attribution1. However, current digital methods are restricted to literal matches and narrow historical scopes. Here we introduce Aeneas, a generative neural network for contextualizing ancient texts. Aeneas retrieves textual and contextual parallels, leverages visual inputs, handles arbitrary-length text restoration, and advances the state of the art in key tasks. To evaluate its impact, we conduct a large study with historians using outputs from Aeneas as research starting points. The historians find the parallels retrieved by Aeneas to be useful research starting points in 90% of cases, improving their confidence in key tasks by 44%. Restoration and geographical attribution tasks yielded superior results when historians were paired with Aeneas, outperforming both humans and artificial intelligence alone. For dating, Aeneas achieved a 13-year distance from ground-truth ranges. We demonstrate Aeneas’ contribution to historical workflows through analysis of key traits in the renowned Roman inscription Res Gestae Divi Augusti, showing how integrating science and humanities can create transformative tools to assist historians and advance our understanding of the past.
Computer science, History
Hippocampal representations drift in stable multisensory environments
Original Paper | Hippocampus | 2025-07-22 20:00 EDT
Jason R. Climer, Heydar Davoudi, Jun Young Oh, Daniel A. Dombeck
Experiments that track hippocampal place cells in mice navigating the same real environment have found significant changes in neural representations over a period of days1,2. However, whether such ‘representational drift’ serves an intrinsic function, such as distinguishing similar experiences that occur at different times3,4, or is instead observed due to subtle differences in the sensory environment or behaviour5,6,7, remains unresolved. Here we used the experimental control offered by a multisensory virtual reality system to determine that differences in sensory environment or behaviour do not detectably change drift rate. We also found that the excitability of individual place cells was most predictive of their representational drift over subsequent days, with more excitable cells exhibiting less drift. These findings establish that representational drift occurs in mice even with highly reproducible environments and behaviour and highlight neuronal excitability as a key factor of long-term representational stability.
Hippocampus, Long-term memory, Spatial memory
Deciphering phenylalanine-derived salicylic acid biosynthesis in plants
Original Paper | Enzymes | 2025-07-22 20:00 EDT
Yukang Wang, Shuyan Song, Wenxuan Zhang, Qianwen Deng, Yanlei Feng, Mei Tao, Mengna Kang, Qi Zhang, Lijia Yang, Xinyu Wang, Changan Zhu, Xiaowen Wang, Wanxin Zhu, Yixiao Zhu, Pengfei Cao, Jia Chen, Jinheng Pan, Shan Feng, Xianyan Chen, Huaxin Dai, Shiyong Song, Jinghua Yang, Tianlun Zhao, Fangbin Cao, Zeng Tao, Xingxing Shen, Robert L. Last, Jianping Hu, Jingquan Yu, Pengxiang Fan, Ronghui Pan
Salicylic acid (SA) is a ubiquitous plant hormone with a long history in human civilization1,2. Because of the central role of SA in orchestrating plant pathogen defence, understanding SA biosynthesis is fundamental to plant immunity research and crop improvement. Isochorismate-derived SA biosynthesis has been well defined in Arabidopsis. However, increasing evidence suggests a crucial function for phenylalanine-derived SA biosynthesis in many other plant species1. Here we reveal the phenylalanine-derived SA biosynthetic pathway in rice by identifying three dedicated enzymes – peroxisomal benzoyl-CoA:benzyl alcohol benzoyltransferase (BEBT), the endoplasmic reticulum-associated cytochrome P450 enzyme benzylbenzoate hydroxylase (BBH), and cytosolic benzylsalicylate esterase (BSE) that sequentially convert benzoyl-CoA to benzylbenzoate, benzylsalicylate and SA. The pathogen-induced gene expression pattern and SA biosynthetic functions of this triple-enzyme module are conserved in diverse plants. This work fills a major knowledge gap in the biosynthesis of a key plant defence hormone, establishing a foundation for new strategies to create disease-resistant crops.
Enzymes, Metabolomics, Plant hormones, Plant immunity, Secondary metabolism
Mechanical underwater adhesive devices for soft substrates
Original Paper | Biomedical engineering | 2025-07-22 20:00 EDT
Ziliang Kang, Johanna A. Gomez, Alisa MeiShan Ross, Ameya R. Kirtane, Ming Zhao, Yubin Cai, Fu Xing Chen, Corona L. Chen, Isaac Diaz Becdach, Rajib Dey, Andrei Russel Ismael, Injoo Moon, Yiyuan Yang, Benjamin N. Muller, Mehmet Girayhan Say, Andrew Pettinari, Jason Kobrin, Joshua Morimoto, Ted Smierciak, Aaron Lopes, Ayten Ebru Erdogan, Matt Murphy, Niora Fabian, Ashley Guevara, Benedict Laidlaw, Kailyn Schmidt, Alison M. Hayward, Alexandra H. Techet, Christopher P. Kenaley, Giovanni Traverso
Achieving long-term underwater adhesion to dynamic, regenerating soft substrates that undergo extreme fluctuations in pH and moisture remains a major unresolved challenge, with far-reaching implications for healthcare, manufacturing, robotics and marine applications1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16. Here, inspired by remoras–fish equipped with specialized adhesive discs–we developed the Mechanical Underwater Soft Adhesion System (MUSAS). Through detailed anatomical, behavioural, physical and biomimetic investigations of remora adhesion on soft substrates, we uncovered the key physical principles and evolutionary adaptations underlying their robust attachment. These insights guided the design of MUSAS, which shows extraordinary versatility, adhering securely to a wide range of soft substrates with varying roughness, stiffness and structural integrity. MUSAS achieves an adhesion-force-to-weight ratio of up to 1,391-fold and maintains performance under extreme pH and moisture conditions. We demonstrate its utility across highly translational models, including in vitro, ex vivo and in vivo settings, enabling applications such as ultraminiaturized aquatic kinetic temperature sensors, non-invasive gastroesophageal reflux monitoring, long-acting antiretroviral drug delivery and messenger RNA administration via the gastrointestinal tract.
Biomedical engineering, Drug delivery, Mechanical engineering
Coherent spectroscopy with a single antiproton spin
Original Paper | Exotic atoms and molecules | 2025-07-22 20:00 EDT
B. M. Latacz, S. R. Erlewein, M. Fleck, J. I. Jäger, F. Abbass, B. P. Arndt, P. Geissler, T. Imamura, M. Leonhardt, P. Micke, A. Mooser, D. Schweitzer, F. Voelksen, E. Wursten, H. Yildiz, K. Blaum, J. A. Devlin, Y. Matsuda, C. Ospelkaus, W. Quint, A. Soter, J. Walz, Y. Yamazaki, C. Smorra, S. Ulmer
Coherent quantum transition spectroscopy is a powerful tool in metrology1, quantum information processing2, magnetometry3 and precision tests of the standard model4. It was applied with great success in proton and deuteron magnetic moment measurements5, which culminated in maser spectroscopy with sub-parts-per-trillion resolution6 and many other experiments at the forefront of physics7. All of these experiments were performed on macroscopic ensembles of particles, whereas the coherent spectroscopy of a ‘free’ single nuclear spin has, to our knowledge, never been reported before. Here we demonstrate coherent quantum transition spectroscopy of the spin of a single antiproton stored in a cryogenic Penning-trap system. We apply a multi-trap technique8, detect the antiproton spin state using the continuous Stern-Gerlach effect9 and transport the particle to the homogeneous magnetic field of a precision trap (PT). Here we induce the coherent dynamics and analyse the result by quantum-projection measurements in the analysis trap (AT)10. We observe, for the first time, Rabi oscillations of an antiproton spin and achieve in time-series measurements spin-inversion probabilities greater than 80% at spin coherence times of about 50 s. Scans of single-particle spin resonances show inversions greater than 70%, at transition linewidths 16 times narrower than in previous measurements8, limited by cyclotron frequency measurement decoherence. This achievement marks a notable step towards at least tenfold improved tests of matter/antimatter symmetry using proton and antiproton magnetic moments.
Exotic atoms and molecules, Quantum metrology
Eye structure shapes neuron function in Drosophila motion vision
Original Paper | Navigation | 2025-07-22 20:00 EDT
Arthur Zhao, Eyal Gruntman, Aljoscha Nern, Nirmala Iyer, Edward M. Rogers, Sanna Koskela, Igor Siwanowicz, Marisa Dreher, Miriam A. Flynn, Connor Laughland, Henrique Ludwig, Alexander Thomson, Cullen Moran, Bruck Gezahegn, Davi D. Bock, Michael B. Reiser
Many animals use vision to navigate their environment. The pattern of changes that self-motion induces in the visual scene, referred to as optic flow1, is first estimated in local patches by directionally selective neurons2,3,4. However, how arrays of directionally selective neurons, each responsive to motion in a preferred direction at specific retinal positions, are organized to support robust decoding of optic flow by downstream circuits is unclear. Understanding this global organization requires mapping fine, local features of neurons across an animal’s field of view3. In Drosophila, the asymmetrical dendrites of the T4 and T5 directionally selective neurons establish their preferred direction, which makes it possible to predict directional tuning from anatomy4,5. Here we show that the organization of the compound eye shapes the systematic variation in the preferred directions of directionally selective neurons across the entire visual field. To estimate the preferred directions across the visual field, we reconstructed hundreds of T4 neurons in an electron-microscopy volume of the full adult fly brain6, and discovered unexpectedly stereotypical dendritic arborizations. We then used whole-head micro-computed-tomography scans to map the viewing directions of all compound eye facets, and found a non-uniform sampling of visual space that explains the spatial variation in preferred directions. Our findings show that the global organization of the directionally selective neurons’ preferred directions is determined mainly by the fly’s compound eye, revealing the intimate connections between eye structure, functional properties of neurons and locomotion control.
Navigation, Sensory processing
Driving a protective allele of the mosquito FREP1 gene to combat malaria
Original Paper | Infectious-disease diagnostics | 2025-07-22 20:00 EDT
Zhiqian Li, Yuemei Dong, Lang You, Rodrigo M. Corder, Jemariz Arzobal, Audrey Yeun, Lei Yang, John M. Marshall, George Dimopoulos, Ethan Bier
Malaria remains a substantial global health challenge, causing approximately half a million deaths each year1. The mosquito fibrinogen-related protein 1 (FREP1) is required for malaria parasites to infect the midgut epithelium2. The naturally occurring FREP1Q allele has been reported to prevent parasite infection, while supporting essential physiological functions in the mosquito3. Here we generate congenic strains of Anopheles stephensi, edited to carry either the parasite-susceptible FREP1L224 or the putative-refractory FREP1Q224 alleles. The FREP1Q224 allele confers robust resistance to infection by both human and rodent malaria parasites, with negligible fitness costs. The protective FREP1Q224 allele can be efficiently driven into FREP1L224 mosquito populations using a novel linked allelic-drive system that selectively replaces the L224 codon with the parasite-refractory Q224 allele, thereby rendering populations refractory to parasite infection. This antimalaria drive system provides a novel genetic approach to aid in malaria elimination efforts.
Infectious-disease diagnostics, Population genetics
Spatiotemporal faunal connectivity across global sea floors
Original Paper | Biogeography | 2025-07-22 20:00 EDT
Timothy D. O’Hara, Andrew F. Hugall, Margaret L. Haines, Alexandra A.-T. Weber, Angelina Eichsteller, Martin I. Brogger, Marc Eléaume, Toshihiko Fujita, Jon A. Kongsrud, Pedro Martinez Arbizu, Sadie Mills, Jennifer M. Olbers, Gustav Paulay, Fran Ramil, Sarah Samadi, Chester J. Sands, Javier Sellanes, Francisco A. Solis-Marin, Adnan Moussalli
Our knowledge of biogeographic patterns and processes in the deep sea has been limited by the lack of integrated datasets that cover its vast extent1. Here we analyse a new global dataset of genomic DNA sequences, spanning an entire taxonomic class of benthic invertebrates (Ophiuroidea), to obtain a broad understanding of phylogenetic divergence and biotic movement across all oceans, from coastal margins down to the abyssal plains. We show that regional faunas on the continental shelf are phylogenetically divergent, particularly at temperate and tropical latitudes. By contrast, assemblages in the deep sea are much more connected. Many temperate deep-sea lineages have achieved distribution ranges across the planet, including over the Quaternary period. A close relationship exists between deep-sea faunas of the northern Atlantic and, on the opposite side of the globe, southern Australia. Bathymetric interchange is not only reliant on vertical migration through isothermal polar waters but also occurs across the thermal depth gradients of tropical regions. The connected nature of deep-sea life should be an important consideration in marine conservation assessments.
Biogeography, Phylogenetics
A generic non-invasive neuromotor interface for human-computer interaction
Original Paper | Brain-machine interface | 2025-07-22 20:00 EDT
Patrick Kaifosh, Thomas R. Reardon, Brian D. Allen, Chris Anderson, Sacha Arnoud, Rahul Arora, Mridu Atray, Lana Awad, Francisco Ayerbe, Christopher Baker, Nicholas Baker, Alexandre Barachant, Philip Bard, Wilman Pimentel Beltran, Adam Berenzweig, Rohin Bhasin, Joe Bienkowski, Sean Bittner, Luke Boegner, Anu Bolarinwa, Don Bosley, Matthew Bracaglia, Mario Bräcklein, Maclyn Brandwein, Joe Bravate, Matt Butler, Adam J. Calhoun, Chia-Jung Chang, Daniel Chenet, Joshua Chester, Rudi Chiarito, Rohan Chitnis, John Choi, Won Chun, Jeremiah Chung, James Connors, Jota Costa, Mark Cramer, Raven Cunningham, William F. Cusack, Nathan Danielson, Thomas J. Davidson, Bruno De Araujo, Bob DiMaiolo, Scott Draves, Alan Du, Zaina Edelson, Phina Enemuo, Mina Fahmi, Nariman Farsad, Ali Farshchian, Randy Feliz, Jake Fine, Emanuele Formento, Dustin Freeman, Jianing Fu, Jean-Christophe Gagnon-Audet, Rupesh Gajurel, Jonathan Gamutan, Sida Gao, Jonateal Garcia, Nathalie Therese Helene Gayraud, Minha Ghani, Sayan Ghosh, Vickram Gidwani, Danny Giebisch, Greg Gimler, Alexandre Gramfort, Lauren Grosberg, Bryn Gunther, Ning Guo, Chetan Gupta, Sinem Guven Kaya, Austin Ha, Katarina Hadjer, Carlos Xavier Hernández, Stav Hertz, Carl Hewitt, Daniel N. Hill, Kirak Hong, Lillian Hong, Helen Hou, Stepan Hruda, Alex Hsieh, Vivian Hsiung, Rongqing Huang, Yue Hui, Hazel Hulet, Shaker Islam, Vinay Jayaram, Connie Jiang, Xiaodong Jiang, Brooke Juarez, James Jaeyoon Jun, Na Young Jun, Nirag Kadakia, Nishant Kakar, Ajay Kamdar, Ta-Chu Kao, Steven Kober, TW Koh, Christina Shabu Koshy, Andrzej Lawn, Claire Lee, Jennifer Lee, JinHyung Lee, Juheui Amy Lee, Tiffanie Li, Jonathan Liao, Yingru Liu, Yuxuan Liu, Saar Lively, Kati London, Roddy Louie, Francisco Luongo, Attila Maczak, Niru Maheswaranathan, Michael Mandel, Jesse Marshall, Najja Marshall, Mirek Martincik, Nicolas Yvan Masse, Stephen McAnearney, Ashley McHugh, Jorge Aurelio Menendez, Josh Merel, David Miller, Ilya Milyavskiy, Ricardo Pio Monti, Sean Moore, Yonathan Morin, Brock Morrell, Dano Morrison, Anthony Moschella, Suman Mulumudi, Conner Muth, Krunal Naik, Norris Nakagaki, Ajay Nathan, Romario Nelson, Jimson Ngeo, Keven Nguyen, Luke O’Connor, Shay Ohayon, Garrick Orchard, Chris Osborn, Timothy M. Otchy, Emmanuella Owolabi, Adam M. Packer, Tejaswy Pailla, Julia Paredes, Sean Parker, Diogo Peixoto, Matias Perez, Zavion Perez, Adrien Piérard, Stephen M. Plaza, Natalie Plotkin, Eftychios Pnevmatikakis, Brandon Pool, Shanil Puri, Sunaina Rajani, Jose Ramirez Fuentes, Julian Ramos Rojas, Tanvi Ranjan, Devin Reardon, Jonathan Reid, Jason Reisman, Lain Warawao Nemo Mora y Rivera, Sebi Rolotti, Andrew Rosenkranz, Ian Roth, Likhon Roy, Ran Rubin, Alexander Rudnicki, Sam Russell, Abby Russo, James Sacra, Amir Sadoughi, Roxanna Salim, Aichatou Savane, Collin Schlager, David Schwab, Jeffrey Seely, Mike Seltzer, Nurettin Dorukhan Sergin, Ami Shah, Anish Shah, Philip Shamash, Vandita Sharma, Stephie Shen, Kevin Shi, Olivia Shiah, Yasmin Siahpoosh, Noor Siddiqi, Jeremy Simpson, Gagandip Singh, Viswanath Sivakumar, Jeff Smith, Seyyid Emre Sofuoglu, Ivy Jiyoung Song, Morgan Springer, Adrian Spurr, Fabio Stefanini, Connor Stout, Emanuel Strauss, Swetha Suresh, Ananya Suri, David Sussillo, Ziyi Tang, Vikram Tank, Jesslyn Tannady, Aliqyan Tapia, Tugce Tasci, Tiberiu Tesileanu, Aman Tiwari, Anoushka Tiwari, Calvin Tong, Blizelle Tormis, Julia Trabulsi, Migmar Tsering, Kyle Urquhart, Peter Walkington, Megan Wang, Renxiong Wang, Zhuo Wang, Christy Warden, Richard Warren, Claire L. Warriner, Ron J. Weiss, Daniel Z. Wetmore, Ezri White, Christopher Wiebe, Steve Williams, Yuguan Xing, Chris Ye, Akshay Yembarwar, Shuibenyang Yuan, Michael Zawadzki, Mingrui Zhang, Jiesi Zhao, Kevin Zheng, Joseph Zhong, Lei Zhou, Danny Zlobinsky
Since the advent of computing, humans have sought computer input technologies that are expressive, intuitive and universal. While diverse modalities have been developed, including keyboards, mice and touchscreens, they require interaction with a device that can be limiting, especially in on-the-go scenarios. Gesture-based systems use cameras or inertial sensors to avoid an intermediary device, but tend to perform well only for unobscured movements. By contrast, brain-computer or neuromotor interfaces that directly interface with the body’s electrical signalling have been imagined to solve the interface problem1, but high-bandwidth communication has been demonstrated only using invasive interfaces with bespoke decoders designed for single individuals2,3,4. Here, we describe the development of a generic non-invasive neuromotor interface that enables computer input decoded from surface electromyography (sEMG). We developed a highly sensitive, easily donned sEMG wristband and a scalable infrastructure for collecting training data from thousands of consenting participants. Together, these data enabled us to develop generic sEMG decoding models that generalize across people. Test users demonstrate a closed-loop median performance of gesture decoding of 0.66 target acquisitions per second in a continuous navigation task, 0.88 gesture detections per second in a discrete-gesture task and handwriting at 20.9 words per minute. We demonstrate that the decoding performance of handwriting models can be further improved by 16% by personalizing sEMG decoding models. To our knowledge, this is the first high-bandwidth neuromotor interface with performant out-of-the-box generalization across people.
Brain-machine interface, Neuroscience
Structural variation in 1,019 diverse humans based on long-read sequencing
Original Paper | Genome informatics | 2025-07-22 20:00 EDT
Siegfried Schloissnig, Samarendra Pani, Jana Ebler, Carsten Hain, Vasiliki Tsapalou, Arda Söylev, Patrick Hüther, Hufsah Ashraf, Timofey Prodanov, Mila Asparuhova, Hugo Magalhães, Wolfram Höps, Jesus Emiliano Sotelo-Fonseca, Tomas Fitzgerald, Walter Santana-Garcia, Ricardo Moreira-Pinhal, Sarah Hunt, Francy J. Pérez-Llanos, Tassilo Erik Wollenweber, Sugirthan Sivalingam, Dagmar Wieczorek, Mario Cáceres, Christian Gilissen, Ewan Birney, Zhihao Ding, Jan Nygaard Jensen, Nikhil Podduturi, Jan Stutzki, Bernardo Rodriguez-Martin, Tobias Rausch, Tobias Marschall, Jan O. Korbel
Genomic structural variants (SVs) contribute substantially to genetic diversity and human diseases1,2,3,4, yet remain under-characterized in population-scale cohorts5. Here we conducted long-read sequencing6 in 1,019 humans to construct an intermediate-coverage resource covering 26 populations from the 1000 Genomes Project. Integrating linear and graph genome-based analyses, we uncover over 100,000 sequence-resolved biallelic SVs and we genotype 300,000 multiallelic variable number of tandem repeats7, advancing SV characterization over short-read-based population-scale surveys3,4. We characterize deletions, duplications, insertions and inversions in distinct populations. Long interspersed nuclear element-1 (L1) and SINE-VNTR-Alu (SVA) retrotransposition activities mediate the transduction8,9 of unique sequence stretches in 5’ or 3’, depending on source mobile element class and locus. SV breakpoint analyses point to a spectrum of homology-mediated processes contributing to SV formation and recurrent deletion events. Our open-access resource underscores the value of long-read sequencing in advancing SV characterization and enables guiding variant prioritization in patient genomes.
Genome informatics, Genomics, Medical genetics, Structural variation
The neural basis of species-specific defensive behaviour in Peromyscus mice
Original Paper | Evolution | 2025-07-22 20:00 EDT
Felix Baier, Katja Reinhard, Bram Nuttin, Arnau Sans-Dublanc, Chen Liu, Victoria Tong, Julie S. Murmann, Keimpe Wierda, Karl Farrow, Hopi E. Hoekstra
Evading imminent threat from predators is critical for animal survival. Effective defensive strategies can vary, even between closely related species. However, the neural basis of such species-specific behaviours remains poorly understood1,2,3,4. Here we find that two sister species of deer mice (genus Peromyscus)5 show different responses to the same looming stimulus: Peromyscus maniculatus, which occupies densely vegetated habitats, predominantly escapes, whereas the open field specialist, Peromyscus polionotus, briefly freezes. This difference arises from species-specific escape thresholds, is largely context-independent, and can be triggered by both visual and auditory threat stimuli. Using immunohistochemistry and electrophysiological recordings, we find that although visual threat activates the superior colliculus in both species, the role of the dorsal periaqueductal grey (dPAG) in driving behaviour differs. Whereas dPAG activity scales with running speed in P. maniculatus, neural activity in the dPAG of P. polionotus correlates poorly with movement, including during visually triggered escape. Moreover, optogenetic activation of dPAG neurons elicits acceleration in P. maniculatus but not in P. polionotus, and their chemogenetic inhibition during a looming stimulus delays escape onset in P. maniculatus to match that of P. polionotus. Together, we trace species-specific escape thresholds to a central circuit node, downstream of peripheral sensory neurons, localizing an ecologically relevant behavioural difference to a specific region of the mammalian brain.
Evolution, Neuroscience
Complete biosynthesis of salicylic acid from phenylalanine in plants
Original Paper | Plant hormones | 2025-07-22 20:00 EDT
Bao Zhu, Yanjun Zhang, Rong Gao, Zhihua Wu, Wei Zhang, Chao Zhang, Penghong Zhang, Can Ye, Linbo Yao, Ying Jin, Hui Mao, Peiyao Tou, Peng Huang, Jiangzhe Zhao, Qiao Zhao, Chang-Jun Liu, Kewei Zhang
Salicylic acid (SA) is a pivotal phytohormone for plant responses to biotic and abiotic stresses. Plants have evolved two pathways to produce SA: the isochorismate synthase and phenylalanine ammonia lyase (PAL) pathways1. Whereas the isochorismate synthase pathway has been fully identified2,3,4, the PAL pathway remains incomplete. Here we report the full characterization of the PAL pathway for SA biosynthesis via functional analysis of rice (Oryza sativa) SA-DEFICIENT GENE 1 (OSD1) to OSD4. The cinnamoyl-coenzyme A (CoA) ligase OSD1 catalyses the conversion of trans-cinnamic acid to cinnamoyl-CoA, which is subsequently transformed to benzoyl-CoA via the β-oxidative pathway in peroxisomes. The resulting benzoyl-CoA is further converted to benzyl benzoate by the peroxisomal benzoyltransferase OSD2. Benzyl benzoate is subsequently hydroxylated to benzyl salicylate by the endoplasmic reticulum membrane-resident cytochrome P450 OSD3, which is ultimately hydrolysed to salicylic acid by the cytoplasmic carboxylesterase OSD4. Evolutionary analyses reveal that the PAL pathway was first assembled before the divergence of gymnosperms and has been conserved in most seed plants. Activation of the PAL pathway in rice significantly enhances salicylic acid levels and plant immunity. Completion of the PAL pathway provides critical insights into the primary salicylic acid biosynthetic pathway across plant species and offers a precise target for modulating crop immunity.
Plant hormones, Plant immunity, Secondary metabolism
Superheating gold beyond the predicted entropy catastrophe threshold
Original Paper | Laser-produced plasmas | 2025-07-22 20:00 EDT
Thomas G. White, Travis D. Griffin, Daniel Haden, Hae Ja Lee, Eric Galtier, Eric Cunningham, Dimitri Khaghani, Adrien Descamps, Lennart Wollenweber, Ben Armentrout, Carson Convery, Karen Appel, Luke B. Fletcher, Sebastian Goede, J. B. Hastings, Jeremy Iratcabal, Emma E. McBride, Jacob Molina, Giulio Monaco, Landon Morrison, Hunter Stramel, Sameen Yunus, Ulf Zastrau, Siegfried H. Glenzer, Gianluca Gregori, Dirk O. Gericke, Bob Nagler
In their landmark study1, Fecht and Johnson unveiled a phenomenon that they termed the ‘entropy catastrophe’, a critical point where the entropy of superheated crystals equates to that of their liquid counterparts. This point marks the uppermost stability boundary for solids at temperatures typically around three times their melting point. Despite the theoretical prediction of this ultimate stability threshold, its practical exploration has been prevented by numerous intermediate destabilizing events, colloquially known as a hierarchy of catastrophes2,3,4,5, which occur at far lower temperatures. Here we experimentally test this limit under ultrafast heating conditions, directly tracking the lattice temperature by using high-resolution inelastic X-ray scattering. Our gold samples are heated to temperatures over 14 times their melting point while retaining their crystalline structure, far surpassing the predicted threshold and suggesting a substantially higher or potentially no limit for superheating. We point to the inability of our samples to expand on these very short timescales as an important difference from previous estimates. These observations provide insights into the dynamics of melting under extreme conditions.
Laser-produced plasmas, Materials science, Phase transitions and critical phenomena, Structure of solids and liquids
Global hotspots of mycorrhizal fungal richness are poorly protected
Original Paper | Biodiversity | 2025-07-22 20:00 EDT
Michael E. Van Nuland, Colin Averill, Justin D. Stewart, Oleh Prylutskyi, Adriana Corrales, Laura G. van Galen, Bethan F. Manley, Clara Qin, Thomas Lauber, Vladimir Mikryukov, Olesia Dulia, Giuliana Furci, César Marín, Merlin Sheldrake, James T. Weedon, Kabir G. Peay, Charlie K. Cornwallis, Tomáš Větrovský, Petr Kohout, Petr Baldrian, Leho Tedersoo, Stuart A. West, Thomas W. Crowther, E. Toby Kiers, Noelia Barriga-Medina, Paola Bonfante, Alper Cevirgel, Peter Chatanga, Bala Chaudhary, Matteo Chialva, S. Caroline Daws, Mark Day, Aurélie Deveau, Vincent Diringer, Katie Franklin, Nicole Hynson, Alyona Koshkina, Luisa Lanfranco, Antonio Leon-Reyes, Sol Llerena, Liteboho Maduna, Francis Martin, Jean-Paul Maurice, Sebolelo Molete, Andrés Avella Muñoz, Liam F. Nokes, Cesar A. Parra Aldana, Rachel Pringle, Dario X. Ramirez-Villacis, Juan David Rosales, Cosmo Sheldrake, Aigerim Soltabayeva, Genevieve Stephens, J. Benjamin Stielow, Nicolas Suberbielle, Matsepo M. Taole, Lorenzo Tolari, Cristian Moreno Tormo, Jacob Ulzen, Rocío Urrutia-Jalabert, Zander S. Venter, Andressa M. Venturini, Alex S. Wegmann, Johan van den Hoogen
Mycorrhizal fungi are ecosystem engineers that sustain plant life and help regulate Earth’s biogeochemical cycles1,2,3. However, in contrast to plants and animals, the global distribution of mycorrhizal fungal biodiversity is largely unknown, which limits our ability to monitor and protect key underground ecosystems4,5. Here we trained machine-learning algorithms on a global dataset of 25,000 geolocated soil samples comprising >2.8 billion fungal DNA sequences. We predicted arbuscular mycorrhizal and ectomycorrhizal fungal richness and rarity across terrestrial ecosystems. On the basis of these predictions, we generated high-resolution, global-scale maps and identified key reservoirs of highly diverse and endemic mycorrhizal communities. Intersecting protected areas with mycorrhizal hotspots indicated that less than 10% of predicted mycorrhizal richness hotspots currently exist in protected areas. Our results describe a largely hidden component of Earth’s underground ecosystems and can help identify conservation priorities, set monitoring benchmarks and create specific restoration plans and land-management strategies.
Biodiversity, Conservation biology, Microbial ecology
Nature Materials
Observation of non-Hermitian topology from optical loss modulation
Original Paper | Condensed-matter physics | 2025-07-22 20:00 EDT
Amin Hashemi, Elizabeth Louis Pereira, Hongwei Li, Jose L. Lado, Andrea Blanco-Redondo
Understanding the interplay of non-Hermiticity and topology is crucial given the intrinsic openness of most natural and engineered systems, and has important ramifications in topological lasers and sensors. Recently, it has been theoretically proposed that topological features could originate solely from a system’s non-Hermiticity in photonic platforms. Here we experimentally demonstrate the appearance of non-Hermitian topology exclusively from loss modulation in a photonic system that is topologically trivial in the absence of loss. We do this by implementing a non-Hermitian generalization of an Aubry-André-Harper model with purely imaginary potential in a programmable integrated photonics platform, which allows us to investigate different periodic and quasiperiodic configurations of the model. In both cases, we show the emergence of topological edge modes and explore their resilience to different kinds of disorder. Our work highlights loss engineering as a mechanism to generate topological properties.
Condensed-matter physics, Optics and photonics
Nature Nanotechnology
Event-driven retinomorphic photodiode with bio-plausible temporal dynamics
Original Paper | Electronic devices | 2025-07-22 20:00 EDT
Qijie Lin, Congqi Li, Haigen Xiong, Meng Zhang, Jiawei Qiao, Jingpeng Wu, Lei Yang, Song Wang, Hao Chen, Yanan Wei, Di Zheng, Guanghao Lu, Xiaotao Hao, Donghong Yu, Yunhao Cai, Antonio Facchetti, Hui Huang
Machine vision is indispensable in Industry 4.0 and autonomous driving, enabling the perception and reaction necessary to navigate dynamic environments. Current machine vision sensors, including frame-based and event-based types, often fall short due to their limited temporal dynamics compared with the human retina, hindering their overall performance and adaptability. In this work, we present an event-driven retinomorphic photodiode (RPD) that mimics the retina’s layered structure and signal pathway. The RPD achieves this by vertically integrating an organic donor-acceptor heterojunction, an ion reservoir with a porous web-like morphology, and a Schottky junction into a single diode through controlled layer-by-layer fabrication and precise nanostructure modulation. Each component replicates a key retinal process, and their spontaneous interaction results in environment-adaptive dynamics. This design yields a dynamic range exceeding 200 dB, substantially reduces noise and data redundancy, and allows for high-density integration. We demonstrate that these improvements enable high-quality machine vision, even under extreme lighting conditions. Our work demonstrates a bottom-up approach to retinomorphic sensors, propelling the development of robust and responsive machine vision systems adaptable to complex and dynamic lighting environments.
Electronic devices, Sensors and biosensors
Nature Reviews Materials
Direct seawater electrolysis for hydrogen production
Review Paper | Electrocatalysis | 2025-07-22 20:00 EDT
Luo Yu, Minghui Ning, Yu Wang, Chuqing Yuan, Zhifeng Ren
Direct seawater electrolysis (DSE) is a sustainable technology for green hydrogen production. However, implementing this technology remains highly challenging owing to the poor catalytic activity and limited lifetime that result from corrosion, chlorine-related side reactions and metal precipitates. Here, we provide a comprehensive overview and critical discussion of current challenges and possible solutions for DSE in terms of the seawater electrolyte, catalysts, membranes and electrolysers. We first discuss challenges and opportunities stemming from impurity ions in seawater and explore potential seawater treatment solutions to improve DSE performance. We then summarize and propose effective strategies for designing efficient hydrogen and oxygen evolution reaction catalysts for DSE. Next, recent progress in, and challenges for, membranes used in DSE are presented, including analysis of the membrane degradation mechanisms and possible mitigation strategies. We also critically review and discuss the advantages and challenges of both conventional and novel electrolysers for DSE. Importantly, to guide future research, we emphasize how to further optimize strategies and solutions to tackle degradation and corrosion in DSE under real-world operating conditions. Finally, we discuss future challenges and prospects for the large-scale application of DSE technology.
Electrocatalysis, Hydrogen energy
Nature Reviews Physics
Drop friction
Review Paper | Chemical physics | 2025-07-22 20:00 EDT
Hans-Jürgen Butt, Rüdiger Berger, Joel De Coninck, Rafael Tadmor
Wetting phenomena have been studied quantitatively for more than 200 years, but there remain many fundamental questions that are not understood. For example, the speed of a water drop sliding down an inclined plane cannot be predicted. A drop that slides down a surface experiences a resistance. We call this resistance drop friction. It is still debated how and where energy is dissipated in a sliding drop. Particularly for the most common liquid, water, there have been considerable advances in the understanding of wetting, driven by the development of new physical, preparative and theoretical methods. Water is a special liquid, owing to its polar nature, its tendency to form hydrogen bonds, the self-ionization into OH- and H3O+, its low viscosity and its high surface tension. In recent years, water-surface interactions due to adaptation, spontaneous electrostatic charging and deformation on elastomers have been identified as important processes that increase drop friction. They may be responsible for drop friction even on seemingly smooth, homogeneous and rigid surfaces.
Chemical physics, Fluid dynamics, Structure of solids and liquids, Surfaces, interfaces and thin films, Wetting
Physical Review Letters
Scalable Parameter Design for Superconducting Quantum Circuits with Graph Neural Networks
Research article | Artificial neural networks | 2025-07-22 06:00 EDT
Hao Ai and Yu-xi Liu
To demonstrate supremacy of quantum computing, increasingly large-scale superconducting quantum computing chips are being designed and fabricated. However, the complexity of simulating quantum systems poses a significant challenge to computer-aided design of quantum chips, especially for large-scale chips. Harnessing the scalability of graph neural networks (GNNs), we here propose a parameter designing algorithm for large-scale superconducting quantum circuits. The algorithm depends on the so-called ‘’three-stair scaling’’ mechanism, which comprises two neural-network models: an evaluator supervisedly trained on small-scale circuits for applying to medium-scale circuits, and a designer unsupervisedly trained on medium-scale circuits for applying to large-scale ones. We demonstrate our algorithm in mitigating quantum crosstalk errors. Frequencies for both single- and two-qubit gates (corresponding to the parameters of nodes and edges) are considered simultaneously. Numerical results indicate that the well-trained designer achieves notable advantages in efficiency, effectiveness, and scalability. For example, for large-scale superconducting quantum circuits consisting of around 870 qubits, our GNNs-based algorithm achieves 51% of the errors produced by the state-of-the-art algorithm, with a time reduction from 90 min to 27 s. Overall, a better-performing and more scalable algorithm for designing parameters of superconducting quantum chips is proposed, which demonstrates the advantages of applying GNNs in superconducting quantum chips.
Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 040601 (2025)
Artificial neural networks, Quantum computation, Quantum gates, Quantum information architectures & platforms, Superconducting qubits, Machine learning
Excited-State Magnetic Properties of Carbon-like ${\mathrm{Ca}}^{14+}$
Research article | Atomic spectra | 2025-07-22 06:00 EDT
Lukas J. Spieß, Shuying Chen, Alexander Wilzewski, Malte Wehrheim, Jan Gilles, Andrey Surzhykov, Erik Benkler, Melina Filzinger, Martin Steinel, Nils Huntemann, Charles Cheung, Sergey G. Porsev, Andrey I. Bondarev, Marianna S. Safronova, José R. Crespo López-Urrutia, and Piet O. Schmidt
We measured the $g$-factor of the excited-state $^{3}{\mathrm{P}}{1}$ in ${\mathrm{Ca}}^{14+}$ ion to be $g=1.499032(6)$ with a relative uncertainty of $4\times{}{10}^{- 6}$. The magnetic field magnitude is derived from the Zeeman splitting of a ${\mathrm{Be}}^{+}$ ion, cotrapped in the same linear Paul trap as the highly charged ${\mathrm{Ca}}^{14+}$ ion. Furthermore, we experimentally determined the second-order Zeeman coefficient ${C}{2}$ of the $^{3}{\mathrm{P}}{0}\text{- }^{3}{\mathrm{P}}{1}$ clock transition. For the ${m}{J}=0\rightarrow {m}{ {J}^{‘ }}=0$ transition, we obtained ${C}_{2}=0.39\pm{}0.04\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{Hz}\text{ }{\mathrm{mT}}^{- 2}$, which is to our knowledge the smallest reported for any atomic transition to date. This confirms the predicted low sensitivity of highly charged ions to higher-order Zeeman effects, making them ideal candidates for high-precision optical clocks. Comparison of the experimental results with our state-of-the art electronic structure calculations shows good agreement and demonstrates the significance of the frequency-dependent Breit contribution, negative energy states, and QED effects on magnetic moments.
Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 043002 (2025)
Atomic spectra, Atomic, optical & lattice clocks, Coherent control, Electronic excitation & ionization, Zeeman effect, Ions, Trapped ions, Magnetic moment
Hyperfine Rovibrational States of ${\mathrm{H}}_{3}^{+}$ in a Weak External Magnetic Field
Research article | Fine & hyperfine structure | 2025-07-22 06:00 EDT
Gustavo Avila, Ayaki Sunaga, Stanislav Komorovsky, and Edit Mátyus
Rovibrational energies, wave functions, and Raman transition moments are reported for the lowest-energy states of the ${\mathrm{H}}{3}^{+}$ molecular ion including the magnetic couplings of the proton spins and molecular rotation in the presence of a weak external magnetic field. The rovibrational-hyperfine-Zeeman Hamiltonian matrix is constructed and diagonalized using the rovibrational eigenstates and the proton spin functions. The developed methodology can be used to compute hyperfine-Zeeman effects also for higher-energy rovibrational excitations of ${\mathrm{H}}{3}^{+}$ and other closed-shell polyatomic molecules. These developments will guide future experiments extending quantum logic spectroscopy to polyatomic systems.
Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 043003 (2025)
Fine & hyperfine structure, Molecular spectra, Zeeman effect
Coherent and Incoherent Light Scattering by Single-Atom Wave Packets
Research article | Cold gases in optical lattices | 2025-07-22 06:00 EDT
Vitaly Fedoseev, Hanzhen Lin (林翰桢), Yu-Kun Lu, Yoo Kyung Lee, Jiahao Lyu, and Wolfgang Ketterle
We study light scattering of atomic wave packets in free space and discuss the results in terms of atom-photon entanglement and which-way information. Using ultracold atoms released from an optical lattice, we realize a Gedanken experiment which interferes single photons scattering off of Heisenberg uncertainty-limited wave packets. We unify the free-space and trapped-atom pictures by measuring the light scattered before and during wave packet expansion and show the coherence properties of the scattered light are independent of the presence of the trap. Therefore, recoilless scattering in a trap (M"ossbauer effect), the different frequency of sidebands, and the excitation of an excited harmonic oscillator state are not essential to the question of which fraction of light scattering is coherent or incoherent. Our experiment demonstrates the potential of using atomic Mott insulators to create single-atom wave packets for fundamental studies.
Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 043601 (2025)
Cold gases in optical lattices, Light-matter interaction, Optical tests of quantum theory, Quantum coherence & coherence measures, Quantum description of light-matter interaction, Trapped atoms, Ultracold gases
Competing Phases of ${\mathrm{HfO}}_{2}$ from Unstable Flat Phonon Bands of an Unconventional High-Symmetry Structure
Research article | Ferroelectricity | 2025-07-22 06:00 EDT
Yubo Qi and Karin M. Rabe
We carry out first-principles calculations to demonstrate that the complex energy landscape and competing phases of ${\mathrm{HfO}}{2}$ can be understood from the four unstable flat phonon bands of an unconventional high-symmetry structure of ${\mathrm{HfO}}{2}$ with the space group $Cmma$. We consider structures generated from the $Cmma$ reference structure by all possible combinations of the zone center and zone boundary modes belonging to the unstable flat phonon branches. We find 12 distinct locally stable structures, of which 5 correspond to well-known phases. We also show that 8 of these 12 structures can be described as period-2 superlattices of the ferroelectric $Pca{2}{1}(\mathrm{oIII})$, ferroelectric $Pmn{2}{1}(\mathrm{oIV})$, monoclinic $P{2}{1}/c(m)$, and distorted monoclinic $P{2}{1}/c(\mathrm{dm})$ structures. We demonstrate how the unstable flat phonon bands can explain the atomically thin grain boundaries in the various types of superlattices. Finally, we point out that arbitrary-period ${\mathrm{HfO}}{2}$ superlattices derived from the 6 different types of period-2 superlattices are expected to form based on the flatness of the unstable phonon branches. The organizing principle provided by this work deepens our understanding of the underlying physics in the phase stability of ${\mathrm{HfO}}{2}$ and provides guidance for functional phase stabilization.
Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 046101 (2025)
Ferroelectricity, Phonons, Density functional theory, First-principles calculations
Magnetically Induced Topological Evolutions of Exceptional Points in Photonic Bands
Research article | Metamaterials | 2025-07-22 06:00 EDT
Xingqi Zhao, Jiajun Wang, Wenzhe Liu, Lei Shi, and Jian Zi
Exceptional points (EPs) have been widely studied in various non-Hermitian systems, exhibiting and underlying many unique topological properties. In photonic systems, multiple degrees of freedom of light enable the EPs with rich properties and high dimensional topology. In this Letter, we propose that the external magnetic field can serve as an additional parameter dimension to manipulate EPs with tunable evolutions and hidden topological structures in magneto-optical photonic crystal slabs. Continuous evolution of EPs can be derived by changing the external magnetic field, where paired EPs gradually approach each other as the Fermi arc shrinks, and eventually merge and annihilate. When considering the parameter space including the magnetic field dimension, these EPs form a closed ring, revealing novel topological structures. The discovered EP ring is further associated with more topological polarization properties, including the closed ring in Poincar'e sphere and the transferred topological charge between the Fermi arc and the circularly polarized states in momentum space. Our Letter reveals complex topological properties in magneto-optical photonic crystal slabs, providing a framework to explore non-Hermitian topological systems with additional parameter dimensions.
Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 046203 (2025)
Metamaterials, Nanophotonics, Photonic crystals, Topological effects in photonic systems, Non-Hermitian systems
Enhanced Superconducting Gap in the Outer ${\mathrm{CuO}}{2}$ Plane of the Trilayer Cuprate $(\mathrm{Hg},\text{ }\mathrm{Re}){\mathrm{Ba}}{2}{\mathrm{Ca}}{2}{\mathrm{Cu}}{3}{\mathrm{O}}_{8+\delta }$
Research article | Fermi surface | 2025-07-22 06:00 EDT
M. Horio, M. Miyamoto, Y. Mino, S. Ishida, B. Thiagarajan, C. M. Polley, C. H. Lee, T. Nishio, H. Eisaki, and I. Matsuda
The material with the highest-temperature superconductivity at ambient pressure has received less attention than its easier-to-prepare relatives–until now.
Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 046501 (2025)
Fermi surface, Superconducting gap, Cuprates, High-temperature superconductors, Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy
Low-Rank Quantics Tensor Train Representations of Feynman Diagrams for Multiorbital Electron-Phonon Models
Research article | Electron-phonon coupling | 2025-07-22 06:00 EDT
Hirone Ishida, Natsuki Okada, Shintaro Hoshino, and Hiroshi Shinaoka
Feynman diagrams are an essential tool for simulating strongly correlated electron systems. However, stochastic quantum Monte Carlo sampling suffers from the sign problem, particularly when solving a multiorbital quantum impurity model. Recently, two approaches have been proposed for efficient numerical treatment of Feynman diagrams: tensor cross interpolation (TCI) to replace stochastic sampling and the quantics tensor train (QTT) representation for compressing space-time dependence. One of the remaining challenges is the nontrivial task of identifying low-rank structures in weak-coupling Feynman diagrams for multiorbital electron-phonon systems. In particular, the traditional TCI algorithm faces an ergodicity problem, which prevents it from fully exploring the multiorbital space. To address this, we incorporate a new algorithm called global search, which resolves this issue. By combining this approach with QTT, we uncover low-rank structures and achieve efficient numerical integration with exponential resolution in time and faster-than-power-law convergence of error relative to computational cost. Additionally, our approach does not require the division of discontinuous regions necessary in nonquantics TCI.
Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 046502 (2025)
Electron-phonon coupling, Superconductivity, Dynamical mean field theory, Green’s function methods, Tensor network methods
Possible Spin-Triplet Excitonic Insulator in the Ultraquantum Limit of ${\mathrm{HfTe}}_{5}$
Research article | Excitons | 2025-07-22 06:00 EDT
Jinyu Liu, Varsha Subramanyan, Robert Welser, Timothy McSorley, Triet Ho, David Graf, Michael T. Pettes, Avadh Saxena, Laurel E. Winter, Shi-Zeng Lin, and Luis A. Jauregui
Precise quantum transport measurements reveal a spin-triplet excitonic insulator phase in the ultra-quantum limit of HfTe5, a three-dimensional topological material.
Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 046601 (2025)
Excitons, Quantum transport, Topological insulators
Odd-Parity Magnetism Driven by Antiferromagnetic Exchange
Research article | Magnetism | 2025-07-22 06:00 EDT
Yue Yu, Magnus B. Lyngby, Tatsuya Shishidou, Mercè Roig, Andreas Kreisel, Michael Weinert, Brian M. Andersen, and Daniel F. Agterberg
Realizing odd-parity, time-reversal-preserving, nonrelativistic spin splitting is a central goal for spintronics applications. We propose a group-theory-based microscopic framework to induce odd-parity spin splitting from coplanar antiferromagnetic (AFM) states without spin-orbit coupling (SOC). We develop phenomenological models for 421 conventional period-doubling AFM systems in nonsymmorphic space groups and construct minimal microscopic models for 119 of these. We find that these AFM states can attain three possible competing ground states. These ground states all break symmetries in addition to those broken by the usual AFM order. Specifically, they give rise to either odd-parity spin-splitting, nematic order, or scalar odd-parity order related to multiferroicity. Our microscopic theories reveal that the odd-parity spin-splitting energy scale is generically large and further reveal that the scalar odd-parity order gives a nonzero Berry curvature dipole without SOC. We identify 67 materials in the Magndata database for which our theory applies. We provide density-functional theory (DFT) calculations on Fe-based materials that reveal an $h$-wave spin splitting consistent with our symmetry arguments and apply our microscopic model to determine the nonrelativistic Edelstein response for CeNiAsO.
Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 046701 (2025)
Magnetism, Spintronics, Antiferromagnets, Multiferroics, Noncollinear magnets, Boltzmann theory, Density functional theory, Discrete symmetries in condensed matter
All-Optical Magnetic Imaging Protocol to Achieve Angstrom-Scale Resolution with Spin Defects in van der Waals Materials
Research article | Defects | 2025-07-22 06:00 EDT
Ning Wang, Jianming Cai, and Chao Lei
Magnetic imaging with ultrahigh spatial resolution is crucial to exploring the magnetic textures of emerging quantum materials. We propose a novel magnetic imaging protocol that achieves angstrom-scale resolution by combining spin defects in van der Waals materials and terahertz (THz) scattering scanning near-field optical microscopy. Spin defects in the atomic monolayer enable the probe-to-sample distance diving into angstrom range where the exchange interactions between the probe and sample spins become predominant. This exchange interaction leads to energy splitting of the probe spin in the order of meV, corresponding to THz frequencies. With THz optics and the spin-dependent fluorescence of the probe spin, the interaction energy can be resolved entirely through optical methods. Our proposed all-optical magnetic imaging protocol holds significant promise for investigating magnetic textures in condensed matter physics due to its excellent compatibility and high spatial resolution.
Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 046901 (2025)
Defects, Magnetic texture, Quantum sensing, Van der Waals systems, Scanning near-field optical microscopy
Kardar-Parisi-Zhang Scaling in Time-Crystalline Matter
Research article | Nonequilibrium statistical mechanics | 2025-07-22 06:00 EDT
Romain Daviet, Carl Philipp Zelle, Armin Asadollahi, and Sebastian Diehl
We discuss the universal behavior linked to the Goldstone mode associated with the spontaneous breaking of time-translation symmetry in many-body systems, in which the order parameter traces out a limit cycle. We show that this universal behavior is closely tied to Kardar-Parisi-Zhang physics, which can strongly affect the scaling properties in all dimensions. Our Letter predicts and rationalizes the emergence of Kardar-Parisi-Zhang in numerous systems such as nonreciprocal phases in active matter, active magnets, driven-dissipative quantum systems, and synchronization of oscillators.
Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 047101 (2025)
Nonequilibrium statistical mechanics, Time crystals, Kardar-Parisi-Zhang equation, Path-integral methods
Effective Markovian Dynamics Method for Solving Non-Markovian Dynamics of Stochastic Gene Expression
Research article | Chemical reactions | 2025-07-22 06:00 EDT
Youming Li and Chen Jia
A two-stage model of gene expression, accounting for an arbitrary distribution of protein degradation times, explains why nonexponentially degraded proteins have smaller mRNA-protein correlation than exponentially degraded proteins.
Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 048401 (2025)
Chemical reactions, Gene expression, Stochastic processes, Nonlinear time-delay systems, Non-Markovian processes
Physical Review X
Hetero-Orbital Two-Component Fractional Quantum Hall States in Bilayer Graphene
Research article | Fractional quantum Hall effect | 2025-07-22 06:00 EDT
Ke Huang, Ajit C. Balram, Hailong Fu, Chengqi Guo, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, Jainendra K. Jain, and Jun Zhu
A new kind of two-component fractional quantum Hall effect state, where electrons occupy distinct orbital and valley pseudospins, suggests a novel route to engineer complex quantum phases using internal electronic degrees of freedom.
Phys. Rev. X 15, 031023 (2025)
Fractional quantum Hall effect, Bilayer graphene, Exact diagonalization, Transport techniques
arXiv
Electronic structure of SLSiN under charge density modulation
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
First-principles density-functional theory calculations were carried out to assess how incremental unit-cell charging alters the electronic behavior of SLSiN (single-layer Si$ _3$ N$ _4$ ). The net charge per cell was systematically tuned from $ n,=,0$ (the neutral/reference configuration) to $ n,=,\pm,1,\pm,2$ , and $ \pm,3$ elementary charges, and for each charged configuration the band structure and density of states were evaluated at the PBE level. In its neutral state, SLSiN exhibits zero electronegativity, signifying both its indifference to additional electron density and its intrinsic stability when integrated into heterostructures. Altogether, these results reveal that precise control of the charge density can drive SLSiN across an insulator-to-metal transition.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Andreev molecules at distance
New Submission | Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Erik S. Samuelsen, Yuli V. Nazarov
Andreev molecule states arise from hybridization of Andreev bound states in different Josephson Junctions. Extensive theoretical and experimental research concentrates on direct coherent electron coupling between the junctions: this implies the distance between the junctions is of the order of superconducting coherence length, that is, short.
We propose and discuss the possibility to create Andreev molecules at long (in principle, arbitrary long) distance between the junctions. In this case, the hybridized states are excited quasi-particle singlets and the coupling is provided by an embedding electric circuit. To achieve a strong hybridization, one aligns the energies of the Andreev bound states with associated phase differences. In fact, a recent experiment realizes such setup.
With circuit theory we derive the hybridization level splitting and estimate the scale of the effect. Since the phenomenon encompasses excited states, we derive and solve the associated Lindblad equation under condition of persistent resonant excitation. By analyzing the resulting dissipative dynamics we identify relevant regimes where the hybridization and resonant excitation peaks are most pronounced. The low-frequency mutual inductance of the Josephson junctions is an important signature of the molecular state and associated non-local Josephson effect. We demonstrate the peak structures for both mutual and self-inductance, and compute them in various frequency regimes.
In an interesting common case the embedding circuit includes an oscillator, which can be used both to enhance hybridization and for state readout with two-tone spectroscopy. We derive and solve Lindblad equations for the conditions of two-tone spectroscopy to demonstrate the the readout of molecular states.
Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con)
24 pages, 10 figures
Generalized symmetry enriched criticality in (3+1)d
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
We construct two classes of continuous phase transitions in 3+1 dimensions between phases that break distinct generalized global symmetries. Our analysis focuses on $ SU(N)/\mathbb{Z}_N$ gauge theory coupled to $ N_f$ flavors of Majorana fermions in the adjoint representation. For $ N$ even and sufficiently large odd $ N_f$ , upon imposing time-reversal symmetry and an $ SO(N_f)$ flavor symmetry, the massless theory realizes a quantum critical point between two gapped phases: one in which a $ \mathbb{Z}_N$ one-form symmetry is completely broken and another where it is broken to $ \mathbb{Z}2$ , leading to $ \mathbb{Z}{N/2}$ topological order. We provide an explicit lattice model that exhibits this transition. The critical point has an enhanced symmetry, which includes non-invertible analogues of time-reversal symmetry. Enforcing a non-invertible time-reversal symmetry and the $ SO(N_f)$ flavor symmetry, for $ N$ and $ N_f$ both odd, we demonstrate that this critical point can appear between a topologically ordered phase and a phase that spontaneously breaks the non-invertible time-reversal symmetry, furnishing an analogue of deconfined quantum criticality for generalized symmetries.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el), High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th)
60 pages, 3 figures
Trimer superfluidity of antiparallel dipolar excitons in a bilayer heterostructure
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Pradyumna P. Belgaonkar, Michal Zimmerman, Snir Gazit, Dror Orgad
We study the phase diagram of a bilayer of antiparallel dipolar excitons with a 1:2 density ratio between the layers, as a function of temperature and density. Using quantum Monte Carlo simulations, we show that such a system supports the formation of trimers, namely, three-exciton bound states consisting of a single dipole in one layer and two dipoles in the second layer. At sufficiently low temperatures and densities, these trimers condense into a trimer superfluid phase. Increasing the excitonic density induces a quantum phase transition into a phase in which condensates of independent dipoles exist in both layers, in parallel to the trimers. We also study the thermal transitions out of these phases, and find that while the normal state is reached directly from the trimer superfluid, the thermal disordering of the two-superfluid phase involves an intermediate state which is either a trimer superfluid or a single excitonic condensate in the denser layer. A potential experimental realization using transition metal dichalcogenide heterostructures is discussed.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall), Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas), Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
5 pages, 4 figures. Supplemental material: 7 pages, 8 figures, 2 movies
Mass-gap description of heavy impurities in Fermi gases
New Submission | Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Xin Chen, Eugen Dizer, Emilio Ramos Rodríguez, Richard Schmidt
We present a unified theory that connects the quasiparticle picture of Fermi polarons for mobile impurities to the Anderson orthogonality catastrophe for static impurities. By operator reordering of the underlying many-body Hamiltonian, we obtain a modified fermionic dispersion relation that features a recoil-induced energy gap, which we call the `mass gap’. We show that the resulting mean-field Hamiltonian exhibits an in-gap state for finite impurity mass, which takes a key role in Fermi polaron and molecule formation. We identify the mass gap as the microscopic origin of the quasiparticle weight of Fermi polarons and derive a power-law scaling of the weight with the impurity-to-fermion mass ratio. The associated in-gap state is shown to give rise to the emergence of the polaron-to-molecule transition away from the limiting case of the Anderson orthogonality catastrophe in which the transition is absent.
Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas), Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el), Mathematical Physics (math-ph)
The Hilbert-space structure of free fermions in disguise
New Submission | Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Free fermions in disguise (FFD) Hamiltonians describe spin chains which can be mapped to free fermions, but not via a Jordan-Wigner transformation. Although the mapping gives access to the full Hamiltonian spectrum, the computation of spin correlation functions is generally hard. Indeed, the dictionary between states in the spin and free-fermion Hilbert spaces is highly non-trivial, due to the non-linear and non-local nature of the mapping, as well as the exponential degeneracy of the Hamiltonian eigenspaces. In this work, we provide a series of results characterizing the Hilbert space associated to FFD Hamiltonians. We focus on the original model introduced by Paul Fendley and show that the corresponding Hilbert space admits the exact factorization $ \mathcal{H}=\mathcal{H}_F\otimes \mathcal{H}_D$ , where $ \mathcal{H}F$ hosts the fermionic operators, while $ \mathcal{H}D$ accounts for the exponential degeneracy of the energy eigenspaces. By constructing a family of spin operators generating the operator algebra supported on $ \mathcal{H}D$ , we further show that $ \mathcal{H}D=\mathcal{H}{F’}\otimes \mathcal{H}{\widetilde{D}}$ , where $ \mathcal{H}{F’}$ hosts ancillary free fermions in disguise, while $ \mathcal{H}{\widetilde{D}}$ is generated by the common eigenstates of an extensive set of commuting Pauli strings. Our construction allows us to fully resolve the exponential degeneracy of all Hamiltonian eigenspaces and is expected to have implications for the computation of spin correlation functions, both in and out of equilibrium.
Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech), Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
11 pages, no figures
AutoMAT: A Hierarchical Framework for Autonomous Alloy Discovery
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Penghui Yang, Chendong Zhao, Bijun Tang, Zhonghan Zhang, Xinrun Wang, Yanchen Deng, Yuhao Lu, Cuntai Guan, Zheng Liu, Bo An
Alloy discovery is central to advancing modern industry but remains hindered by the vastness of compositional design space and the costly validation. Here, we present AutoMAT, a hierarchical and autonomous framework grounded in and validated by experiments, which integrates large language models, automated CALPHAD-based simulations, and AI-driven search to accelerate alloy design. Spanning the entire pipeline from ideation to validation, AutoMAT achieves high efficiency, accuracy, and interpretability without the need for manually curated large datasets. In a case study targeting a lightweight, high-strength alloy, AutoMAT identifies a titanium alloy with 8.1% lower density and comparable yield strength relative to the state-of-the-art reference, achieving the highest specific strength among all comparisons. In a second case targeting high-yield-strength high-entropy alloys, AutoMAT achieves a 28.2% improvement in yield strength over the base alloy. In both cases, AutoMAT reduces the discovery timeline from years to weeks, illustrating its potential as a scalable and versatile platform for next-generation alloy design.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI), Machine Learning (cs.LG)
Anomalous thermal activation of the electron glass dynamics in a-InOx and granular aluminum
New Submission | Disordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Thierry Grenet, Julien Delahaye
In this article, we explore the temperature dependence of the electrical glassy dynamics in insulating amorphous indium oxide (a-InOx) and granular Al films. We use non-isothermal gate voltage protocols, which can reveal changes in the dynamics induced by the temperature, when logarithmic relaxations devoid of characteristic times are at work. We demonstrate that, contrary to almost 20 years of opposite belief, the dynamics of amorphous indium oxide films in the liquid helium temperature range is thermally activated, i.e. it slows down under cooling and accelerates upon heating. Amorphous indium oxide thus adds to the list of glassy disordered systems in which we already demonstrated thermal activation, which includes granular Al and amorphous NbxSi1-x films. Moreover, measurements up to 40 K in a-InOx and granular Al films reveal the close similarity between the two systems and a very anomalous character of the thermal activation, with an effective activation energy increasing with T as T^2 . We so far have no explanation for it. Its further study and understanding may be important for the physics of electron glasses.
Disordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn)
To appear in the Journal of Physics Condensed Matter. The present version is the one originally submitted to the journal. Accepted manuscript : this https URL
Hamiltonian parameter inference from RIXS spectra with active learning
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Marton K. Lajer, Xin Dai, Kipton Barros, Matthew R. Carbone, S. Johnston, M. P. M. Dean
Identifying model Hamiltonians is a vital step toward creating predictive models of materials. Here, we combine Bayesian optimization with the EDRIXS numerical package to infer Hamiltonian parameters from resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) spectra within the single atom approximation. To evaluate the efficacy of our method, we test it on experimental RIXS spectra of NiPS3, NiCl2, Ca3LiOsO6, and Fe2O3, and demonstrate that it can reproduce results obtained from hand-fitted parameters to a precision similar to expert human analysis while providing a more systematic mapping of parameter space. Our work provides a key first step toward solving the inverse scattering problem to extract effective multi-orbital models from information-dense RIXS measurements, which can be applied to a host of quantum materials. We also propose atomic model parameter sets for two materials, Ca3LiOsO6 and Fe2O3, that were previously missing from the literature.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
15 pages plus supplementary information
Stoner Transition at Finite Temperature in a 2D Isotropic Fermi Liquid
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
R. David Mayrhofer, Megan Schoenzeit, Andrey V. Chubukov
We present the results of a mean-field analysis of the temperature evolution of a ferromagnetic Stoner transition in a two-dimensional (2D) system with an isotropic dispersion $ \varepsilon_k \propto k^{2\alpha}$ , which for $ \alpha >1$ models flat dispersions in various multi-layer graphene systems in a displacement field. This study is an extension to a finite $ T$ of previous studies at $ T=0$ , which found both first-order and second-order Stoner transitions, depending on the value of $ \alpha$ and special behavior at $ \alpha =1$ and $ \alpha =2$ . We find that the Stoner transition at a finite $ T$ displays new features not seen at $ T=0$ . The most interesting one is the reentrant behavior, where the ordered state emerges as temperature is increased. This behavior develops at $ \alpha >1.4$ and the range where it holds increases with $ \alpha$ . We conjecture that the reentrant behavior is the fundamental feature of the Stoner transition in 2D, not sensitive to the details of the electronic structure.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
28 pages, 9 figures
Spatiotemporal organization of chemical oscillators via phase separation
New Submission | Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Jonathan Bauermann, Giacomo Bartolucci, Artemy Kolchinsky
We study chemical oscillators in the presence of phase separation. By imposing timescale separation between slow reactions and fast diffusion, we define a dynamics at phase equilibrium for the relevant degrees of freedom. We demonstrate that phase separation affects reaction kinetics by localizing reactants within phases, allowing for control of oscillator frequency and amplitude. The analysis is validated with a spatial model. Finally, relaxing the timescale separation between reactions and diffusion leads to waves of phase equilibria at mesoscopic scales.
Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft), Pattern Formation and Solitons (nlin.PS), Biological Physics (physics.bio-ph)
Beyond fragmented dopant dynamics in quantum spin lattices: Robust localization and sub-diffusion
New Submission | Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Mingru Yang, Sajant Anand, Kristian Knakkergaard Nielsen
The motion of dopants in magnetic spin lattices has received tremendous attention for at least four decades due to its connection to high-temperature superconductivity. Despite these efforts, we lack a complete understanding of their behavior, especially out-of-equilibrium and at nonzero temperatures. In this Article, we take a significant step towards a much deeper understanding based on state-of-the-art matrix-product-state calculations. In particular, we investigate the non-equilibrium dynamics of a dopant in two-leg $ t$ –$ J$ ladders with antiferromagnetic XXZ spin interactions. In the Ising limit, we find that the dopant is \emph{localized} for all investigated \emph{nonzero} temperatures due to an emergent disordered potential, with a localization length controlled by the underlying correlation length of the spin lattice, whereby it only delocalizes asymptotically in the zero temperature limit. This greatly generalizes the localization effect discovered recently in Hilbert space fragmented models. In the presence of spin-exchange processes, the dopant delocalizes according to a power-law behavior, which is strongly sub-diffusive for weak spin-exchange but which eventually becomes diffusive for strong enough exchange. Moreover, we show that the underlying spin dynamics at infinite temperature behaves qualitatively the same, albeit with important quantitative differences. We substantiate these findings by showing that the dynamics shows self-similar scaling behavior, which strongly deviates from the Gaussian behavior of regular diffusion. Finally, we show that the diffusion coefficient follows an Arrhenius relation at high temperatures, whereby it exponentially decreases for decreasing temperatures.
Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas), Disordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn), Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el), Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con)
19 pages, 12 figures
Scanning Tunneling Microscope Tip-Induced Formation of Bi Bilayers on Bi$_2$Te$_3$
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
We report the formation of Bi(111) bilayer (BL) islands and crater structures on Bi$ _2$ Te$ _3$ (111) surfaces induced by voltage pulses from an STM tip. Pulses above a threshold voltage ($ +3$ V) produce craters $ \sim 0.5$ microns in diameter, similar to the size of the tip. Redeposited material self-assembles into a network of atomically ordered islands with a lattice constant identical to the underlying Bi$ _2$ Te$ _3$ surface. The island size monotonically decreases over several microns from the pulse site, until the pristine Bi$ _2$ Te$ _3$ surface is recovered. We assign these islands to Bi BL based on atomic resolution images, analysis of step heights, and tunneling spectroscopy. The dependence of bilayer formation on bias polarity and the evidence for defect diffusion together suggest a mechanism driven by the interplay of field evaporation and tunneling-current-induced Joule heating.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall), Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
14 pages, 7 figures
External magnetic field suppression of carbon diffusion in iron
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Luke J. Wirth, Dallas R. Trinkle (Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA)
External magnetic fields reduce diffusion of carbon in BCC iron, but the physical mechanism is not understood. Using DFT calculations with magnetic moments sampled from a Heisenberg model, we calculate diffusivities of carbon in iron at high temperatures and with field. Our model reproduces the measured suppression of diffusivity from field. We find that increasing magnetic disorder flattens the electron density of states compared with the ferromagnetic case, which distorts the octahedral cages around carbon, lowering the activation barrier to diffusion; an applied field reverses these trends.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
13 pages, 5 figures, 8 pages supplemental material with 3 figures
Optically Reconfigurable Electrodes for Dielectric Elastomer Actuators
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Gino Domel, Ehsan Hajiesmaili, David R. Clarke
An optically addressable and configurable electrode architecture for dielectric elastomer actuators and arrays is described. It is based on embedding photoconductive, zinc oxide (ZnO) nanowires in the DEA to create electrodes. Normally, a network of ZnO nanowires is electrically insulating but it becomes conductive in the presence of UV light with a photon energy above the optical bandgap. Taking advantage of this characteristic optical induced switching behavior, we create an optically addressable electrode design, and create new, localized capacitor structures. As the ZnO nanowires are only conductive where, and when, illuminated the effective electrode structure is not fixed, as is the case with CNT and carbon-black electrodes currently used in DEAs. This provides greater, previously unattainable, freedom in the design of dielectric elastomer actuators for soft robotics and devices.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Applied Physics (physics.app-ph)
31 pages, 9 figures, 3 supplementary figures
Observation of a phase transition in KTaO$_3$ induced by residual niobium impurities
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Zijun C. Zhao, Jeremy F. Bourhill, Maxim Goryachev, Aleksey Sadekov, Michael E. Tobar
We report the observation of a phase transition in a KTaO$ _3$ crystal, corresponding to a paraelectric-to-ferroelectric transition. The crystal was placed inside a copper cavity to form a dielectric-loaded microwave cavity, and the transition was observed to occur near 134 K. As the cavity was cooled, the frequencies of both transverse electric and transverse magnetic resonant modes decreased (corresponding to an increase in permittivity). The mode frequencies converge at the transition temperature (near 134 K) and, below this point, reverse their tuning direction, increasing their frequency with decreasing temperature. This behaviour corresponds to a decrease in dielectric permittivity and is atypical for pure KTaO$ _3$ . To investigate further, we conducted impurity analysis using Laser Ablation inductively coupled mass spectrometry (LA-ICPMS), revealing a significant concentration ($ \sim$ 7%) of niobium (Nb) in the crystal. This suggests that the observed phase transition is driven by residual Nb impurities, which induce ferroelectricity in an otherwise paraelectric host. Similar crystals with a lower concentration ($ <$ 2%) did not undergo a phase transition but exhibited a loss peak at this temperature. These findings have practical implications for the design of tunable devices, for example, resonator-based dark matter detectors, where low-loss material phase stability and tunability are crucial.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Instrumentation and Detectors (physics.ins-det), Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
Unveiling two-dimensional electron systems on ultra-wide bandgap semiconductor $\mathrmβ$-Ga$_2$O$_3$
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Ryu Yukawa, Hiroshi Mizuseki, Suryo Santoso Putro, Yé-Jin L. Lee, Yuuki Masutake, Hinako Telengut, Boxuan Li, Hajime Yamamoto, Tadashi Abukawa, Junya Yoshida, Vladimir V. Kochurikhin, Taketoshi Tomida, Masanori Kitahara, Takahiko Horiai, Akira Yoshikawa, Nobuhiko Sarukura, Noriko Chikumoto, Toshihiko Shimizu, Marilou Cadatal-Raduban, Yoshiyuki Kawazoe, Ryuhei Kohno, Hiroshi Kumigashira, Takuto Nakamura, Tatsuhiko Kanda, Akira Yasui, Miho Kitamura, Hideaki Iwasawa, Koji Horiba, Kenichi Ozawa
Ultra-wide bandgap (UWBG) semiconductors promise to revolutionize power electronics, yet a fundamental understanding of their interfacial electronic structure has been hindered by the absence of direct experimental observation. Here, we report the first momentum-resolved observation of two-dimensional electron systems on a UWBG material, enabled by angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) on high-purity $ \beta$ -Ga$ _2$ O$ 3$ single crystals. Alkaline-metal-induced electron doping forms an isotropic circular Fermi surface, achieving a sheet carrier density of up to $ 1.0\times10^{14}$ $ \mathrm{cm}^{-2}$ . Self-consistent Poisson-Schrödinger calculations show that the electrons are confined within 1.2 nm of the surface and reveal an internal electric field of $ 18$ MV cm$ ^{-1}$ . Crucially, our measurements reveal a pronounced renormalization of the electronic band structure: a series of carrier-density-dependent ARPES measurements shows that as the carrier density increases from $ 2\times10^{13}$ to $ 1.0\times10^{14}$ $ \mathrm{cm}^{-2}$ , the effective mass anomalously increases, nearly doubling to a final value of 0.48 $ \textit{m}{\mathrm{e}}$ . This trend is notably opposite to that reported for other oxide semiconductors, pointing towards a unique renormalization mechanism in $ \beta$ -Ga$ _2$ O$ _3$ . Our findings establish the interfacial electronic structure of $ \beta$ -Ga$ _2$ O$ _3$ and demonstrate that UWBG materials provide fertile ground for exploring carrier-density-driven electronic phenomena, opening new avenues for future quantum and power devices.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
18 pages, 3 figures
Nd3+ Doping-induced Leakage Currents Suppression in High-temperature 0.7BiFeO3-0.3BaTiO3 Lead-free Piezoceramics
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Jinming Liu, Mingtong Chen, Zhengbao Yang
BiFeO3 has attracted much attention as a potential candidate for replacing conventional, lead based piezoelectric materials due to its remarkable spontaneous polarization and high Curie temperature. However, its inherent high leakage currents, which lead to low piezoelectric response and poor temperature stability, have severely limited its practical applications. In this study, lead free piezoelectric ceramics of the 0.7BiFeO3-0.3BaTiO3 (BF-BT) system were prepared, and their microstructures along with high-temperature electrical performance were modulated by introducing Nd3+. The results indicate that moderate Nd doping improves lattice symmetry and reduces oxygen vacancy-related defect dipoles, thereby effectively suppressing leakage currents at temperatures above 75°C. The Nddoped samples exhibit significantly lower leakage current densities, reduced by over 99% compared to the undoped ceramics, reaching values as low as 10-5Acm-2. They also show higher resistivity under elevated temperatures and electric fields, offering notable improvements in thermal stability over the undoped counterparts. In addition, the Nd-doped samples achieved piezoelectric coefficients as high as 172 pC N -1 at room temperature while still maintaining high dielectric and piezoelectric responses at elevated temperatures. This work not only provides an effective way to solve the leakage current problem of BF-BT ceramics in high temperature applications but also indicates a new design strategy for optimizing the high temperature stability of lead free piezoelectric materials, which shows a broad application prospect in the field of high-temperature sensors and actuators.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Systems and Control (eess.SY)
Origin of Suppressed Ferroelectricity in k-Ga$_2$O$_3$: Interplay Between Polarization and Lattice Domain Walls
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Yonghao Zhu, Zhi Wang, Junwei Luo, Lin-Wang Wang
The large discrepancy between experimental and theoretical remanent polarization and coercive field limits the applications of wide-band-gap ferroelectric materials. Here, using a machine-learning potential trained on ab-initio molecular dynamics data, we identify a new mechanism of the interplay between polarization domain wall (PDW) and lattice domain wall (LDW) in ferroelectric k-phase gallium oxide (Ga2O3), which reconciles predictions with experimental observations. Our results reveal that the reversal of out-of-plane polarization is achieved through in-plane sliding and shear of the Ga-O sublayers. This pathway creates strong anisotropy in PDW propagation, and crucially leads to topologically forbidden PDW propagation across the 120 degree LDWs observed in synthesized samples. The resulting stable network of residual domain walls bypasses slow nucleation and suppresses the observable polarization and coercive field. These insights highlight the potential for tailoring the ferroelectric response in k-Ga2O3 from lattice-domain engineering.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Zurek’s scaling-law in the Ising model out of thermal equilibrium
New Submission | Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
José Armando Pérez-Loera, Wolfgang Bietenholz
The Kibble mechanism plays a prominent role in the theory of the early Universe, as an explanation of the possible formation of cosmic strings. Zurek suggested the analogous effect in liquid helium under rapid cooling, and he conjectured - together with del Campo and Kibble - a scaling-law for the relation between the density of remnant topological defects and the cooling rate, when a system passes through its critical temperature. Such scaling-laws were indeed observed in condensed matter experiments.
Here we test the validity of Zurek’s scaling-law in a different framework. We numerically study the behavior of the Ising model (with classical spins) in 1, 2 and 3 dimensions under rapid cooling. This model does not have topological defects, so we consider the dynamics of domains instead, i.e. we measure their evolution during a cooling process down to zero temperature. For several Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms, we consistently observe scaling-laws along the lines of Zurek’s conjecture, in all dimensions under consideration, which shows that this feature holds more generally than expected. It is highly remarkable that even the exponents of these scaling-laws are consistent for three different algorithms, which hints at a physical meaning.
Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech), High Energy Physics - Lattice (hep-lat)
20 pages, LaTex, 6 figures
Quantum oscillation and topology change of the uncondensed Landau Fermi surface in superconducting CeCoIn5
New Submission | Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Sangyun Lee, Duk. Y. Kim, Andrew J. Woods, Priscila F. S. Rosa, E. D. Bauer, Filip Ronning, Shi-Zeng Lin, R. Movshovich
Metals typically have multiple Fermi surface sheets, and when they enter the superconducting state, some electrons on these sheets may remain uncondensed, or their superconducting pairs can be rapidly destroyed by a magnetic field. Detecting uncondensed electrons within the superconducting state provides key information about the underlying electronic structure; however, this task remains a significant experimental challenge. Here we demonstrate quantum oscillations from the uncondensed electrons in the heavy-fermion superconductor CeCoIn5, observed through thermal conductivity measurements with a magnetic field rotating within the tetragonal a-b plane. We detect a fine structure in thermal conductivity, characterized by multiple small resonances (oscillations) in a rotating magnetic field. Remarkably, the phase of these resonances shifted by as much as {\pi} for a field above 9.7 T where spin-density wave (SDW) order emerges and coexists with superconductivity. This phase shift is naturally explained by a change in the Berry phase of the uncondensed Fermi surface, driven by the Fermi surface reconstruction associated with the onset of SDW order. Our work unambiguously shows the existence of uncondensed electrons in the superconducting state of CeCoIn5, thus resolving a longstanding debate on this issue.
Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con)
Cooperation and competition of basepairing and electrostatic interactions in mixtures of DNA nanostars and polylysine
New Submission | Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Gabrielle R. Abraham, Tianhao Li, Anna Nguyen, William M. Jacobs, Omar A. Saleh
Phase separation in biomolecular mixtures can result from multiple physical interactions, which may act either complementarily or antagonistically. In the case of protein–nucleic acid mixtures, charge plays a key role but can have contrasting effects on phase behavior. Attractive electrostatic interactions between oppositely charged macromolecules are screened by added salt, reducing the driving force for coacervation. By contrast, base-pairing interactions between nucleic acids are diminished by charge repulsion and thus enhanced by added salt, promoting associative phase separation. To explore this interplay, we combine experiment and theory to map the complex phase behavior of a model solution of poly-L-lysine (PLL) and self-complementary DNA nanostars (NS) as a function of temperature, ionic strength, and macromolecular composition. Despite having opposite salt dependences, we find that electrostatics and base pairing cooperate to stabilize NS–PLL coacervation at high ionic strengths and temperatures, leading to two-phase or three-phase coexistence under various conditions. We further observe a variety of kinetic pathways to phase separation at different salt concentrations, resulting in the formation of nonequilibrium aggregates or droplets whose compositions evolve on long timescales. Finally, we show that the cooperativity between electrostatics and base pairing can be used to create multiphase coacervates that partition various NS species at intermediate salt concentrations. Our results illustrate how the interplay between distinct interaction modes can greatly increase the complexity of the phase behavior relative to systems with a single type of interaction.
Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft), Biomolecules (q-bio.BM)
Include supplementary information
Spatial filtering of interlayer exciton ground state in WSe2/MoS2 heterobilayer
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Disheng Chen, Kevin Dini, Abdullah Rasmita, Zumeng Huang, Qinghai Tan, Hongbing Cai, Ruihua He, Yansong Miao, Timothy C. H. Liew, Wei-bo Gao
Long-life interlayer excitons (IXs) in transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) heterostructure are promising for realizing excitonic condensates at high temperatures. Critical to this objective is to separate the IX ground state (the lowest energy of IX state) emission from other states emissions. Filtering the IX ground state is also essential in uncovering the dynamics of correlated excitonic states, such as the excitonic Mott insulator. Here, we show that the IX ground state in WSe2/MoS2 heterobilayer can be separated from other states by its spatial profile. The emissions from different moire IX modes are identified by their different energies and spatial distributions, which fits well with the rate-diffusion model for cascading emission. Our results show spatial filtering of the ground state mode and enrich the toolbox to realize correlated states at elevated temperatures.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)
28 pages, 18 figures, 1 table, journal
Stability by Design: Atomistic Insights into Hydrolysis-Driven MOF Degradation
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Ashok Yacham, Tarak K. Patra, Jithin John Varghese, Richa Sharma
Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are porous materials formed by interconnected metal atoms via organic linkers, resulting in high surface area and tuneable porosity, making them exceptional candidates for CO2 capture. However, their stability and efficacy in humid conditions are not fully understood, often limiting their commercial applications. Here, we estimate the stability of seven common Zn-based MOFs using reactive molecular dynamics (MD) along with metadynamics sampling to determine hydrolysis energetics at conditions representative of low water concentration limit. The reactions’ free energy surfaces (FESs) showed that water stability strongly depends on its linker size and chemistry. Our findings indicate zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (ZIFs), a subclass of MOFs, exhibit higher water stability than iso-reticular metal-organic frameworks (IRMOFs). We further attempt to correlate hydrolysis energy barrier with the physicochemical descriptors of these MOFs. This study provides insights into the critical factors and fundamental implications for developing stable porous materials for carbon capture technologies.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Dynamic correlations in a polar fluid: confronting stochastic density functional theory to simulations
New Submission | Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Sleeba Varghese, Pierre Illien, Benjamin Rotenberg
Understanding the dynamic behavior of polar fluids is essential for modeling complex systems such as electrolytes and biological media. In this work, we develop and apply a Stochastic Density Functional Theory (SDFT) framework to describe the polarization dynamics in the Stockmayer fluid, a prototypical model of dipolar liquids consisting of Lennard-Jones particles with embedded point dipoles. Starting from the overdamped Langevin dynamics of dipolar particles, we derive analytical expressions for the intermediate scattering functions and dynamic structure factors of the longitudinal and transverse components of the polarization field, within linearized SDFT. To assess the theory’s validity, we compare its predictions with results from Brownian Dynamics simulations of the Stockmayer fluid. We find that SDFT captures the longitudinal polarization fluctuations accurately, while transverse fluctuations are underestimated due to the neglect of dipolar correlations. By incorporating the Kirkwood factor into a modified SDFT, we recover quantitative agreement for both components across a range of dipole strengths. This study highlights the utility of SDFT as a coarse-grained description of polar fluid dynamics and provides insights into the role of collective effects in polarization relaxation.
Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft), Chemical Physics (physics.chem-ph), Computational Physics (physics.comp-ph)
13 pages and 5 figures
The Solid-state Physics of Rydberg-dressed Bosonic Mixtures
New Submission | Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Yi-Ming Duan, Liang-Jun He, Fabian Maucher, Yong-Chang Zhang
We explore phases of two-component Rydberg-dressed Bose-Einstein condensates in three spatial dimensions. The competition between the effective ranges of inter- and intra-component soft-core interactions leads to a rich variety of ground states. These include states resembling ionic compounds with face-centered cubic or simple cubic lattice structure. Upon increasing the scattering length, the dimensionality of the symmetry-breaking is lower due to the suppression of large densities, leading to segregated planar or tubular density profiles. We also show that these states are not only stable ground states, but can also emerge dynamically upon time evolution.
Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas)
5 pages, 4 figures
Elucidating the impact of point defects on the structural, electronic, and mechanical behaviour of chromium nitride
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Barsha Bhattacharjee, Emilia Olsson
Defect engineering offers an important route to property tuning of nanostructured coatings for advanced applications. Transition metal nitrides, such as CrN, are widely used for their mechanical resilience, but their nitrogen-rich analogue CrN2 remains poorly understood, especially at the atomic scale. This study employs density functional theory to investigate the energetics as well as how intrinsic defects (vacancies, interstitials, and anti-sites) and extrinsic impurities (hydrogen and oxygen) influence the structural, electronic, magnetic, and mechanical response of CrN2, in comparison to the more commonly studied CrN. With directional N-N bonding and semiconducting character, CrN2 shows high sensitivity to defect incorporation, including local spin polarisation, gap states, and mechanical softening. In contrast, CrN’s metallic character enables effective screening of similar defects, preserving its structural, magnetic, electronic and mechanical integrity. However, hydrogen induces anisotropic distortions and mechanical degradation in CrN, while oxygen enhances hardness. These findings reveal how defect chemistry and bonding anisotropy govern mechanical performance, with implications for nanoscale control in coatings design.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Exact model of aerotactic band: From Fokker-Planck equation to band structure and fluid flow
New Submission | Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
A variety of bacterial species spontaneously assemble in aerotactic band, local accumulation at a fixed distance from the air-water interface. Although the phenomenon is long known, its modelling is so far limited to mesoscopic, one-dimensional or numerical descriptions. We investigate band properties at the microscopic scale using exact solutions to the Fokker-Planck equation. First, we show that the interplay between oxygen consumption and tumbling modulation is governed by a third-order nonlinear differential equation relating the oxygen concentration to the aerotactic response. For two model aerotactic behaviors, we present analytical solutions and discuss the resulting band structure. Second, we investigate how an aerotactic band of magnetotactic bacteria in a magnetic field induces a spontaneous fluid flow, as observed in experiments [Marmol et al, arXiv 2025]. In the low field limit, we determine the bacterial distribution and the active stress tensor. Using the Green function of the hydrodynamic problem, we obtain a prediction for the fluid flow that is both simple and consistent with observations. Altogether, our results provide a model system of aerotactic band and solid ground to analyze aerotaxis-driven self-organization.
Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft), Biological Physics (physics.bio-ph)
19 pages, 8 figures
Unconventional charge density wave in Kagome metal BaFe2Al9
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Liucheng Chen, Mingwei Ma, Xiaohui Yu, Fang Hong
The charge density wave (CDW) is a macroscopic quantum state characterized by long-range lattice distortion and modulated charge density. Conventionally, CDWs compete with other electronic orders (e.g. superconductivity) and are suppressed under hydrostatic pressure. Intriguingly, the Kagome-variant metal BaFe2Al9, crystallized in a three-dimensional structure, exhibits pressure-enhanced CDW ordering, where the transition temperature (TCDW) rises from ~110 K to room temperature near 3.6 GPa. The lattice structure was checked by both powder and single crystal x-ray diffraction (XRD). The XRD data reveals an abnormal lattice expansion along a axis near 4-5 GPa upon compression. The strongly suppressed diffraction intensity and splitting diffraction spots from single crystal indicates cracking and breakdown to smaller pieces, indicative of an intrinsic first-order transition character. This anomalous response implies a CDW mechanism dominated by electron-electron and/or electron-phonon correlations, distinct from Fermi-surface nesting in conventional systems. Concomitant dome-shaped pressure-dependent resistance suggests competing electronic phases. Our work establishes BaFe2Al9 as a 3D Kagome platform with unconventional CDW behavior and strong electron-phonon coupling, which provides an alternative platform to explore the electron correlation induced exotic electronic states and other potential emergent quantum phenomenon.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el), Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con)
4 figures
Electron doping in single crystalline BaBiO$3$: BaBiO${3-x}$F$_{x}$
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Sathishkumar M, Asha Ann Abrahama, Rajesh Kumar Sahu, Soma Banik, Soham Manni
Topological insulators are a new class of insulators with conducting surface state. Most of the topological insulators are chalcogenides, where a tiny amount of chalcogen vacancy destroys the predicted bulk insulating state and results in a metallic or semimetallic bulk electrical transport. BaBiO$ _3$ (BBO) is an interesting large bandgap (0.7 eV) insulator that upon hole doping becomes a superconductor and is theoretically predicted to show a topological insulating state under electron doping. We have explored electron doping through the chemical substitution of fluorine atoms at the oxygen site. The single crystals of BBO and fluorine doped BBO were synthesized via a one-step solid-state technique. The single crystals of pure BBO and 10 % F -doped BBO (BaBiO$ _{2.7}$ F$ _{0.3}$ ) are chemically single-phase samples and crystallize in monoclinic I2/m crystal structure. The core level and valence band X-ray photoelectron spectra confirm electron doping in the 10% fluorine-doped BBO. 20 % F-doped BBO appears to be a multiphase sample, confirmed by back-scattered electron (BSE) imaging and X-ray diffraction. This article reports on the successful growth of pure and F-doped BBO using a one-step solid-state technique and discusses the effect of F-doping on structural and electronic properties.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el), Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
5 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables
Constructing material network representations for intelligent amorphous alloys design
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
S.-Y. Zhang, J. Tian, S.-L. Liu, H.-M. Zhang, H.-Y. Bai, Y.-C. Hu, W.-H. Wang
Designing high-performance amorphous alloys is demanding for various applications. But this process intensively relies on empirical laws and unlimited attempts. The high-cost and low-efficiency nature of the traditional strategies prevents effective sampling in the enormous material space. Here, we propose material networks to accelerate the discovery of binary and ternary amorphous alloys. The network topologies reveal hidden material candidates that were obscured by traditional tabular data representations. By scrutinizing the amorphous alloys synthesized in different years, we construct dynamical material networks to track the history of the alloy discovery. We find that some innovative materials designed in the past were encoded in the networks, demonstrating their predictive power in guiding new alloy design. These material networks show physical similarities with several real-world networks in our daily lives. Our findings pave a new way for intelligent materials design, especially for complex alloys.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Disordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn), Computational Complexity (cs.CC), Machine Learning (cs.LG)
5 figures
Characterizing the cage state of glassy systems and its sensitivity to frozen boundaries
New Submission | Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Rinske M. Alkemade, Frank Smallenburg, Laura Filion
Understanding the role that structure plays in the dynamical arrest observed in glassy systems remains an open challenge. Over the last decade, machine learning (ML) strategies have emerged as an important tool for probing this structure-dynamics relationship, particularly for predicting heterogeneous glassy dynamics from local structure. A recent advancement is the introduction of the \textit{cage state}, a structural quantity that captures the most likely positions of particles while rearrangements are forbidden. During the caging regime, linear models trained on the cage state have been shown to outperform more complex ML methods trained on initial configurations alone. In this paper, we explore the properties associated with the cage state in more detail to better understand why it serves as such an effective predictor for the dynamics. Specifically, we examine how the cage state in a binary hard-sphere mixture is influenced by both packing fraction and boundary conditions. Our results reveal that, as the system approaches the glassy regime, the cage state becomes increasingly influenced by long-range structural effects. This influence is evident both in its predictive power for particle dynamics and in the internal structure of the cage state, suggesting that the CS might be associated with some form of an amorphous growing structural length scale.
Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
Long-lived Photoluminescence of Photostable One-dimensional Picoperovskites
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Maximilian Tomoscheit, Julian Schröer, Jaskaran Singh Virdee, Rico Schwartz, Christopher E. Patrick, Reza J. Kashtiban, Tobias Korn
We study one-dimensional metal halide perovskite crystals encapsulated in single-wall nanotubes, so-called picoperovskites, using optical spectroscopy. Polarized micro-photoluminescence (PL) reveals bright emission from aligned bundles of picoperovskites with clear linear polarization along the bundle axis. This emission is red-shifted with respect to bulk perovskite samples using the same constituents. Temperature-dependent, time-resolved micro-PL shows extraordinarily long PL lifetimes of the picoperovskites at low temperatures, reaching several hundred nanoseconds and exceeding those of bulk perovskites by two orders of magnitude.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)
Interstitially bridged van der Waals interface enabling stacking-fault-free, layer-by-layer epitaxy
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
GunWoo Yoo, TaeJoon Mo, Yong-Sung Kim, Chang-Won Choi, Gunho Moon, Sumin Lee, Chan-Cuk Hwang, Woo-Ju Lee, Min-Yeong Choi, Jongyun Choi, Si-Young Choi, Moon-Ho Jo, Cheol-Joo Kim
Van der Waals (vdW) crystals are prone to twisting, sliding, and buckling due to inherently weak interlayer interactions. While thickness-controlled vdW structures have attracted considerable attention as ultrathin semiconducting channels, the deterministic synthesis of stacking-fault-free multilayers remains a persistent challenge. Here, we report the epitaxial growth of single-crystalline hexagonal bilayer MoS2, enabled by the incorporation of Mo interstitials between layers during layer-by-layer deposition. The resulting bilayers exhibit exceptional structural robustness, maintaining their crystallinity and suppressing both rotational and translational interlayer misalignments even after transfer processes. Atomic-resolution analysis reveals that the Mo interstitials are located at a single sublattice site within the hexagonal lattice, where they form tetrahedral bonds with sulfur atoms from both MoS2 layers, effectively anchoring the interlayer registry. Density functional theory calculations further indicate that these Mo atoms act as nucleation centers, promoting the selective formation of the hexagonal bilayer phase. This approach offers a robust strategy for the deterministic growth of multilayer vdW crystals with precisely controlled stacking order and enhanced interlayer coupling.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
48 pages, 17 figures
A general model for frictional contacts in colloidal systems
New Submission | Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Kay Hofmann, Kay-Robert Dormann, Benno Liebchen, Friederike Schmid
In simulations of colloidal matter, frictional contacts between particles are often neglected. For spherical colloids, such an approximation can be problematic, since frictional contacts couple translational and rotational degrees of freedom, which may affect the collective behavior of, e.g., colloids under shear and chiral active matter. Deterministic models for frictional contacts have been proposed in the granular matter community. On the colloidal scale, however, thermal fluctuations are important and should be included in a thermodynamically consistent manner. Here, we derive the correct fluctuation-dissipation relation for linear and nonlinear instantaneous frictional contact interactions. Among other, this generates a new generalized class of dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) thermostats with rotation-translation coupling. We demonstrate effects of frictional contact interactions using the examples of Poiseuille flow and motility induced phase separation in active Langevin particles.
Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft), Computational Physics (physics.comp-ph)
Defect-Mediated Melting of Square-Lattice Solids
New Submission | Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
William Grampel, Daniel Podolsky
The Kosterlitz-Thouless-Halperin-Nelson-Young (KTHNY) theory successfully explains the melting mechanism of two-dimensional isotropic lattices as a two-step process driven by the unbinding of topological defects. By considering the elastic theory of the square lattice, we extend the KTHNY theory to melting of square lattice solids. In addition to the familiar elastic constants that govern the theory – the Young’s modulus and the Poisson ratio – a third constant controlling the anisotropy of the medium emerges. This modifies both the logarithmic and angular interactions between the topological defects. Despite this modification, the extended theory retains the qualitative features of the isotropic case, predicting a two-step melting with an intermediate tetratic phase. However, some subtle differences arise, including a modified bound on the translational correlation exponent and the absence of universal values for the Young’s modulus at the solid-to-tetratic phase transition.
Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft), Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)
12 pages, 2 figures
Scarred ferromagnetic phase in the long-range transverse-field Ising model
New Submission | Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Ángel L. Corps, Armando Relaño
We report the existence of a large set of ferromagnetic scarred states in the one-dimensional transverse-field Ising model with long-range interactions, in a regime with no ferromagnetic phase at finite temperature. These scarred states are distributed over different spectral regions, surrounded by paramagnetic states. We show that simple initial conditions, consisting in a few small magnetic domains, selectively populate these scarred states. This leads to the appearance of a special dynamical phase, which we call scarred ferromagnetic phase. As a consequence, initial states with a small number of small magnetic domains evolve towards ferromagnetic equilibrium states, whereas initial states with larger domains or no magnetic structure relax to the expected thermal paramagnetic equilibrium state.
Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech), Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
7 pages, 4 figures
Miniaturized and robust tunable monochromatic magneto-optical platform for pulsed magnetic fields
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Lev Bergsma, Zhuo Yang, Bei Sun, Yasuhiro H. Matsuda, Koichi Kindo, Hiroshi Kageyama, Hiroaki Ueda, Henrik M. Ronnow, Atsuhiko Miyata
Tunable monochromatic magneto-transmission is one of the most established magneto-optical techniques, particularly well suited for pulsed magnetic fields. It employs fixed-wavelength monochromatic light as the probe, while the magnetic field is swept to bring the sample into resonance with the photon energy. The key component of this setup is a tunable laser system, typically consisting of a Ti:sapphire laser coupled with an optical parametric oscillator. However, such laser systems are often bulky, expensive, and inherently unstable, which significantly limits their widespread application in magneto-optical laboratories. In this work, we develop a high-accuracy, cost-effective, and compact tunable monochromatic magneto-transmission system based on a combination of a laser-driven white light source and a mini monochromator, and demonstrate its feasibility and performance in a millisecond-range pulsed magnetic field condition. To verify the accuracy of this new and simplified setup, we performed Faraday rotation measurements on the geometrically frustrated spin system CdCr2O4, as well as magneto-transmission experiments on the Shastry-Sutherland lattice antiferromagnet SrCu2(BO3)2. These results show excellent agreement with previous reports, confirming the reliability and precision of the new setup.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
6 pages, 4 figures
A sublattice Stokes polarimeter for bipartite photonic lattices
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Martin Guillot, Cédric Blanchard, Nicolas Pernet, Martina Morassi, Aristide Lemaître, Luc Le Gratiet, Abdelmounaim Harouri, Isabelle Sagnes, Jacqueline Bloch, Sylvain Ravets
The concept of pseudo-spin provides a general framework for describing physical systems featuring two-component spinors, including light polarization, sublattice degrees of freedom in bipartite lattices, and valley polarization in 2D materials. In all cases, the pseudo-spin can be mapped to a Stokes vector on the Poincaré sphere. Stokes polarimeters for measuring the polarization of light are a powerful tool with a wide range of applications both in classical and quantum science. Generalizing Stokes polarimetry to other spinor degrees of freedom is thus a challenge of prime importance. Here, we introduce and demonstrate a Stokes polarimeter for the sublattice polarization in a bipartite photonic lattice. Our method relies on k-space photoluminescence intensity measurements under controlled phase shifts and attenuations applied independently to each sublattice. We implement our method using honeycomb arrays of coupled microcavities realizing photonic analogs of graphene and hexagonal boron nitride. Using our sublattice polarimeter, we reconstruct the Bloch modes in amplitude and phase across the Brillouin zone, achieving sub-linewidth precision in the determination of their eigenenergies, including near band touching points. This enables full access to the system Bloch Hamiltonian and quantum geometric tensor. Our approach can readily be extended to more complex systems with additional internal degrees of freedom, enabling experimental investigations of trigonal warping, Chern insulating phases, and Euler-class topology in multigap systems.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall), Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas), Optics (physics.optics)
Exciton photoemission from a ground state of a solid Ta2Pd3Te5
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Siwon Lee, Kyung-Hwan Jin, SeongJin Kwon, Hyunjin Jung, Choongjae Won, Sang-Wook Cheong, Gil Young Cho, Jaeyoung Kim, Han Woong Yeom
Excitons are bosonic quasiparticles with a variety of applications in optoelectronics, photosyn thesis, and dissipationless informatics, and their lifetime can become sufficiently long to form a quantum condensate. While exciton condensation has been predicted to occur as a ground state of a solid, so called an excitonic insulator, whose material realization has been elusive. Here we report the observation of direct photoemission signals from excitons in a ground state of a very recent excitonic insulator candidate Ta2Pd3Te5 below its metal-insulator transition temperature using orbital-selective angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. It is confirmed that the excitons have a lower energy than the valence band maximum to possibly drive the phase transition. This measurement further discloses the size and the unusual odd parity of the exciton wave function. The present finding opens an avenue toward applications of coherent excitons in solid systems and searching for exotic quantum phases of exciton condensates.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
“Odd” Toric Code in a tilted field: Higgs-confinement multicriticality, spontaneous self-duality symmetry breaking, and valence bond solids
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Umberto Borla, Ayush De, Snir Gazit
We investigate the quantum phase diagram of an odd'' variant of the two-dimensional Ising Fradkin--Shenker model, characterized by a uniform background of static $ e$ and $ m$ charges. Using large-scale tensor network and exact diagonalization methods, we determine the topology of the phase diagram, identifying an odd’’ deconfined phase, confinement- and Higgs-induced valence bond solids (VBS), and a trivial paramagnet. Most notably, we uncover an exotic multicritical point along the self-dual line, where electric and magnetic excitations are related by an enriched $ \mathbb{Z}_2$ duality. This transition is marked by the simultaneous onset of confinement, Higgs condensation, translational symmetry breaking, and spontaneous duality symmetry breaking. Within our numerical accuracy, the transition appears continuous, involving the softening of excitation gaps for $ e$ and $ m$ anyons at finite momentum. At intermediate couplings, we further identify VBS phases with enlarged unit cells, potentially indicating frustration-induced crystalline order beyond commensurate limits.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el), High Energy Physics - Lattice (hep-lat), High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th)
15 pages, 15 figures
Flat-band thermodynamics reveals enhanced performance across Otto, Carnot, and Stirling cycles
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Hadi Mohammed Soufy, Colin Benjamin
Magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene (MATBG) exhibits remarkable electronic properties under external magnetic fields, notably the emergence of flat Landau levels. In this study, we present a comprehensive analysis of MATBG’s operational phase diagram under three distinct quantum thermodynamic cycles, i.e., Quantum Otto Cycle (QOC), Quantum Carnot Cycle (QCC), and Quantum Stirling Cycle (QSC). Employing the continuum eight-band model, we evaluate the thermodynamic performance of MATBG across multiple operational modes: heat engine, refrigerator, cold pump, and Joule pump, and benchmark it against other graphene systems such as monolayer graphene, AB-Bernal stacked bilayer graphene, and non-magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene. Our findings reveal that MATBG demonstrates superior heat engine performance in QSC, while achieving high efficiency albeit with reduced work output in QOC. Even though the performance of MATBG as a cold pump or refrigerator is modest in QOC and QSC, it shows notable improvement as a refrigerator in QCC. Additionally, we identify a highly reversible Joule pump mode in both QSC and QOC under strict adiabaticity, underscoring the unique thermodynamic behavior of MATBG.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall), High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph), Mathematical Physics (math-ph), Applied Physics (physics.app-ph), Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
17 pages, 17 figures, 5 tables
Revisiting boundary-driven method for transport: Finite-size effects and the role of system-bath coupling
New Submission | Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Mariel Kempa, Markus Kraft, Sourav Nandy, Jacek Herbrych, Jiaozi Wang, Jochen Gemmer, Robin Steinigeweg
Understanding transport in interacting quantum many-body systems is a central challenge in condensed matter and statistical physics. Numerical studies typically rely on two main approaches: Dynamics of linear-response functions in closed systems and Markovian dynamics governed by master equations for boundary-driven open systems. While the equivalence of their dynamical behavior has been explored in recent studies, a systematic comparison of the transport coefficients obtained from these two classes of methods remains an open question. Here, we address this gap by comparing and contrasting the dc diffusion constant $ \mathcal{D}{\text{dc}}$ computed from the aforementioned two approaches. We find a clear mismatch between the two, with $ \mathcal{D}{\text{dc}}$ exhibiting a strong dependence on the system-bath coupling for the boundary-driven technique, highlighting fundamental limitations of such a method in calculating the transport coefficients related to asymptotic dynamical behavior of the system. We trace the origin of this mismatch to the incorrect order of limits of time $ t \rightarrow \infty$ and system size $ L\rightarrow \infty$ , which we argue to be intrinsic to boundary-driven setups. As a practical resolution, we advocate computing only time-dependent transport coefficients within the boundary-driven framework, which show excellent agreement with those obtained from the Kubo formalism based on closed-system dynamics, up to a timescale set by the system size. This leads us to interpret the sensitivity of the dc diffusion constant on the system-bath coupling strength in an open system as a potential diagnostic for finite-size effects.
Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech), Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el), Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
11 pages, 8 figures
Graph-Coarsening for Machine Learning Coarse-grained Molecular Dynamics
New Submission | Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Soumya Mondal, Subhanu Halder, Debarchan Basu, Sandeep Kumar, Tarak Karmakar
Coarse-grained (CG) molecular dynamics (MD) simulations can simulate large molecular complexes over extended timescales by reducing degrees of freedom. A critical step in CG modeling is the selection of the CG mapping algorithm, which directly influences both accuracy and interpretability of the model. Despite progress, the optimal strategy for coarse-graining remains a challenging task, highlighting the necessity for a comprehensive theoretical framework. In this work, we present a graph-based coarsening approach to develop CG models. Coarse-grained sites are obtained through edge contractions, where nodes are merged based on a local variational cost metric while preserving key spectral properties of the original graph. Furthermore, we illustrate how Message Passing Atomic Cluster Expansion (MACE) can be applied to generate ML-CG potentials that are not only highly efficient but also accurate. Our approach provides a bottom-up, theoretically grounded computational method for the development of systematically improvable CG potentials.
Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
19 pages, 5 figures
Giant magneto-cubic in-plane Hall effect in a nonmagnetic material
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Jie Chen, Jin Cao, Yue Lu, Hang Li, Xiaodong Zhou, Xuekui Xi, Orest Pavlosiuk, Piotr Wiśniewski, Dariusz Kaczorowski, Yong-Chang Lau, Cong Xiao, Yue Li, Yong Jiang, Wenhong Wang, Shengyuan A. Yang
In-plane Hall effect (IPHE) triggered by an external magnetic field applied in the transport plane has attracted significant experimental attentions in recent few years 1-6. However, most experiments focus on magnetic materials, where the existence of magnetic ordering may complicate understanding the physics behind, and the relatively small signal magnitudes limit the application of the effect. Here, we report a giant IPHE in a nonmagnetic half-Heusler compound LuAuSn, with a magnitude exceeding all the previously reported values. A -period of IPHE and the consistent cubic dependence on the magnetic field are observed, realizing the long-sought theoretical prediction of magneto-cubic IPHE under threefold rotational symmetry7-9 in an unexpected material. The scaling law analysis and first-principles calculations indicate that extrinsic side jump and skew scattering processes from both impurity and phonon scatterings dominate the observed effect. These findings unravel a new type of magneto-nonlinear IPHE, and its large magnitude and wide-temperature operation may open the door to practical applications of IPHE.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Thermal Hall transport in Kitaev spin liquids
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Tsuyoshi Okubo, Joji Nasu, Takahiro Misawa, Yukitoshi Motome
We investigate the thermal Hall conductivity in the Kitaev model with additional interactions under a magnetic field, employing a finite-temperature tensor network method benchmarked by a thermal pure quantum state technique. We find that the thermal Hall conductivity divided by temperature, $ \kappa_{xy}/T$ , significantly overshoots the value of the half-integer quantization and exhibits a pronounced hump while decreasing temperature. Moreover, we show that the field-direction dependence of $ \kappa_{xy}/T$ is consistent with the sign of the Chern number associated with the Majorana fermions across a wide range of magnetic fields. We also demonstrate that the additional off-diagonal interactions, known as the $ \Gamma$ and $ \Gamma^{\prime}$ terms, considerably affect $ \kappa_{xy}/T$ . In particular, we show that positive $ \Gamma$ and negative $ \Gamma^{\prime}$ lead to a remarkable enhancement in the intermediate temperature region. From the comparison with the classical counterpart, we reveal that the effects of the $ \Gamma$ term go beyond the classical picture, indicating significant quantum fluctuation effects, while those of the $ \Gamma^\prime$ term are well captured at the classical level. These comprehensive analyses indicate that the enhanced thermal Hall response is consistently explained by dominant contributions from topological Majorana fermions, even within the polarized regime beyond the critical field. Our approach not only establishes a robust theoretical framework for understanding the thermal Hall transport in Kitaev materials such as $ \alpha$ -RuCl$ _{3}$ , but also offers a promising pathway to bridge the gap between theories and experiments across a wide range of strongly correlated materials.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
25 pages, 24 figures
Microstructure of Silicon Anodes in Solid-State Batteries – From Crystalline to Amorphous
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Shamail Ahmed, Federico Rossi, Hanyu Huo, Johannes Haust, Franziska Hueppe, Juergen Belz, Andreas Beyer, Juergen Janek, Kerstin Volz
Silicon offers great promise as a potential anode active material and the optimum alternative to lithium metal in all-solid-state lithium-ion batteries. However, its practical application is limited by severe volume expansion (~300%) during lithiation, leading to cracking upon delithiation. In this study, we investigated the microstructural evolution of microcrystalline silicon electrodes in a solid-electrolyte-free environment using cryogenic scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) during electrochemical cycling. A controlled workflow prevents ambient exposure, and cryo-TEM ensures structural integrity. After the first lithiation, the electrode shows a heterogeneous mix of crystalline Li15Si4, various amorphous LixSi phases, and residual crystalline silicon. After delithiation, the structure becomes predominantly amorphous with thread-like features and minimal remaining crystallinity. By the 10th delithiation, the microstructure is more uniform, with thread-like regions mainly at grain boundaries. Our results reveal that starting from a crystalline phase, a stationary microstructure emerges in bulk silicon only after several cycles. Thus, to have a more controlled behavior of the electrode and minimize cracking, the starting material should be carefully chosen along with an optimized electrode architecture to help stabilize the microstructure throughout cycling.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
False signatures of non-ergodic behavior in disordered quantum many-body systems
New Submission | Disordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Adith Sai Aramthottil, Ali Emami Kopaei, Piotr Sierant, Lev Vidmar, Jakub Zakrzewski
Ergodic isolated quantum many-body systems satisfy the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH), i.e., the expectation values of local observables in the system’s eigenstates approach the predictions of the microcanonical ensemble. However, the ETH does not specify what happens to expectation values of local observables within an energy window when the average over disorder realizations is taken. As a result, the expectation values of local observables can be distributed over a relatively wide interval and may exhibit nontrivial structure, as shown in [Phys. Rev. B \textbf{104}, 214201 (2021)] for a quasiperiodic disordered system for site-resolved magnetization. We argue that the non-Gaussian form of this distribution may \textit{falsely} suggest non-ergodicity and a breakdown of ETH. By considering various types of disorder, we find that the functional forms of the distributions of matrix elements of the site-resolved magnetization operator mirror the distribution of the onsite disorder. We argue that this distribution is a direct consequence of the local observable having a finite overlap with moments of the Hamiltonian. We then demonstrate how to adjust the energy window when analyzing expectation values of local observables in disordered quantum many-body systems to correctly assess the system’s adherence to ETH, and provide a link between the distribution of expectation values in eigenstates and the outcomes of quench experiments.
Disordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn), Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech), Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
12pp of fascinating text including references, 11 figs, comments most welcome
Chemical Treatment-Induced Indirect-to-Direct Bandgap Transition in MoS2: Impact on Optical Properties
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Yusuf Kerem Bostan, Elanur Hut, Cem Sanga, Nadire Nayir, Ayse Erol, Yue Wang, Fahrettin Sarcan
The unique electrical and optical properties of emerging two-dimensional transition metal dichal-cogenides (TMDs) present compelling advantages over conventional semiconductors, including Si, Ge, and GaAs. Nevertheless, realising the full potential of TMDs in electronic and optoelectronic devices, such as transistors, light-emitting diodes (LEDs), and photodetectors, is con-strained by high contact resistance. This limitation arises from their low intrinsic carrier concen-trations and the current insufficiency of doping strategies for atomically thin materials. Notably, chemical treatment with 1,2-dichloroethane (DCE) has been demonstrated as an effective post-growth method to enhance the n-type electrical conductivity of TMDs. Despite the well-documented electrical improvements post-DCE treatment, its effects on optical properties, specifically the retention of optical characteristics and excitonic behaviour, are not yet clearly under-stood. Here, we systematically investigate the layer- and time-dependent optical effects of DCE on molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) using photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy and Density Functional Theory (DFT) simulations. Our PL results reveal a rapid reduction in the indirect bandgap transition, with the direct transition remaining unaffected. DFT confirms that chlorine (Cl) atoms bind to sulphur vacancies, creating mid-gap states that facilitate non-radiative recom-bination, explaining the observed indirect PL suppression. This work demonstrates DCE’s utility not only for n-type doping but also for optical band structure engineering in MoS2 by selec-tively suppressing indirect transitions, potentially opening new avenues for 2D optoelectronic device design.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Optics (physics.optics)
Distinguishing dual lattice by strong-pulse matter-wave diffraction
New Submission | Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Fangde Liu, Wei Han, Yunda Li, Feifan Zhao, Liangchao Chen, Lianghui Huang, Pengjun Wang, Zengming Meng, Jing Zhang
Dual lattices such as honeycomb and hexagonal lattices typically obey Babinet’s principle in optics, which states that the expected interference patterns of two complementary diffracting objects are identical and indistinguishable, except for their overall intensity. Here, we study Kapitza–Dirac diffraction of Bose–Einstein condensates in optical lattices and find that matter waves in dual lattices obey Babinet’s principle only under the condition of weak-pulse Raman–Nath regimes. In contrast, the Kapitza–Dirac matter-wave diffraction in the strong-pulse Raman–Nath regime (corresponding to the phase wrapping method we developed to generate sub-wavelength phase structures in Sci. Rep. 10, 5870 (2020)) can break Babinet’s principle and clearly resolve the distinct interference patterns of the dual honeycomb and hexagonal lattices. This method offers exceptional precision in characterizing lattice configurations and advance the study of symmetry-related phenomena, overcoming the limitations of real-space imaging.
Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas)
Two-Stage Ordering and Elastocaloric Effect in TmVO$_4$
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Sayan Ghosh, Anirudha Menon, Manoranjan Kumar, Rajiv R.P. Singh
Rare-earth material TmVO$ 4$ shows ferro-quadrupolar order below a critical temperature which can be tuned by various parameters such as a magnetic field, a strain field, chemical composition, and nuclear spin coupling to its non-Kramers electronic doublets. In this work, we study a pseudo-spin-1/2 model to understand the various phases in TmVO$ 4$ . The model captures coupled electronic and nuclear orders via (i) a ferro-quadrupolar Jahn-Teller interaction, (ii) a $ B{1g}$ shear strain, (iii) a transverse magnetic field, and (iv) a weak on-site nuclear hyperfine coupling A. At zero transverse magnetic and strain fields, electronic quadrupoles undergo a second-order transition at $ T_Q$ , lowering the entropy per site from ln 4 to ln 2. At a much lower $ T_N$ ~ $ A^2/T_Q$ , virtual electronic fluctuations mediate an effective nuclear-spin Ising interaction, driving a second transition that collapses the remaining entropy. Under a transverse magnetic field, nuclear moments polarize smoothly, replacing the sharp low-T transition by a crossover. In contrast, adiabatic $ B{1g}$ strain sweeps across the two ordering temperatures yielding a pronounced two-step elastocaloric effect, highlighting TmVO$ _4$ as a tunable strain-driven solid-state refrigerant.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
Thermodynamic modeling of binaries in Cr-Fe-Mo-Nb-Ni supported by first-principles calculations
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Hui Sun, Shun-Li Shang, Shuang Lin, Jingjing Li, Allison M. Beese, Zi-Kui Liu
Thermodynamic descriptions of all binaries within the Cr-Fe-Mo-Nb-Ni system have been complied and, where necessary, remodeled. Notably, the Cr-Fe and Fe-Mo systems have been remodeled using comprehensive sublattice models for the topologically close-packed (TCP) phases of Laves_C14, sigma, and mu according to their Wyckoff positions. These refinements are supported by first-principles calculations based on density functional theory (DFT), in conjunction with available experimental data in the literature. The resulting models offer improved accuracy in describing the TCP phases. For instance, the predicted site occupancies of sigma in Cr-Fe show excellent agreement with experimental observations. The present work provides a robust foundation for CALPHAD modeling and the design of complex, multi-component materials, particularly those based on Fe-based and Ni-based alloys.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
36 pages, 7 figures in main text
Ultrafast X-ray sonography reveals the spatial heterogeneity of the laser-induced magneto-structural phase transition in FeRh
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Maximilian Mattern, Angel Rodriguez-Fernandez, Roman Shayduk, Jon Ander Arregi, Vojtěch Uhlíř, Ulrike Boesenberg, Jörg Hallmann, Wonhyuk Jo, Aliaksandr Leonau, Rustam Rysov, James Wrigley, Alexey Zozulya, Stefan Eisebitt, Anders Madsen, Daniel Schick, Jan-Etienne Pudell
Phase transitions are governed by both intrinsic and extrinsic heterogeneities, yet capturing their spatio-temporal dynamics remains a challenge. While ultrafast techniques track phase changes on femtosecond timescales, the spatial complexity and stochastic nature of the processes often remain hidden. Here, we present an experimental approach that combines well-established ultrafast hard-X-ray diffraction with a propagating strain pulse as a universal and non-invasive probe. This ultrafast X-ray sonography can capture the spatio-temporal phase heterogeneity in great detail by resolving the phase-specific strain response. We apply this approach to the antiferromagnetic-to-ferromagnetic magneto-structural phase transition in FeRh and identify the ferromagnetic phase to nucleate at the surface as narrow columnar domains of approximately $ 30,\text{nm}$ diameter. Besides reconciling the diverse experimental results in the literature on FeRh, X-ray sonography offers a versatile platform for investigating a wide range of phase transitions accompanied by structural changes.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Asymmetric trions in monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Arthur Christianen, Atac Imamoglu
Exciton spectroscopy serves as a sensitive probe of electronic states in two-dimensional semiconductors. A prominent feature in optical spectra is the trion peak arising from the binding of a charge carrier to an exciton. The splitting between the exciton and trion peaks is usually interpreted as the trion binding energy, but we theoretically show that this view is incomplete. Since dark excitons are more strongly bound than the bright exciton, the trion wave function is asymmetric and a large contribution to the measured splitting is the difference between the bright and dark exciton binding energies. Our model quantitatively explains the measured trion energies in MoSe2 and WSe2, demonstrating the importance of the internal structure of the exciton for the interpretation of the optical response of transition metal dichalcogenides.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall), Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas)
5+1 pages, 4 figures
Building Intuition for Dynamical Mean-Field Theory: A Simple Model and the Cavity Method
New Submission | Disordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Dynamical Mean-Field Theory (DMFT) is a powerful theoretical framework for analyzing systems with many interacting degrees of freedom. This tutorial provides an accessible introduction to DMFT. We begin with a linear model where the DMFT equations can be derived exactly, allowing readers to develop clear intuition for the underlying principles. We then introduce the cavity method, a versatile approach for deriving DMFT equations for non-linear systems. The tutorial concludes with an application to the generalized Lotka–Volterra model of interacting species, demonstrating how DMFT reduces the complex dynamics of many-species communities to a tractable single-species stochastic process. Key insights include understanding how quenched disorder enables the reduction from many-body to effective single-particle dynamics, recognizing the role of self-averaging in simplifying complex systems, and seeing how collective interactions give rise to non-Markovian feedback effects.
Disordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn), Biological Physics (physics.bio-ph)
33 pages, 2 figures, 5 margin figures, unpublished tutorial
Dissecting intervalley coupling mechanisms in monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides
New Submission | Other Condensed Matter (cond-mat.other) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Oleg Dogadov, Henry Mittenzwey, Micol Bertolotti, Nicholas Olsen, Thomas Deckert, Chiara Trovatello, Xiaoyang Zhu, Daniele Brida, Giulio Cerullo, Andreas Knorr, Stefano Dal Conte
Monolayer (1L) transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) provide a unique opportunity to control the valley degree of freedom of optically excited charge carriers due to the spin-valley locking effect. Despite extensive studies of the valley-contrasting physics, stimulated by perspective valleytronic applications, a unified picture of competing intervalley coupling processes in 1L-TMDs is lacking. Here, we apply broadband helicity-resolved transient absorption to explore exciton valley polarization dynamics in 1L-WSe$ {}_2$ . By combining experimental results with microscopic simulations, we dissect individual intervalley coupling mechanisms and reveal the crucial role of phonon-assisted scattering in the fast decay of the A exciton circular dichroism and the formation of the dichroism of opposite polarity for the B exciton. We further provide a consistent description of the valley depolarization driven by the combined action of Coulomb scattering processes and indicate the presence of efficient single spin-flip mechanisms. Our study brings us closer to a complete understanding of exciton dynamics in TMDs.
Other Condensed Matter (cond-mat.other)
Non-Local Correlation Effects in DC and Optical Conductivity of the Hubbard Model
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Nagamalleswararao Dasari, Hugo U. R. Strand, Martin Eckstein, Alexander I. Lichtenstein, Evgeny A. Stepanov
Conductivity is one of the most direct probes of electronic systems, yet its theoretical description remains challenging in the presence of strong non-local correlations. In this Letter, we analyze the conductivity of the half-filled single-band Hubbard model and identify the role of spatial correlations across the Mott transition. We show that in the correlated metallic regime, an accurate description of the conductivity requires not only the correct spectral function but also the inclusion of complex multi-electron processes encoded in vertex corrections. The crossover to the Mott insulating regime is marked by a vanishing contribution of vertex corrections to the DC conductivity. However, in the Mott insulating case, vertex corrections remain significant for the optical conductivity.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
11 pages, 4 figures
Enhancing far-field thermal radiation by Floquet engineering
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Huimin Zhu, Yuhua Ren, Hui Pan, Gaomin Tang, Lei Zhang, Jian-Sheng Wang
Time modulation introduces a dynamic degree of freedom for tailoring thermal radiation beyond the limits of static materials. Here we investigate far-field thermal radiation from a periodically time-modulated SiC film under the Floquet nonequilibrium Green’s function framework. We show that time modulation enables radiative energy transfer into the far field that surpasses the limit imposed by the equilibrium thermal fluctuations. This enhancement originates from the modulation-induced coupling between evanescent surface phonon polaritons and propagating modes, effectively bridging the energy and momentum mismatch through frequency conversion. Notably, even at zero temperature, the film emits a finite radiative heat flux due to nonequilibrium photon occupation generated by the modulation. The radiative output grows with increasing modulation strength, highlighting the role of external work in driving far-field emission. These results establish time modulation as an effective mechanism for bridging near-field and far-field regimes, opening new pathways for active thermal radiation control.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)
6+6 pages, 3 figures
Wrinkle Mediated Phase Transitions in In$_2$Se$_3$
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Joseph L. Spellberg, Lina Kodaimati, Atreyie Ghosh, Prakriti P. Joshi, Sarah B. King
Crystalline phase transitions in two-dimensional materials enable precise control over electronic and ferroic properties, making them attractive materials for memory and energy storage applications. In$ _2$ Se$ _3$ is particularly promising because its $ \alpha$ and $ \beta’$ phases are both stable at room temperature but exhibit distinct ferroic behaviors. However, achieving reliable reversible switching between these states remains challenging. Here, we show that controlled $ \beta’\rightarrow\alpha$ phase transitions in 2D In$ _2$ Se$ _3$ become accessible through laser-induced wrinkling, establishing a room-temperature approach for manipulating ferroic states in In$ _2$ Se$ _3$ thin films. Combined with thermal annealing for phase recovery, this approach eliminates cryogenic steps and mechanical perturbation while harnessing accumulated internal strain to generate multiphase heterostructures and direct domain reorganization. This pathway for phase transitions in In$ _2$ Se$ _3$ opens the door for further development in ferroic device architectures and phase-change memory technologies.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)
20 pages, 5 figures
Dwell-Time Model Simulation Assistance for Advancing Iron 3D Nano-Printing of Via Focused Electron Beam Induced Deposition
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Sameh Okasha, Stephen McVitie, Trevor P. Almeida
Focused electron-beam induced deposition (FEBID) has emerged as a powerful technique for shifting from direct-write fabrication of two- to three-dimensional nanostructures, which reflects a broader movement across nanotechnology as a whole. Fields such as nanoelectronics, nanophotonics, and energy storage and harvesting are poised to benefit from a new generation of greener, more versatile, and multifunctional technologies enabled by this transition to 3D structures. The availability of numerous precursors enables the deposition of a wide range of materials, including metallic, organic, semiconducting, magnetic, and superconductors. While materials fabricated using FEBID typically contain significant amounts of impurities, several strategies have been developed to achieve high purity. These include the synthesis of new precursors, optimizing growth conditions, introducing reactive gases during the growth process, and post-deposition purification this http URL iron (Fe)-based deposits are gaining particular interest due to their potential applications in nanomagnetism and spintronics, FEBID of Fe has not developed significantly due to several challenges, mainly controlling the e-beam reaction with Fe precursors which often results in low yield growth due to a slow dissociation reaction. This work advances the controlled FEBID of complex 3D Fe nanostructures by further refining the spatial dwell-time resolution map to print complex structures within nm feature accuracy, through quantitatively calibrating Monte Carlo simulations with the measured experimental growth profiles. The methodology, visualized in 3D graphs, enables high shape fidelity in Fe growth and maintains the ongoing growth across multiple complex structures through predictive tuning of model parameters based on input geometry, an outcome that was previously unachievable for Fe.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)
30 pages, 7 figures
Large anisotropic magnetoresistance in $α$-MnTe induced by strain
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Bao-Feng Chen, Jie-Xiang Yu, Gen Yin
$ \alpha\textrm{-MnTe}$ is a p-type semiconducting altermagnet with a Néel temperature near 300K. Due to the strong spin-orbit coupling and the altermagnetic symmetry, Kramers degeneracy is lifted in the valence band maxima along the $ \Gamma$ -K line and the A point. However, the energy difference is found to be small, and any small shift in the spectrum can dramatically change the overall transport behavior. Here we show that a strain modulating the [0001] axis of the unit cell by $ \sim\pm0.5%$ can significantly change the transport signature, switching the thermal window between the two regions of the valence band. When the $ \Gamma$ -K line is dominating, the planar Hall effect and the anisotropic magnetoresistance can be modulated by an order of magnitude, with the maximum up to $ \sim30%$ .
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
4 figures
Many-Body Physics from Spin-Phonon Coupling in Rydberg Atom Arrays
New Submission | Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Shuo Zhang, Langxuan Chen, Pengfei Zhang
The rapid advancement of quantum science and technology has established Rydberg atom arrays as a premier platform for exploring quantum many-body physics with exceptional precision and controllability. Traditionally, each atom is modeled as a spin degree of freedom with its spatial motion effectively frozen. This simplification has facilitated the discovery of a rich variety of novel equilibrium and non-equilibrium phases, including $ \mathbb{Z}_{\text{N}}$ symmetry-breaking orders and quantum scars. In this work, we investigate the consequences of incorporating atomic vibrations in optical tweezers, which give rise to spin-phonon coupling. For systems in thermal equilibrium, we find that this coupling leads to a new symmetry-breaking phase in the weak driving limit, as a result of induced three-spin interactions. Furthermore, we show that the violation of quantum thermalization in $ \mathbb{Z}_2$ -ordered states is suppressed when spin-phonon coupling is introduced. Our results are readily testable in state-of-the-art Rydberg atom array experiments.
Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas), Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
7 pages, 3 figures
Atomic-scale Frustrated Josephson Coupling and Multi-condensate Visualization in FeSe
New Submission | Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Nileema Sharma, Matthew Toole, James McKenzie, Sheng Ran, Xiaolong Liu
In a Josephson junction involving multi-band superconductors, competition between inter-band and inter-junction Josephson coupling gives rise to frustration and spatial disjunction of superfluid densities among superconducting condensates. Such frustrated coupling manifests as quantum interference of Josephson currents from different tunneling channels and becomes tunable if channel transparency can be varied. To explore these unconventional effects in the prototypical $ s^\pm$ -wave superconductor FeSe, we use atomic resolution scanned Josephson tunneling microscopy SJTM for condensate resolved imaging and junction tuning – capabilities unattainable in macroscopic Josephson devices with fixed characteristics. We quantitatively demonstrate frustrated Josephson tunneling by examining two tunneling inequalities. The relative transparency of two parallel tunneling pathways is found tunable, revealing a tendency towards a 0-pi transition with decreasing SJTM junction resistance. Simultaneous visualization of both superconducting condensates reveals anti correlated superfluid modulations, highlighting the role of inter-band scattering. Our study establishes SJTM as a powerful tool enabling new research frontiers of multi condensate superconductivity.
Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con), Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
14 pages, 4 figures
Ultracold high-spin $Σ$-state polar molecules for new physics searches
New Submission | Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Alessio Ciamei, Adam Koza, Marcin Gronowski, Michał Tomza
We propose high-spin $ \Sigma$ -state polar molecules assembled from ultracold atoms to probe charge-parity violating physics beyond the Standard Model. We identify YbCr as a prime candidate to search for the electric dipole moment of the electron. We show that the combination of relativistic ytterbium and high-spin chromium, amenable to magneto-association, leads to molecules with easy-to-polarize parity doublets and large intramolecular electric fields. Based on \textit{ab initio} results for molecular constants, we predict a sensitivity of $ \delta d_{\textrm{e}}= ( 6 \times 10^{-31} / \sqrt{n_{\mathrm{day}}}),e,\mathrm{cm}$ via standard spin-precession measurements, we assess the experimental feasibility, and discuss potential extensions to more advanced quantum control as well as searches of the nuclear magnetic quadrupole moment. This work paves the way to next-generation searches for new physics with ultracold molecules in both the leptonic and hadronic sectors.
Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas), Atomic Physics (physics.atom-ph)
16 pages (9 main text and 7 supplemental material), 8 figures (4 in main and 4 in SM), 7 tables in SM
Generalized non-reciprocal phase transitions in multipopulation systems
New Submission | Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Non-reciprocal interactions are prevalent in various complex systems leading to phenomena that cannot be described by traditional equilibrium statistical physics. Although non-reciprocally interacting systems composed of two populations have been closely studied, the physics of non-reciprocal systems with a general number of populations is not well explored despite the potential relevance to biological systems, active matter, and driven-dissipative quantum materials. In this work, we investigate the generic features of the phases and phase transitions that emerge in $ O(2)$ symmetric many-body systems with multiple non-reciprocally coupled populations, applicable to microscopic models such as networks of oscillators, flocking models, and more generally systems where each agent has a phase variable. Using symmetry and topology of the possible orbits, we systematically show that a rich variety of time-dependent phases and phase transitions arise. Examples include multipopulation chiral phases that are distinct from their two-population counterparts that emerge via a phase transition characterized by critical exceptional points, as well as limit cycle saddle-node bifurcation and Hopf bifurcation. Interestingly, we find a phase transition that dynamically restores the $ \mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry occurs via a homoclinic orbit bifurcation, where the two $ \mathbb{Z}_2$ broken orbits merge at the phase transition point, providing a general route to homoclinic chaos in the order parameter dynamics for $ N\geq4$ populations. The results contribute to the understanding of the novel collective behavior and provide formalism for classifying dynamic phases and their transitions in systems driven by non-reciprocal interactions.
Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft), Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)
15 pages, 7 figures
Collective synchrony in confluent, pulsatile epithelia
New Submission | Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) | 2025-07-23 20:00 EDT
Wenhui Tang, Mehrana R. Nejad, Adrian F. Pegoraro, L. Mahadevan, Ming Guo
Collective cell migration lies at the intersection of developmental biology and non-equilibrium physics, where active processes give rise to emergent patterns that are biologically relevant. Here, we investigate dilatational modes–cycles of expansion and contraction–in epithelial monolayers, and show that the divergence of the velocity field exhibits robust, large-scale temporal oscillations. These oscillatory patterns, reminiscent of excitable media and their biological analogs, emerge spontaneously from the coupled dynamics of actively pulsing cells. We find that the temporal persistence of these oscillations varies non-monotonically with cell density: synchrony initially increases with density, reaches a maximum at intermediate densities and is lost at higher values. This trend mirrors changes in the spatial correlation length of cell-cell interactions, and the density of topological defects in the system, suggesting a shared physical origin. We develop a continuum model in which a complex-valued Ginzburg-Landau-type field that governs the amplitude and phase of oscillations is coupled to local cell density. Simulations reproduce the observed behavior, revealing that local density adapts to phase patterns, reinforcing temporal coherence up to a critical density, and variations in the density of topological defects as a function of cell density. Extending our analysis to breast cancer cell lines with increasing invasiveness, we find that malignant cells exhibit longer phase persistence and fewer topological defects, suggesting a mechanistic link between temporal coherence and metastatic potential. Together, these results highlight the role of density-dependent synchrony dynamics as a fundamental, quantifiable mode of collective behavior in active epithelial matter, with implications for morphogenesis, cancer progression, and tissue diagnostics.
Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
23 pages, 13 figures