CMP Journal 2026-06-01
Statistics
Nature: 2
Nature Nanotechnology: 2
Nature Physics: 2
Nature Reviews Materials: 1
arXiv: 75
Nature
Enantioselective hydrogen atom relay via non-covalent catalyst assembly
Original Paper | Asymmetric catalysis | 2026-05-31 20:00 EDT
Navadheer Yalamanchili, Jules Hugo Alexandre, Robert L. Anderson, Giuseppe Zuccarello
Most biological functions are regulated by chiral molecules1 that contain at least one tertiary stereogenic carbon, i.e., a carbon with one C(sp3)-H bond. Hydrogen Atom Transfer (HAT)2 is a straightforward strategy to either edit3 or introduce tertiary stereocenters in multiple synthetically useful transformations,4 especially when coupled with photoredox catalysis.5,6 However, traditional de novo designs of chiral HAT catalysts that provide sufficient enantiocontrol over short-lived open-shell intermediates,7 have represented a major hurdle for the development of enantioselective HAT reactions. Here, we describe a distinct approach in which chiral HAT catalysts are obtained in situ by non-covalent self-assembly of privileged chiral phosphoric acids and commercial 2-mercaptopyridines. The phosphoric acid serves as a modular interchangeable chiral element that renders the achiral thiol effectively chiral, thereby allowing for a previously inaccessible combinatorial space of chiral HAT catalysts. This platform enabled the photochemical deracemization of 2-aryl pyrrolidines, a prevalent scaffold in active pharmaceutical ingredients. Optical enrichment occurs via enantioselective hydrogen atom relay, in which a single chiral assembly orchestrates hydrogen atom abstraction and delivery. This conceptual approach of relaying chiral information via non-covalent assembly paves the way for the discovery of numerous asymmetric radical transformations.
Asymmetric catalysis, Synthetic chemistry methodology, Stereochemistry
Passive heart-rate monitoring during smartphone use in everyday life
Original Paper | Biomarkers | 2026-05-31 20:00 EDT
Shun Liao, Paolo Di Achille, Jiang Wu, Silviu Borac, Jonathan Wang, Xin Liu, Eric S. Teasley, Lawrence Cai, Yuzhe Yang, Yun Liu, Daniel McDuff, Hao-Wei Su, Brent Winslow, Anupam Pathak, Mark Malhotra, Shwetak Patel, James A. Taylor, Jameson K. Rogers, Ming-Zher Poh
Resting heart rate (RHR) is a key biomarker of cardiovascular health and mortality1,2,3, but passively tracking it longitudinally generally requires a wearable device, limiting its availability. Here we present passive heart-rate monitoring (PHRM), a deep-learning system that uses facial video-based photoplethysmography for passive measurements of heart rate (HR) and RHR during everyday smartphone interactions. Our system was developed using 192,353 videos from 485 participants and validated on 162,546 videos from 211 participants in laboratory and free-living conditions, representing, to our knowledge, the largest validation study of its kind. PHRM outperformed state-of-the-art methods on our benchmarks. Compared with reference electrocardiograms, PHRM achieved a mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) lower than 10% for HR measurements across three skin-tone groups of light, medium and dark pigmentation, meeting industry accuracy standards; MAPE for each skin-tone group was non-inferior versus the others. Daily RHR measured by PHRM had a mean absolute error of less than five beats per minute, compared with a wearable HR tracker, and was associated with known risk factors for cardiovascular disease. These results highlight the potential of smartphones for enabling passive and equitable monitoring of heart health. To facilitate further research, we publicly release a large, annotated smartphone video dataset along with a pre-trained HR model.
Biomarkers, Physiology, Translational research
Nature Nanotechnology
Intracellular neuronal recordings across DNA tiles
Original Paper | Characterization and analytical techniques | 2026-05-31 20:00 EDT
Shulan Xiao, Sang Hoon Um, Meng Xu, Derrick Dankwa, Seongmin Seo, Jong Hyun Choi, Aleksei Aksimentiev, Leopold N. Green, Krishna Jayant
Transmembrane ionic flow through artificial ion channels is integral to the development of biohybrid electronics, such as neural interface technologies. However, achieving accurate and stable intracellular access through these synthetic analogues has remained a challenge. Here we use DNA origami tiles (0.8 nm diameter), anchored into live neuronal membranes, both with and without cholesterol tags, to demonstrate highly stable ion transport (net 2 nS), channel-like stochasticity and intracellular drug delivery without disrupting neuronal physiology. These results are supported by molecular dynamics simulations. Using a suite of patch-clamp techniques, including two-photon-targeted variants, we obtain repeatable intracellular and quasi-intracellular voltage measurements across DNA tiles, eliminating the need for membrane break-in even from thin dendritic structures (1 µm), which are inaccessible with standard electrodes. This advancement establishes an ‘outside looking in’ method to probe intracellular voltage dynamics using DNA nanostructure-based transmembrane access.
Characterization and analytical techniques, Drug delivery, Nanostructures
Hydrophobic liquid electrolyte interphases for efficient aqueous zinc batteries
Original Paper | Batteries | 2026-05-31 20:00 EDT
Guanjie Li, Shilin Zhang, Jodie A. Yuwono, Xinyu Li, Javen Qinfeng Shi, Chunsheng Wang, Zaiping Guo
Expanding the electrochemical stability window of aqueous electrolyte solutions is a viable strategy to improve battery performance. Using water-in-salt aqueous electrolyte solutions, the solid electrolyte interphase formed on the negative electrode enables an electrochemical stability window up to 3.0 V, but this often reduces ionic conductivity and increases costs. Here, to circumvent these issues, we report the use of hydrophobic and electrode-philic ether-based additives in 3-molal aqueous zinc trifluoromethanesulfonate electrolyte solutions. These additives, characterized by a weak Zn-ion solvation capability, are soluble in the aqueous electrolyte solution at low concentrations (below 2 mol%). They can be adsorbed on both positive and negative electrode surfaces, inhibiting Zn dendrite growth, forming a liquid electrolyte interphase that extends the electrochemical stability window to 3.08 V, enabling high bulk ionic conductivity (about 54 mS cm-1 at 25 °C) and ensuring the non-flammability of the aqueous electrolyte solution. This nanoengineered electrolyte approach enables a Zn||NaV3O8 single-layer pouch cell to operate 500 stable cycles (average Coulombic efficiency of 99.95%) with a specific discharge capacity retention of 80% at 500 mA g-1 and 25 °C with a calculated initial specific energy of 132 Wh kg-1 (based on the mass of the negative and positive electrode active materials).
Batteries, Electrochemistry, Energy storage, Materials for energy and catalysis
Nature Physics
Hong-Ou-Mandel interference of more than ten indistinguishable atoms
Original Paper | Quantum metrology | 2026-05-31 20:00 EDT
Martin Quensen, Mareike Hetzel, Luis Santos, Augusto Smerzi, Géza Tóth, Luca Pezzè, Carsten Klempt
When two indistinguishable bosons interfere at a beam splitter, they exit through the same output port. This quantum effect, known as Hong-Ou-Mandel interference, underpins many protocols in quantum information. It also generalizes to larger numbers of identical particles, for which interference produces characteristic many-body patterns. So far, experiments have observed the many-particle regime mainly in photonic platforms with unavoidable loss, and atomic realizations have remained challenging. Here we demonstrate Hong-Ou-Mandel interference with up to 12 indistinguishable neutral atoms in a system with negligible loss. Single-particle counting reveals parity oscillations, a bunching envelope and genuine multipartite entanglement, which are defining features of the multiparticle Hong-Ou-Mandel effect. Using the generated quantum states, we demonstrate metrological sensitivities that scale with the number of particles according to the Heisenberg limit. Our technique can be extended to larger ensembles, with wide-ranging applications from high-precision atom interferometry to multiparticle Bell tests.
Quantum metrology, Single photons and quantum effects
Single- and two-mode magnon thermal squeezing
Original Paper | Ferromagnetism | 2026-05-31 20:00 EDT
Tomosato Hioki, Kaito Tojo, Mehrdad Elyasi, Sohei Horibe, Hiroki Shimizu, Koujiro Hoshi, Takahiko Makiuchi, Gerrit E. W. Bauer, Eiji Saitoh
Squeezed states play a central role in modern precision measurement and information processing, reducing the noise through manipulating its distributions in phase space. Although squeezing has been explored in various physical systems, realization and characterization in magnetic media remain largely unexplored. Here we demonstrate the single-mode thermal squeezing of the magnetization dynamics in an yttrium iron garnet film using microwave parametric excitation. We also demonstrate two-mode thermal squeezing in the form of correlated fluctuations of magnons concentrated on the top and bottom surfaces of the film. Establishing the control of thermal squeezing in magnetic systems provides insights into the fluctuation dynamics of the magnetic order, and represents a key advance in the quest to observe quantum effects in magnetic films.
Ferromagnetism, Spintronics
Nature Reviews Materials
Towards selective recycling technologies for complex plastic waste
Review Paper | Chemical engineering | 2026-05-31 20:00 EDT
Marta Ximenis, Coralie Jehanno, Louise Breloy, Oguzhan Akin, Rita Kol, Kevin M. Van Geem, Steven De Meester, Haritz Sardón
Despite the growing volume of plastic waste, plastic recycling remains limited, hindered by a complex interplay of economic, societal and logistical challenges. Technical barriers persist, particularly in scaling laboratory innovations to industrially viable processes. Moreover, the research focus on idealized, single-polymer waste streams overlooks the complexity of real-world plastic waste streams, which are typically heterogeneous and contaminated. The development of strategies for the selective recycling of materials from complex waste streams is crucial to advancing a circular plastics economy. In this Review, we define the concept of complex plastic waste and assess recycling strategies that show potential for the selective recycling of plastic waste, namely, solvent-based recycling and depolymerization technologies. By classifying approaches according to application and evaluating their scalability and operational reliability, we identify key limitations and outline future directions for the selective and efficient recycling of industrially relevant plastic mixtures.
Chemical engineering, Pollution remediation, Polymer characterization
arXiv
Topological Phenomena Protected by Diabolical Textures
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Sayantan Mandal, Neelima Pulletikurty, Abhishodh Prakash
We present a new class of topological phenomena in inhomogeneous systems arising from the adiabatic spatial embedding of parametrized families of quantum states such as charge pumps and their generalizations. We demonstrate that each topologically distinct class of these “diabolical textures” gives rise to distinct gapped states that are separated by “trap-scaling” critical points. When the texture varies sufficiently rapidly in space, the critical line terminates abruptly, producing an “unnecessary critical” surface. We demonstrate our results using a microscopic model of non-interacting fermions with a spatially embedded Thouless pump. We study its phase diagram comprehensively and establish its stability to arbitrary perturbations, including interactions, in the vicinity of the critical regions. For systems in arbitrary spatial dimensions and global symmetries, we present a framework to systematically classify diabolical textures using Kitaev’s $ \Omega$ spectrum conjecture.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el), High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th)
10 pages, 3 figures (main text + supplementary materials)
Mean-squared displacements of rough particles in polydisperse granular gases
New Submission | Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
We investigate the diffusion coefficients and mean-squared displacements in a polydisperse granular gas in a homogeneous cooling state by considering the roughness of the particles. We study their dependence on the normal and tangential restitution coefficients. We show that the motility of particles is strongly affected by their mechanical properties and surface characteristics.
Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft), Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)
Phys. Rev. E 113, 045403 (2026)
Harnessing diamond surface features for dense and aligned NV ensembles
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Eveline Postelnicu, Lillian B. Hughes Wyatt, Tri Nguyen, Simon A. Meynell, Christine Jilly, Paul Wallace, Andrew Barnum, Ania Bleszynski Jayich, Kunal Mukherjee
Controlling nitrogen doping in diamond is key to advancing nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center devices. We harness the hillock, a typically undesirable surface feature, to incorporate high densities of grown-in, aligned NV-centers on a (001)-oriented substrate. Enhanced cathodoluminescence at hillock sidewalls is correlated via nanoSIMS to up to 1000x greater nitrogen incorporation compared to the planar film. We find that these hillocks are associated with stacking faults and edge-type dislocations, consistent with an origin in surface preparation rather than substrate screw dislocations. Yet, the growth is orderly enough that each of the four hillock sidewalls hosts a distinct NV orientation. A 1.7-2% grown-in NV/substitutional nitrogen (P1) ratio, 4x higher than typical (001)-oriented growth, is measured via NV decoherence analysis. By revealing that spontaneously formed hillocks act as natural laboratories for dense, aligned NV formation, this work motivates systematic investigation of facet-dependent nitrogen incorporation and preferential NV alignment in (001) diamond.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
18 pages, 5 figures
Kinetic phase transition modeling for metals
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Ann E. Mattsson Wills, Daniel N. Blaschke, Michael B. Prime, David R. Jones, Saryu Fensin, Abigail Hunter
We present a new phenomenological model for phase transformation (PT) kinetics in metals, the “Fermi Kinetic Phase Transition (KPT) Model”. It is designed such that it captures the main macroscopic features of our previously developed micro-structure dependent model, but at a fraction of the computational cost of the latter. Using four model parameters, the Fermi KPT model performs better than other phenomenological PT kinetics models in the literature, as shown by our present comparisons to experimental data for iron and tin.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
19 pages, 10 figures
Entanglement entropy of an acoustic black hole
New Submission | Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
P.C. van de Graaf, H.T.C. Stoof
We introduce a method to numerically compute the entanglement entropy of an acoustic black hole. It is shown that the entanglement entropy of sufficiently large subregions scales linearly with size and thus shows a volume law instead of an area law. The origin of this scaling can be traced back to the non-separable long-distance correlations due to the production of phonon pairs at the horizon. The system is shown to be locally thermal, such that the part of the entanglement entropy scaling with volume is well approximated by the thermal entropy of the outgoing Hawking radiation.
Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas), General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc)
Observation and Control of the Magnetic Photogalvanic Effect from Strongly Bound Excitons
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Xianfan Nie, Tarun Patel, Hyunggeun Lee, Chuangtang Wang, Meixin Cheng, Mingrui Lai, Bowen Yang, Matteo Pennacchietti, Shiyu Liu, Hechang Lei, Liuyan Zhao, Michael E. Reimer, Su Ying Quek, Adam W. Tsen
Photogalvanic effects arising from the quantum geometry of noncentrosymmetric materials are promising for next-generation light-harvesting devices that do not require a built-in electric field. Recent theories predict photogalvanic currents generated in magnetic systems with spin-dependent symmetry breaking as well as by bound exciton states, allowing for potential magnetic field control of the photoresponse and enhanced detection of deep sub-gap signals, respectively. We demonstrate the magnetic photogalvanic effect in a bilayer CrI3 tunnel junction with both magnetic field switching and electric field tuning of interlayer symmetry. By controlling for the polarization and energy of light illumination, we disentangle the shift and injection current contributions and find that the peak response occurs under resonant excitation of strongly bound excitons in CrI3. Our results can be captured within a many-body framework of the photogalvanic effect, while our devices function as tunable, multispectral helicity- and polarization-sensitive detectors that highlight the potential of 2D magnets for future optoelectronic applications.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)
Symmetry-Resolved Second Harmonic Generation in Quantum and Functional Materials
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Xiaoyu Guo, Chang Jae Roh, Youngjun Ahn
Second harmonic generation (SHG) has evolved from a probe of noncentrosymmetric crystals into a symmetry-resolved optical method for identifying order parameters in quantum and functional materials. In particular, polarization-resolved rotational anisotropy (RA) measurements of SHG can connect nonlinear susceptibility tensors to the crystallographic and magnetic point groups of the underlying materials. This capability is especially powerful when the ordered state is weak, spatially confined, multipolar, magnetic, or hidden from conventional linear probe techniques. In this review article, we provide a comprehensive overview of RA-SHG studies across a broad range of condensed matter systems. We begin with basic theoretical background for the multipole origins of SHG radiation, the construction of nonlinear susceptibility tensors, and group-theoretical framework connecting tensor components to order parameters. We then review the applications of RA-SHG to polar materials, magnetic orders, and other hidden electronic materials. Finally, we outline challenges and future research directions for using SHG to reveal, image, and control hidden, intertwined, and nonequilibrium phases in quantum and functional materials.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
Deterministic fabrication of large-area, high-crystallinity oxide moire superlattices
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Reza Ghanbari, Eli Rodrigues, Young-Hoon Kim, Konnor Koons, Yan Li, Kabelo Lebogang, Yiming Ding, Doug Barefoot, Yueyin Wang, Yin Liu, Hua Zhou, Miaofang Chi, Ruijuan Xu
Oxide twistronics extends moire engineering beyond van der Waals materials, offering a promising platform for accessing emergent interfacial phenomena arising from the strong coupling of lattice, charge, and orbital degrees of freedom in complex oxides. However, deterministic fabrication of high-crystallinity oxide moire superlattices over large lateral dimensions remains challenging due to the three-dimensional bonding network of oxides. Here, we demonstrate a scalable, generalized fabrication strategy that enables the formation of high-crystallinity oxide moire superlattices with clean, chemically bonded interfaces and precisely controlled twist angles down to nominal values of 0.1 degree, achieving sub-degree twist-angle accuracy across large contiguous lateral dimensions approaching the millimeter scale. Using NaNbO3 as a model system, we show that the resulting interlayer coupling drives pronounced structural reconstruction that modifies both the phase structure and ferroelectric domain configuration. Synchrotron-based X-ray 3D reciprocal space mapping reveals the emergence of a single-phase state in twisted bilayers, in contrast to the mixed-phase structure observed in single-layer membranes prior to twist assembly. The structural signatures are further consistent with gradual lattice rotation distributed along the thickness direction that may accommodate interfacial shear strain, distinct from reconstruction observed in van der Waals moire systems, which primarily occurs through in-plane stacking rearrangement. This collective lattice response is correlated with twist-dependent nanoscale electromechanical modulations observed by piezoresponse force microscopy. These results establish a scalable materials platform for oxide twistronics and open new pathways towards integrating twist-engineered complex oxides into practical, macroscale device architectures.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Wetting as an emergent property of water: reformulating Young equation on molecular grounds
New Submission | Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Nicolas Loubet, Gustavo Appignanesi
Young equation provides a remarkably successful macroscopic description of wetting, yet its molecular origin (particularly for water) has remained elusive for over two centuries. Here we make the molecular basis of aqueous wetting explicit by reformulating it in terms of a molecular wetting coefficient, omega m, which quantifies how an interface compensates the intrinsic energetic cost of hydrogen-bond defects relative to bulk water. Across a broad and continuous spectrum of hydrophilicities, spanning chemically diverse experimental and model surfaces, macroscopic contact angles collapse onto a single universal master curve when expressed through omega m. This molecular reformulation closes Young and Young-Dupre relations on energetic grounds, establishing a unified and predictive physical link between wetting, adhesion, cavitation, and nanoconfined filling. By anchoring interfacial behavior to waters intrinsic hydrogen-bond energetic scales, our results reveal wetting as an emergent property of water itself, rather than a surface-specific attribute and provide a transferable molecular framework that recalibrates energetic intuition and guides the rational design of aqueous interfaces. (This document is the unedited Author version of a Submitted Manuscript subsequently accepted for publication in J. Am. Chem. Soc. For the published version, which includes a more complete molecular-thermodynamics grounding of the method see the published version)
Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft), Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall), Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Journal of the American Chemical Society (2026)
Simulations of dislocation dynamics on an atomic lattice: the effect of collision rules
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Tom Hudson, Akaraphon Jantaraphum, Patrick van Meurs
The stochastic dynamics of dislocations on a one-dimensional periodic lattice domain are considered. Two models are studied: one without a collision rule, and one which annihilates colliding dislocations if they have opposite orientation. The behaviour of both models is investigated by means of a series of numerical simulations exploring the asymptotic behaviour of these models as the number of dislocations increases. From these simulations, evidence is obtained that the discrete model with annihilation tends to a PDE for the dislocation density that accounts for annihilation. However, the discrete model without a collision rule does not appear to exhibit consistent convergence behaviour; instead, it appears that the expected PDE with conserved dislocation density appears in the limit for some parameters, but that for other parameters the density appears to follow to the evolution of the PDE with annihilation. These findings provide evidence that a careful treatment of dislocation collisions is important in discrete dislocation dynamics models.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Analysis of PDEs (math.AP)
28 pages
Nonlinear Schrodinger Equations for Dense Bose Fluid and He4 Film at Low Temperatures
New Submission | Other Condensed Matter (cond-mat.other) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
We have derived the nonlinear Schrodinger equation generalizing the Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) equa tion for dilute Bose gas. The derivation is based on the Hartree-Fock time-dependent mean-field theory with an arbitrary intermolecular interaction potential. It is shown that obtained nonlinear Schrodinger equation with appropriate redefinition of coefficients can be used for description of dense Bose fluid at low temperatures. We also present the Schrodinger type equation describing the superfluid component of helium in two fluid hydrodynamics. This approach leads to quantum correction for superfluid component of velocity in two fluid hydrodynamics. We also have derived the nonlinear Schrodinger equation for superfluid He4 film at low temperatures. It is shown that this Schrodinger type equation for superfluid He4 film leads to phonon-roton dispersion relation for elementary excitation at low temperatures.
Other Condensed Matter (cond-mat.other)
12 pp
Non-Perturbative Renormalization Group for Ising-Nematic Criticality: A Closed-Form Nonlocal Ansatz
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Hyeon Jung Kim, Kyoung-Min Kim, Ki-Seok Kim
The two-dimensional metallic quantum critical problem is a long-standing puzzle that is widely believed to hold the key to resolving ubiquitous non-Fermi liquid behavior in strongly correlated electronic systems. In this study, we present a non-perturbative renormalization group (RG) analysis of the metallic Ising-nematic quantum critical point in two dimensions, formulated directly around an intrinsically nonlocal infrared (IR) boson propagator. Rather than treating the anomalous dynamical critical exponent $ a$ as a fixed phenomenological parameter, we regard it as an intrinsic component of the fixed-point data to be determined from the internal consistency of the low-energy patch field theory under highly anisotropic scaling dimensions ($ [k_0]=a+1$ , $ [k_x]=2$ , $ [k_y]=1$ ). While the leading two-loop diagrammatics vanish identically due to kinematic pole configurations, our three-loop evaluation reveals a profound structural asymmetry between the sectors: the fermion self-energy and Yukawa vertex receive non-vanishing logarithmic corrections, whereas the corresponding bosonic counter-term remains strictly zero. Consequently, we find that no self-consistent, intersecting fixed-point solution for the exponent $ a$ exists within the three-loop truncation, failing to reproduce the physical value of $ a \approx 1.85$ observed in quantum Monte Carlo simulations. We conjecture that the cross-linked topology of the four-loop boson self-energy diagrams is exactly marginal and yields the minimal, mandatory bosonic counter-term required to restore multi-sector self-consistency. Our framework establishes a rigid multi-loop matching scheme necessary to uniquely pin down the critical exponent, and uncovers a stable phase space for field anomalous dimensions.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
A Convenient Sealing Method Using Boron Nitride Capping for Reactive Reactions
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
While quartz (SiO2) ampule sealing is commonly used in laboratories to prevent sample oxidation during synthesis, its application is limited for reactions involving highly reactive elements such as alkali, alkaline-earth, and rare-earth metals. These elements can react with SiO2 at elevated temperatures, causing compositional loss, tube failure, and experimental inconsistencies. Here, we introduce an inexpensive boron nitride (BN) cap sealing technique. This approach is readily adaptable to centrifugal separation and flux transport growth and yields superior sample quality. We demonstrate its efficacy by growing KFe2As2 and CsCr6Sb6 single crystals, the former exhibiting record-high quality, with a residual resistivity ratio (RRR) exceeding 2500, and the latter achieving significantly larger crystal dimensions than other methods. This accessible and economical method promises to accelerate the discovery of novel materials that contain reactive elements.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
15 pages, 4 figures accepted by Crystal Growth & Design
Tensor gradient flow for rod-like liquid crystals from molecular model with closure approximation by quasi-entropy
New Submission | Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Yongyong Cai, Jie Xu, Haixin Zhang
In tensor dynamics for liquid crystals derived from molecular models, a common problem is closure approximation. For rod-like molecules, the Bingham closure has proved to outperform other methods because it inherits the gradient flow structure of the molecular model, but is difficult to achieve efficient computations maintaining the gradient flow structure. We propose a closure approximation by the quasi-entropy that has been successfully applied to the free energy, based on which we construct the tensor gradient flow. The quasi-entropy closure has the same symmetry properties as the Bingham closure. The resulting tensor gradient flow is able to constrain the eigenvalues of the tensor within the physical range, guaranteeing the positive definiteness of the dissipation operator given by the higher-order tensors. The quasi-entropy closure is easy to implement since it can be reduced to minimizing an elementary function of three variables. As a result, we construct a numerical scheme preserving the eigenvalue constraints and energy dissipation, with the closure approximation decoupled from solving the scheme. Numerical simulations are carried out for the interface between the isotropic and the uniaxial nematic phase, as well as the defect evolutions, where the higher-order tensors indeed make a difference.
Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft), Numerical Analysis (math.NA), Computational Physics (physics.comp-ph)
25 pages, 6 figures
A Padding Method for Enhanced Encoding of Inorganic Structures with Varying Chemical Compositions
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Thang Dang, Haderbache Amir, Tzanakakis Alexandros, Yoshimoto Yuta
Designing novel inorganic materials through generative models remains an important challenge for material science, driven by the complexity and diversity of inorganic structures across expansive chemical compositions and structural landscape. The vast combinatorial space of inorganic compounds demands innovative, AI-driven approaches to overcome limitations in generative accuracy and efficiency. To address this, we introduce a novel method that redefines the encoding and generation of inorganic materials by utilizing domain-specific symmetry-aware representation. Our approach not only refines the representation of intricate inorganic structures but also contributes to the field of material discovery by enhancing the precision and stability of generated candidates. Central to our methodology is a novel padding technique that exploits crystal symmetry information to enhance the encoding process. By integrating Wyckoff position length-aware padding into an encoder architecture, we achieve a more robust informed representation of inorganic materials. This symmetry-driven enhancement improves deep learning models to generate stable, previously unexplored inorganic structures with superior accuracy and computational efficiency. Furthermore, we introduce an end-to-end system that leverages the machine learning potential models to seamlessly generate novel, even those unseen in the training data, and stable inorganic materials from initial data to validated output. This pipeline integrates advanced generative models with stability analysis, marking a significant leap forward in the automated exploration and design of next-generation inorganic materials. Our method improved reconstruction accuracy 5.3% in proton conductor data, and generated 63.5% more novel stable inorganic material to baseline model on the perov-5 dataset.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science (cs.CE), Computation and Language (cs.CL)
Superconductor-“Metal” Transition of One-dimensional Interacting Bosons with Ohmic Quantum Dissipation
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
The phase diagram of a system of interacting bosons (Cooper pairs) hoping on a one-dimensional (1D) lattice with onsite phase dissipation describing the Josephson tunneling to a nearby diffusive normal-metal electrode is studied. Starting from the system at commensurate lattice filling, it is shown by a combination of analytical techniques that the phase diagram contains two quantum phases: A dissipative Bose-Einstein condensate (D-BEC) or superconductor with long-range phase coherence, and a dissipative Mott insulator (D-Mott) or “metal” with exponentially decaying phase correlations in space and local imaginary-time correlations decaying as the local pairing correlations of the electrode. The D-Mott/metal phase can be described as a 1D array of dissipative boson puddles, weakly coupled by Josephson tunneling. The puddle size roughly corresponds to the length scale beyond which phase slips suppress phase coherence. The dissipative time-dependent Ginsburg-Landau theory phenomenologically used by Sachdev, Werner, and Troyer [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 92} 237003 (2004)] for the superconductor-metal transition in quasi-1D wires is derived from this microscopic puddle picture. Thus, the criticality of the D-Mott/D-BEC transition is shown to belong to the Wilson-Fisher universality class with dynamical exponent $ z\approx 2$ . At small doping, the D-Mott/metal phase remains stable due to its finite compressibility, which is computed to leading order in a perturbation expansion of the dissipation strength and the inter-puddle Josephson coupling. At larger doping, using a mapping to a pseudospin chain combined with bosonization, the D-BEC/superconductor phase is the ground state for non-vanishing but arbitrarily small dissipation. Similarities and differences with deconfinement transition of an array 1D bosonic Mott insulators in anisotropic optical lattices are also discussed.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall), Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas), Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el), Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con), Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
23 pages + 3 figures
Defect-engineered scaling of lead-free ferroelectrics with ultralow-voltage switching
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Reza Ghanbari, Jiayue Wang, Harikrishnan KP, Zixiao Shi, Aarushi Khandelwal, Konnor Koons, Eli Rodrigues, Tao Zhou, Martin Holt, David A. Muller, Harold Y. Hwang, Ruijuan Xu
Scaling ferroelectrics to nanometer thicknesses remains a central challenge for low-power, nonvolatile electronics, as leakage currents increasingly dominate with reduced dimensions. Alkali-based, lead-free ferroelectrics offer an environmentally sustainable alternative to lead-based systems, yet their scaling is severely limited by leakage arising from volatile alkali constituents. Here, we show that this intrinsic limitation can be transformed into an advantageous degree of freedom through defect engineering. By precisely modulating alkali deficiency during thin-film synthesis, we engineer clustered defect complexes that function as deep trap states, strongly suppressing leakage and enabling robust ferroelectric operation in ultrathin films down to the sub-10 nm regime at voltages below 100 mV. Our results establish defect-enabled scaling as a viable pathway for advancing environmentally benign ferroelectrics toward ultra-low-power, non-volatile electronic technologies.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
23 pages, 4 figures
Ni-O hybridization-driven electronic reconstruction across the superconducting dome in an infinite-layer nickelate
New Submission | Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Chi Sin Tang, Shengwei Zeng, Xing Gao, Zhaoyang Luo, Xiongfang Liu, Zhi Shiuh Lim, Saurav Prakash, Ping Yang, Caozheng Diao, Xinmao Yin, Changjian Li, Huajun Liu, Mark B. H. Breese, A. Ariando
Superconductivity in infinite-layer nickelates has drawn wide interest as a cuprate analogue, yet how the electronic structure evolves with hole doping remains unsettled. Here we map the doping- and temperature-dependent unoccupied states of the La-based infinite-layer nickelate La1-xCaxNiO2 using O K-edge and Ni L-edge x-ray absorption spectroscopy. Superconductivity occurs for 0.18<=x<=0.27. Near x~0.20-0.23, low-energy spectral weight redistributes: Ni3d-dominated states decrease while O2p-hybridized states increase, indicating an orbital-selective crossover in Ni-O covalency. This crossover coincides with a sign reversal of the Hall coefficient and precedes the reduction of the superconducting critical temperature at higher doping. By directly linking transport anomalies and the superconducting dome to a measurable Ni-O orbital reorganization, our results provide a key step toward a unified, orbital-resolved phase diagram for infinite-layer nickelates and a practical route to engineer superconductivity via hybridization control.
Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con), Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
13 main pages; 3 main figures; 4 supplementary pages; 5 supplementary figures
Bending-like stress induced by solder joint under uniaxial tensile testing in 2G-HTS tapes: Impact and optimization approach
New Submission | Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Dean Liu, Yue Wu, Haoliang Xiang, Xiaofen Li, Caida Fu, Chiheng Dong, Yue Zhao
The reversible stress limit (\mathit{R}{rev}) of second-generation high-temperature superconducting (2G-HTS) tapes is a critical performance indicator, typically characterized through uniaxial tensile testing. In practice, the accuracy of the measured Rrev value is often compromised by stress concentration induced by the voltage tap solder joint. The present study investigates the underlying interference mechanism using integrated experimental and numerical methods. Mechanistic analysis reveals that under uniaxial tensile loading, the local geometric inhomogeneity introduced by the solder joint induces an external, bending-like stress in the vicinity of the solder joint, transitioning from additional tensile stress in the zone adjacent to the joint to additional compressive stress in the zone remote from it. When the solder joint is attached to the front surface of the tape (the side closer to the superconducting layer), the superconducting layer experiences localized additional tensile stress, triggering premature damage and early \mathit{I}{c} degradation. Consequently, an optimized back-surface soldering approach is proposed, which positions the superconducting layer in a localized compressive zone. Experimental validation demonstrates that the proposed approach effectively mitigates testing errors for various tape configurations. Notably, for the tape with a copper layer thickness of 5 {\mu}m, the measured \mathit{R}_{rev} increased from 546 MPa to 734 MPa, corresponding to a 42% increase, and moved closer to the actual value. The findings provide essential insights for the precision characterization of the electromechanical performances (EMPs) of 2G-HTS tapes.
Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con)
Crystal Dislocations as Atomic Scale Ratchets
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Wu-Rong Jian, Yifan Wang, Wei Cai
The symmetry of a system’s response to external stimuli is a fundamental concept in physics and materials science. At the microscopic scale, breaking this symmetry to achieve a rectified response is exceptionally difficult to engineer and remains rare in nature. Conventional micromechanics models of crystalline solids assume a symmetric response to applied stress, where reversing the load simply inverts the direction of defect velocity without altering its magnitude. In this work, we report an atomic-scale, geometry-rooted mechanism that breaks this symmetry. Molecular dynamics simulations of face-centered cubic nickel reveal that dislocations containing atomic-scale jogs exhibit asymmetric mobility under opposite applied stresses, reversing the loading direction triggers significantly higher drag. This asymmetry arises from an unconventional coupling between an atomic displacement vector and the second-order tensorial eigenstrain of the jog motion mechanism. Because jogs are ubiquitous structures in plastic deformation, this discovery challenges classical descriptions of plastic deformation mechanisms, with direct implications to cyclic creep, and opens new pathways for defect engineering to enhance fatigue resistance.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)
Saturated and Anisotropic Magnetostriction in an Altermagnet
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Zhiyuan Duan, Qiyun Xu, Peixin Qin, Li Liu, Guojian Zhao, Yuzhou He, Xiaoyang Tan, Sixu Jiang, Jingyu Li, Xiaoning Wang, Qinghua Zhang, Wenhui Duan, Yong Xu, Ziang Meng, Peizhe Tang, Chengbao Jiang, Zhiqi Liu
Magnetostriction, a fundamental phenomenon bridging magnetism and mechanics, has enabled a broad spectrum of applications. For almost two centuries, it has been mainly investigated for ferromagnets. Regarding the magnetostriction of antiferromagnets (AFMs), limitedly known examples for both conventional collinear AFMs and noncollinear AFMs predominantly exhibit non-saturating magnetic-field dependence. Herein, we report an easily saturated magnetostriction effect in a prototypical altermagnet - MnTe, which is an emerging class of collinear AFMs with special crystal symmetries. For high-quality MnTe single crystals, the magnetostriction saturates under a moderate field of ~0.7 T with an intriguing two-fold-symmetry anisotropy. First-principles calculations reveal that the saturated and anisotropic magnetostriction originates from symmetry-allowed coupling between elastic strain and its Néel order parameter. These findings break the traditional wisdom on antiferromagnetic magnetostriction.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall), Applied Physics (physics.app-ph)
51 pages, 21 figures, 1 table, published at Journal of the American Chemical Society
Using graph neural networks to predict many-body interactions in amorphous materials
New Submission | Disordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Mehryar Jannesari Ghomsheh, Donald L. Koch, Sarah Hormozi
Many-body interactions govern the complex behavior of many amorphous materials, from metallic glasses to biological tissues, yet are often replaced by pairwise additive frameworks for computational efficiency. Here, we use classical density functional theory (DFT) to study a model soft glass of solvent-free polymer-grafted nanoparticles (PGNs), where the absence of solvent forces grafted chains to uniformly fill the interstitial space, generating strong angular-dependent many-body interactions between the cores. We show that NequIP, an equivariant message-passing graph neural network (GNN), learns the high-dimensional, rugged potential energy landscape of the system and reproduces classical DFT energies across a range of PGN design parameters at four orders of magnitude lower cost. Systematic analysis of GNN hyperparameters offers physical insights into the range, anisotropy, and effective body order of interactions. GNN-driven Monte Carlo simulations reveal locally favored icosahedral-like structures at equilibrium, and strikingly, recover equilibrium structures in agreement with experiments, despite the network being trained only on high-energy, out-of-equilibrium configurations.
Disordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn), Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
Terahertz Electrodynamics and Kinetic Inductance of Disordered Titanium-Vanadium Alloy Thin Films
New Submission | Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Shekhar Chandra Pandey, Shilpam Sharma, Ashish Khandelwal, M. K. Chattopadhyay
Disordered superconductors represent an important area in modern condensed matter physics, where superconductivity survives even in the presence of strong electron scattering and localization effects. Understanding how disorder modifies the high-frequency electrodynamic response is not only important from physics point of view, but is also essential for developing next-generation quantum detectors and superconducting devices. In this work, we investigate the terahertz electrodynamics of disordered Ti40V60 alloy thin films using terahertz time-domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS) to understand the relationship between disorder, quasiparticle dynamics, and kinetic inductance. By analysing the complex conductivity, penetration depth and superfluid response, we show that structural disorder can be systematically used to tune the inductive response while maintaining a robust superconducting phase. Unlike conventional nitride superconductors that require tightly controlled reactive growth conditions, Ti40V60 alloys provide a simpler and more adaptable route for tuning the superconducting energy scales directly through the deposition conditions. These findings establish Ti40V60 alloys as a promising material for kinetic inductance detectors and provide useful insights into the electrodynamics of strongly disordered superconductors.
Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con)
Living Helices in Fluctuating Polymer Chains: Cooperative Nucleation, Dynamics, and Lifetime
New Submission | Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Helical segments in polymer chains are often transient, finite, and dynamically evolving, yet their origin and stability remain incompletely understood. Here we develop a minimal coarse-grained statistical-mechanical theory that explains how such living helices emerge in fluctuating polymer systems. Using a three-state model with cooperative interactions, we show that helix formation proceeds through a multistep nucleation mechanism. An initial constrained pre-nucleus forms first, followed by cooperative stabilization that promotes the growth of finite helical segments. The resulting free-energy landscape naturally favors marginally stable helices whose size is determined by a competition between cooperative gains and nonlinear penalties arising from stiffness, torsional strain, and solvent fluctuations. By formulating the dynamics as a stochastic process in segment size, we derive analytical expressions for both formation times and lifetimes within a mean first-passage framework. For representative parameters relevant to flexible polymers and peptide segments, the theory predicts characteristic timescales in the nanosecond to sub-microsecond range. The present analysis supports a view of living helices as finite, mobile excitations whose stability is controlled by cooperativity, boundary motion, and solvent-induced fluctuations.
Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
53 pages, 2 figures
Spin Hall effect in two-dimensional materials with inverted bands and Mexican-hat dispersion
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Bagun S. Shchamkhalova, Vladimir A. Sablikov
We study the spin Hall effect in two-dimensional topological insulators with “Mexican hat” dispersion and a ring-shaped Fermi surface which are formed due to the band inversion. Electron transitions between different isoenergetic contours and the quantum metric of band states play an important role in the transport properties of such materials, since they largely determine the spatial distribution of the electron charges screening the impurity potential and the scattering probability [Phys.B, 719, 417942 (2025)]. Here we study a spin-dependent skew scattering, which is enabled by the second-order scattering processes, and show that the extrinsic spin-Hall current (SHC) can significantly exceed the intrinsic SHC arising from the Berry curvature. Furthermore, due to Mexican-hat dispersion, the SHC exhibits a very unusual dependence on the Fermi energy ($ E_F$ ). The extrinsic SHC reaches a maximum at some $ E_F$ , then decreases with increasing $ E_F$ and can even change a sign. This complicated behavior reflects an interplay of energy dependencies of such important factors as probabilities of inter- and intra-contour transitions, as well as different electron velocities in two contours.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)
8 pages,6 figures, to appear in Physica B, doi https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physb.2026.418850
Activity-Enhanced Ordering in Fluctuation-Induced First-Order Transitions
New Submission | Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Fluctuations can drive otherwise continuous phase transitions to first order through the Brazovskii mechanism. We study how these fluctuation-induced transitions are modified in active systems by introducing nonequilibrium spatiotemporally correlated noise. We show that, while the transition remains fluctuation-induced first order, activity systematically suppresses these fluctuation effects, shifting the transition to higher temperatures and rendering it increasingly weakly first order. As a result, ordering is enhanced without inducing a spinodal instability of the isotropic phase, as confirmed by direct numerical simulations. In the strong-activity limit, fluctuation effects disappear and mean-field behavior is recovered. Our results identify activity as a generic control parameter for tuning the strength of fluctuation-induced first-order transitions.
Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech), Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
Pure Spin Photocurrent in Altermagnetic Photovoltaic Battery
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Qiang Li, Shibo Fang, Zongmeng Yang, Xingyue Yang, Jianhua Wang, Rui Peng, Lin Zhu, Shuhua Wang, Dexing Liu, Min Zhang, Dahua Ren, Mai Zhang, Han Zhang, Yee Sin Ang
Altermagnets, featuring momentum-dependent spin splitting without net magnetization, provide a promising platform for spintronic functionalities beyond conventional ferromagnets and antiferromagnets. Here, we propose an altermagnetic spin photovoltaic battery consisting of a nonmagnetic semiconducting layer sandwiched between two altermagnetic electrodes. Using first-principles quantum-transport simulations, we show that a V2Te2O/ZnSe/V2Te2O junction supports a pure spin photocurrent for opposite Néel vectors in the two altermagnetic electrodes, with spin-up and spin-down photocurrents equal in magnitude and opposite in sign. The effect persists under both linearly and circularly polarized light and remains tunable with photon energy and polarization angle. Our results establish a realistic route toward light-driven pure spin-current generation in altermagnetic junctions.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)
Finite-time Scaling with Arbitrary Driving Rates: Bridging the Kibble-Zurek and De Grandi-Gritsev-Polkovnikov Limits
New Submission | Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
The pursuit of a universal description for nonequilibrium critical dynamics in quantum many-body systems stands as a central frontier in modern statistical physics. For driven critical dynamics starting far from the critical point, the well-known Kibble-Zurek (KZ) scaling holds only when the driving rate lies below an upper bound. Here we study driven dynamics restricted to the critical region, and show that robust dynamic scaling behavior exists for arbitrary driving rates. We develop a generalized finite-time scaling (FTS) framework, which provides a unified understanding on the driven dynamics for the full range of quench rates, bridging the KZ scaling in the slow-driving regime and the De~Grandi-Gritsev-Polkovnikov (DGP) scaling in the sudden-quench limit. We verify this unified FTS form through numerical simulations in both quantum critical and tricritical points. The good agreement between theoretical predictions and numerical results confirms the generality of our theory. Our work establishes a universal theory for nonequilibrium critical dynamics spanning the full range of driving rates, with broad implications for quantum quench experiments and out-of-equilibrium statistical mechanics.
Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)
6 pages, 4 figures
Competing heterogeneities shape ordering via higher-order interactions
New Submission | Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Gangmin Son, Federico Battiston, Deok-Sun Lee, K.-I. Goh
Higher-order interactions admit richer structural heterogeneity than pairwise networks. To understand how heterogeneity impacts collective phenomena we develop a framework based on the cavity method and apply it to the simplicial Ising model on heterogeneous hypergraphs. Unlike in homogeneous structures, group size and node degree play fundamentally different roles: size heterogeneity sharpens the transition via large-group unanimity, while degree heterogeneity softens it as hubs cooperatively seed ordering with non-hubs. Under either type of heterogeneity, continuous–discontinuous double transitions can arise, where the symmetry-breaking continuous transition is driven by pairs or by hubs, respectively. When both heterogeneities coexist, cross-order degree correlations further modulate the phase diagram, with anticorrelation delaying the group-driven discontinuous jump and broadening the hysteretic region. Our results reveal the intricate interplay between size and degree heterogeneities in collective phenomena beyond pairwise interactions.
Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech), Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph)
Parity-induced generalized Brillouin zone without non-Hermitian skin effect
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Acute spectral sensitivity to boundary conditions and the formation of a generalized Brillouin zone associated with complex quasimomenta are features frequently attributed to systems with non-trivial non-Hermitian topology, showcasing the non-Hermitian skin effect. We show that, away from the thermodynamic limit, these features themselves are not uniquely tied to this phenomenon; they can similarly arise as parity-induced even-odd effects in non-Hermitian systems without skin effect. Despite an underlying generalized Brillouin zone description, wavefunctions remain delocalized. In addition, the effect can arise in skin-effect models as entirely separate distinguishable feature
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall), Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
article: 5 pages, 4 figures; supplemental: 5 pages, 4 figures
Dimensionality of a strongly interacting 2D-3D Fermi-Fermi mixture from the perspective of superfluid instability and excitation properties
New Submission | Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Haruka Takeda, Saki Hirai, Shumpei Iwasaki, Yoji Ohashi
We theoretically investigate strong-coupling properties of an attractively interacting Fermi atomic gas, where the Cooper-pair formation occurs between atoms belonging to different dimensional bands. Including pairing fluctuations within the framework of the self-consistent $ T$ -matrix approximation (SCTMA), we examine how the BCS-type superfluid phase transition temperature $ T_\mathrm{c}$ varies as one moves from the 3D-3D to the 2D-3D system, in the wide parameter region with respect to the strength of the pairing interaction. In the 2D-3D limit, we find that, while the mean-field BCS theory predicts $ T_\mathrm{c}>0$ in the strong-coupling regime, $ T_\mathrm{c}$ is remarkably suppressed down to zero by pairing fluctuations that are strongly enhanced by the mixed-dimensionality of the system. As the origin of this, we clarify that the lower-dimensional (2D) component dominates the superfluid instability, so that the vanishing $ T_\mathrm{c}$ is the same phenomenon as that in the 2D-2D case. We also point out that this can already be seen in the mean-field level, when one examines the propagation of the Goldstone mode. On the other hand, we find that the pseudogap phenomenon, which is known as a precursor of Cooper-pair formation, exhibits a 3D character of the 2D-3D system. These results indicate that the dimensionality of a strongly interacting Fermi gas depends on what we observe.
Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas), Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con), Atomic Physics (physics.atom-ph)
14 pages, 11 figures. Submitted to Physical Review A
Spin-Spiral Enhancement of Ultrafast Light-Polarization-Robust Magnetization
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Yirui Lu, Zeyu Jiang, Bing Huang
Ultrafast light-driven magnetization, a frontier in quantum magneto-optics, has traditionally relied on circularly polarized lasers to provide external angular momentum. While increasing efforts have aimed to achieve light-polarization-robust (LPR) magnetization that is insensitive to the form of external light excitation, the underlying mechanism remains largely unclear. Here, we establish the symmetry-constrained rule for LPR magnetization in antiferromagnetic systems. Through real-time time-dependent density functional theory calculations, we observe the strong LPR magnetization in spin-spiral magnets and its suppression in collinear antiferromagnets, confirming our theory. Strikingly, laser excitation induces real-space demagnetization, rotation, and oscillation of atomic spins in spin-spiral monolayer NiI$ _2$ , whereas rotation is largely suppressed in conventional collinear antiferromagnets. Our work reveals a novel microscopic pathway for ultrafast magnetization that is independent of light polarization, paving the way for advanced femtosecond spin control.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Finite-inertia effects in Langevin dynamics of a lopsided elastic dumbbell using exponential-time differencing schemes
New Submission | Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Lei Song, Dingyi Pan, Nhan Phan-Thien
Inertia effects in the Langevin dynamics of a lopsided elastic dumbbell are investigated using exponential-time-differencing (ETD) integrators for the corresponding stiff stochastic equations at small mass limit. Starting from the bead-level underdamped Langevin model, we formulate the dynamics in modal coordinates, highlighting two distinct friction scales: an additive friction $ \zeta_{\rm trans}=\zeta_1+\zeta_2$ controlling translation ($ \zeta_i, i=1,2$ are the friction factor on bead $ i$ ), and an effective internal friction $ 1/\zeta_{\rm eff}=1/\zeta_1+1/\zeta_2$ controlling configurational relaxation, with relaxation time $ \tau_R=\zeta_{\rm eff}/H$ for a Hookean spring of stiffness $ H$ . We benchmark ETD against Euler–Maruyama and overdamped Brownian dynamics using equilibrium statistics, time-domain autocorrelations, and frequency-domain power spectra of the end-to-end vector. When time is rescaled by $ \tau_R$ , configurational and orientational relaxation curves collapse across asymmetry ratios, showing that the dominant long-time structural dynamics remains close to the overdamped description. Inertial signatures are instead confined to short-time transients, high-frequency modifications of the configurational spectrum, and a transient coupling between translational and internal modes. This study provides a practical and accurate route for lopsided dumbbells across overdamped and weakly underdamped regimes, and clarify how mass and friction asymmetry affect the translational and internal dynamics.
Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft), Fluid Dynamics (physics.flu-dyn)
Clustering in atom probe tomography data: coordination number metric, percolation-based parameter scaling, and size effects
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
The ability to identify nanometer-scale nuclei of new phases in atom probe tomography (APT) is often limited by the sensitivity of clustering algorithms to user-defined control parameters. Conventional approaches typically rely on the Euclidean distance metric and consider only solute atoms, thereby discarding the solvent atoms that contain most of the spatial information. Here, we introduce a coordination-number metric based on the composition and apply it to higher-order clustering. Using various metrics, we investigate percolation in typical APT structures. By scaling clustering properties to the corresponding percolation thresholds, we define a self-similar variable that is almost invariant with respect to metrics, clustering parameters, and structural disorder. This variable provides a relevant description of clustering and enables the formal transfer of optimal parameters between clustering methods. We also study the characteristic clustering behavior in small precipitates and quantify how the precipitate-matrix interface alters the composition spectrum and broadens the clustering curve. Finally, using simulations that incorporate finite spatial resolution, detection efficiency, and other APT reconstruction artifacts, we show that the approach based on coordination numbers effectively compensates for heterogeneous dilations and outperforms solute-density-based methods in all tested scenarios.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability (physics.data-an)
41 pages, 17 figures
Functional methods for quantum thermodynamics
New Submission | Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Sibo Wang, Samuel Degen, Haozhao Liang
The functional renormalization group provides a nonperturbative and systematically improvable route to constructing density functionals for quantum many-body systems from microscopic Hamiltonians. Here we advance this program by benchmarking functional-renormalization-group density functional theory (FRG-DFT) against the exact thermodynamics of the single-site Bose-Hubbard model. This model provides an ideal testing ground because it is analytically solvable, yet remains subtle in the imaginary-time coherent-state path integral, where a naive continuum treatment generates a spurious self-interaction. We show that a careful Hubbard-Stratonovich derivation identifies the self-interaction correction term that must be included in the FRG-DFT flow to recover the exact thermodynamics. We then systematically compare several closures of the resulting hierarchy of flow equations for the free energy, chemical potential, and connected density correlators over broad ranges of density, temperature, and interaction strength. The benchmark shows that the free energy is comparatively robust, whereas the chemical potential and fluctuation observables provide much sharper diagnostics of the hierarchy closure. A maximum-entropy closure gives the most accurate overall description and reproduces even the low-temperature oscillatory structure of the connected two-density correlator. These results identify two general requirements for functional approaches to quantum thermodynamics: the renormalization group flow equation must retain the equal-time contact subtraction to avoid spurious self-interactions, and any closure of the hierarchy must preserve the statistical consistency of density correlators. This work provides a controlled foundation for deriving ab initio density functionals for quantum many-body systems across condensed-matter, ultracold-atom, and nuclear physics, as well as quantum chemistry.
Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas), Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech), Nuclear Theory (nucl-th)
24 pages, 14 figures; comments are welcome
Complex Magnetic Behavior of the Ce sawtooth chains in CeRhSn$_2$
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
P. Opletal, J. Fikáček, E. Duverger-Nédellec, A. Thamizhavel, Z. Hossain, R. Tarasenko, V. Tkáč, D. Legut, Bin Shen, P. Gegenwart, J. Custers
Conflicting reports exist on the ground state of the intermetallic compound CeRhSn$ 2$ . This can be rooted in the sawtooth-like arrangement of two inequivalent Ce sites in the unit cell, which suggests potential geometric magnetic frustration. To resolve, we conducted a comprehensive study on high-quality single crystals of CeRhSn$ 2$ by means of magnetization ($ M$ ), specific heat ($ C_p/T$ ), and resistivity ($ \rho$ ). The system exhibits strong magnetic anisotropy, confirming the $ b$ -axis as the easy magnetic axis. We establish three successive transitions, an AFM order at $ T{N} = 3.65$ K, a first-order FM order at $ T{C} = 1.7$ K and final transition, at $ T = 1.5$ K. The transition temperatures are highly field-directional dependent: in a magnetic field, the lowest transition is immediately suppressed while $ \mathbf{H} \parallel b$ rapidly merges $ T_{C}$ and $ T_{N}$ into a single second-order transition. Conversely, $ \mathbf{H}\parallel c$ suppresses the FM order and reduces $ T_{N}$ . Additional ab initio calculations affirm the FM ground state of CeRhSn$ _2$ . The observation of an enhancement of the Sommerfeld coefficient ($ \gamma = 76.5$ mJ/mol$ \cdot$ K$ ^2$ ) may arise from geometric frustration, but it is most consistently attributed to weak Kondo hybridization as frustration cannot be conclusively established through our data.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
10 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. B
Interplay of Cl Substitution and He$^{+}$ Irradiation in CrSBr${1-x}$Cl${x}$
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Satyam Sahu, Adeel Bukhari, Arijit Kayal, Valerie Černá, Bing Wu, Aljoscha Söll, Gregor Hlawacek, Zdeněk Sofer, Martin Kalbáč, Matěj Velický, Otakar Frank
Two-dimensional magnetic semiconductors provide a promising platform for exploring the interplay between disorder, lattice dynamics, and resonant light–matter interactions. Among them, CrSBr exhibits strong in-plane anisotropy and pronounced resonance-enhanced Raman scattering. Here, we investigate the effects of Cl substitution and He$ ^{+}$ irradiation on the vibrational response of CrSBr using polarization-resolved Raman spectroscopy. Cl substitution activates additional phonon modes associated with local symmetry breaking, while He$ ^{+}$ irradiation introduces distinct defect-related scattering channels and enhanced phonon broadening. The combined effects of alloy disorder and externally introduced defects lead to strong anisotropic reconstruction of the Raman spectra and modification of the nonlinear Raman response under near-resonant 1.96 eV excitation. Power-dependent measurements reveal robust superlinear scaling of both intrinsic and substitution-induced phonon modes, indicating persistent resonance-enhanced electron–phonon coupling even in defect-engineered samples.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall), Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
11 pages, 5 main figures, 6 SI figures, and 1 toc graphic
A Self-Evolving Machine-Learning-Based Kinetic Monte Carlo Method for Modelling Thin-Film Growth
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Jyri Kimari, Flyura Djurabekova, Kostas Sarakinos
We present a kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) simulation framework parameterized by automatically sampling machine-learning (ML) for modeling thin-film growth atom by atom. Given an interatomic potential energy function, the KMC algorithm builds an ML-based regression model for rate parameters on runtime, being trained on the local atomic environments encountered during the system evolution. New environments are continuously added to the training set in a self-evolving manner at points where the ML model estimates high uncertainty. As the simulation progresses, the ML model gains confidence, and the quick estimation of rates increasingly overtakes the relatively-expensive nudged elastic band calculations, promoting computational efficiency while retaining high fidelity description of the atomic diffusion kinetics. As a test case, we simulate the sub-monolayer growth of Ag on Ag {111}, where we demonstrate adatom islands forming in shapes and densities in accordance with the underlying atomistic interaction model, the theoretical framework, and available experimental results related to thin-film nucleation and growth.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
The geometry of the CISS effect
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
P. Hedegård, A. Kazimir, C. Lamers, L. T. Baczewski, T. N. H. Nguyen, C. Tegenkamp
Using scanning tunneling microscopy, and a careful selection of chiral molecules and anchoring groups, we systematically carried out a series of magnetoresistance experiments. We observed a reversal of the signal upon changing the magnetization direction, the molecular chirality, and the molecular orientation. The orientation of the molecules and the magnetization of the substrate are vectors, and by associating an axial vector with the molecule, the observations can be explained. Other recent experiments, among them null experiments showing no CISS related magnetoresistance can be explained using our framework. The physical interpretation is, that the polar electrical polarization of the molecule cannot play a direct role, while the axial magnetic polarization vector operator is a much more realistic candidate. This vector plays an important role in the creation of a magnetic moment in the interface between molecule and metallic lead.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)
A charge qubit on solid neon in a spin-qubit compatible circuit QED platform
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
J. Wang, Y. Tian, I. Grytsenko, A. Jennings, X. Zhou, H. Terai, D. Jin, E. Kawakami
Electrons floating in vacuum provide a clean platform for quantum information processing due to their isolation from material defects; electrons on solid neon have emerged as a promising qubit platform for its long coherence times. Here, toward spin-qubit realization, we couple a single electron on solid neon to a magnetic-field-compatible superconducting NbTiN nanowire resonator. We realize a charge qubit and demonstrate microwave readout and coherent control, with Rabi frequencies up to 76 MHz, an order of magnitude larger than in previous studies. Under strong driving, we observe a qubit frequency shift from nonlinear interactions with the intense microwave field. Deterministic electron trapping at an intended position remains challenging due to solid neon surface roughness; we characterize the electron’s position from its differential coupling to distinct electrodes. Although not trapped at an intended position, our estimates indicate that spin-qubit demonstrations remain feasible.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall), Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
Topological Interstitial-Electron Conductor
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Tingli He, Xiaoming Zhang, Chaoxi Cui, Yilin Han, Yang Wang, Wei Jiang, Zhi-Ming Yu, Yugui Yao
Electron transport in solids arises primarily from two mechanisms: freely moving bulk electrons in metals, and gapless boundary states in topological insulators. Here, we report a new mechanism discovered in electrides. The topological interstitial-electron conductors (TIECs) proposed here are insulating electrides, but host interstitial electrons (IEs) distributed within crystal voids that traverse the entire unit cell. Without being tightly bound to real ions, the IEs generally experience low periodic potential barrier along the void channels. As a consequence, by applying a weak electric field sufficient to overcome the IE barriers but far below the system’s dielectric breakdown threshold, one can expect that the TIECs would generate a persistent current contributed by the IEs and propagating along the void channels. We identify a family of realistic altermagnetic electrides, $ A_5X_3$ ($ A$ = Ca, Sr, Ba, Yb; $ X$ = As, Sb), as TIECs. Remarkably, for $ A_5X_3$ materials, the periodic potential barrier of the IEs along the void channels are ultralow, ranging from 13.43 to 67.96 meV per formula unit. This renders our proposal readily accessible to experimental verification. We further demonstrate that when the IEs of $ A_5X_3$ undergo periodic motion along the channels, topological surface states will emerge at the boundary perpendicular to the channel direction, and continuously move across the bulk band gap. This pumping-like behaviour not only corroborates the topological nature of TIECs, but also rationalizes the finite-electric-field induced electronic transport within the band theory. Our findings expand the classification of electronic conductors, uncover unexplored transport properties of electrides, and establish a new material platform for low-power electronic devices.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Surface lone-pair polarization probed by quantum-geometric transport in tellurium
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Nathanael N. Batista, Wendel S. Paz, Manuel Suárez-Rodríguez, Pierpaolo Fontana, Victor Velasco, Marcus V. O. Moutinho, Chang Niu, Peide D. Ye, Marco Gobbi, Fèlix Casanova, Luis E. Hueso, Caio Lewenkopf, Marcello B. Silva Neto
Stereochemically active lone pairs are ubiquitous microscopic sources of polarity in molecules and solids, but their collective behavior in crystals is often hidden by symmetry or confined to surfaces. Here we show that quantum-geometry transport provides a sensitive probe of surface lone-pair polarization in trigonal tellurium. This surface polarization appears microscopically as an inversion-odd dipolar component of the crystal potential, which shifts the center of mass of Bloch wavepackets and produces quantum-geometric corrections to their velocity. We describe this lone-pair polar texture through a minimal three-component lattice model, and we show that the resulting linear and nonlinear transport coefficients probe, respectively, the second and first moments of the net polarization field. Because rectified voltages in tellurium flakes are directly proportional to the surface lone-pair polarization, our results provide a microscopic route to understanding and engineering polarization-driven, quantum-geometric electronic devices based on tellurium allotropes.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)
Main 7 pages and 6 figures, Suppl Info 12 pages and 1 figure
In-situ operation of amorphous circuits under heavy-ion irradiation
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Xuanzhe Sha, Shun Liao, Xiaoxi Li, Chengyuan Li, Jianli Liu, Yu Pan, Wenhai Wang, Yu Ye, Chengxin Zhao, Liyi Li, Hanwen Wang, Zheng Vitto Han, Jianming Lu
Radiation-hardened electronics using semiconductors beyond silicon are essential for computation and control in extreme environments. Yet complex digital circuits based on such material platforms operating in situ under heavy-ion irradiation remain largely unexplored. Here, we show a timing circuit based on amorphous thin-film semiconductors at the 100-transistor scale, and demonstrate its robust operation through a functional “Hello World” ASCII output sequence. Beyond static device characterization, we evaluate the circuit under powered heavy-ion irradiation using tantalum ions, providing an operationally relevant assessment of radiation tolerance at the system level. Under a high particle flux of 2.5 x 10^3 ions cm^-2 s^-1, the circuit maintains stable operation during the irradiation test, achieving a total fluence of 1 x 10^6 ions cm^-2, establishing a milestone of prolonged powered digital operation under extreme conditions. Our work expands the design space of radiation-tolerant electronics, highlighting amorphous semiconductors as a promising foundation for digital circuits deployed in harsh environments.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Other Condensed Matter (cond-mat.other)
11 Pages, 4 figures
Cover time statistics of one-dimensional Brownian motion under stochastic resetting
New Submission | Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Anirban Ghosh, Sanjib Sabhapandit
We investigate the effect of stochastic resetting on the statistics of the cover time of a one-dimensional Brownian motion with a diffusion constant $ D$ , confined to a finite interval of length $ L$ . The cover time $ t_c$ , defined as the minimum time required for the particle to visit every point of the interval at least once, exhibits a non-monotonic dependence on the scaled reset rate $ \rho = rL^2/4D$ . The scaled mean cover time $ 4D\langle t_c\rangle/L^2$ initially decreases with increasing $ \rho$ , attains a minimum at an optimal value $ \rho^\ast$ , and then increases with $ \rho$ , indicating an optimal resetting rate that minimizes the search duration. Furthermore, we derive an exact analytical expression for the cover time distribution, including its asymptotic limits, which agree well with numerical simulations. These results demonstrate that stochastic resetting serves as an efficient mechanism for optimizing cover-time processes in confined geometries.
Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)
11 pages, 4 figures
Global thermodynamics for heat-conducting fluids under weak gravity
New Submission | Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Naoko Nakagawa, Shin-ichi Sasa
We study liquid-gas coexistence under gravity and heat conduction from the viewpoint of global thermodynamics. We construct a variational free-energy function for the fixed-global-temperature description and decompose it into two parts. The first has the same configurational form as the equilibrium weak-gravity free energy with gravity replaced by the effective gravity, and it determines the first-order configurational transition between the two separated liquid-gas arrangements. The second is a residual excess-latent-heat contribution that vanishes without heat conduction. Although it does not decide which separated liquid-gas arrangement is thermodynamically favored, this residual part is needed to derive the fundamental relation in the laboratory variables and to recover thermodynamic observables such as the spatially averaged pressure. The same residual contribution reshapes the barrier geometry, ridge/valley structure, and interfacial anomalies of the fixed-global-temperature free-energy landscape. Numerical examples based on the van der Waals model illustrate the resulting landscape structure, and estimates of experimental scales suggest a setup for detecting the effective-gravity inversion.
Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)
56 pages, 10 figures
Emergence of spin entanglement with the pseudogap onset in the Fermi-Hubbard model
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Frederic Bippus, Thomas Chalopin, Gabriele Bellomia, Gergő Roósz, Titus Franz, Antoine Georges, Anna Kauch, Immanuel Bloch, Karsten Held
Despite decades of intense theoretical and experimental investigation, the two-dimensional Fermi-Hubbard model still resists a complete microscopic understanding. Conventional approaches typically probe global observables and locally resolved correlation functions. Here, we develop a complementary perspective based on the measurement of entanglement. Using both an ultracold-atom quantum simulator and numerical simulations based on the dynamical vertex approximation, we find that entanglement is closely tied to the onset of the enigmatic pseudogap regime: spin-singlet entanglement emerges only as the pseudogap sets in and, in contrast to classical correlations, remains confined to nearest-neighbour sites in this regime. Our results, therefore, disfavour purely classical-fluctuation theories of the pseudogap and constrain microscopic models to those that develop nearest-neighbour spin-singlet entanglement at the pseudogap onset.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el), Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas)
8 figures, 34 pages
Magnetic domains reconfiguration on the Fe3O4(110) surface across the Verwey transition by Spin-Polarized Low-Energy Electron Microscopy
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
C. Gutiérrez-Cuesta, A. Mandziak, J.E. Prieto, P. Nita, A. Mascaraque, U. Choudhry, J. Turner, A. Stibor, J. de la Figuera
We have studied the (110) surface of Fe$ _3$ O$ _4$ single crystals by means of spin-polarized low-energy electron microscopy (SPLEEM). After preparation by sputtering and annealing a well defined reconstructed surface was achieved, composed of rows aligned in the [010] direction. By acquiring SPLEEM images along different spin directions the vector magnetization was mapped on the surface, both at room temperature and at a temperature well below the Verwey transition. At room temperature, domains were observed with their magnetization aligned along the two <111> bulk easy axes which are in the (110) surface plane. They presented 180$ ^\circ$ , 71$ ^\circ$ and 109$ ^\circ$ Néel-type domain walls. Below the Verwey transition, the magnetization directions changed to regions where the magnetization was oriented along the in-plane [100] and [001] directions. Those observations can be interpreted as the presence of magnetized regions on the surface where the monoclinic $ c$ axis is in-plane in the former, and regions where the $ c$ is out-of-plane in an oblique direction in the latter. However, the magnetization was at all times within the surface plane, with no out-of-plane component detected.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
7 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Surfaces and Interfaces
Charged Bose polarons at finite momentum
New Submission | Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Grover Andrade Sánchez, Arturo Camacho Guardian
Charged impurities in quantum fluids have unveiled new classes of strongly correlated many-body states across condensed matter, ultracold gases, and hybrid atom-ion platforms. While previous studies have primarily focused on their ground-state and static properties, much less is known about their finite-momentum behavior, which governs transport, dissipation, and quasiparticle stability. Here, we investigate the momentum-dependent properties of a charged Bose polaron using a diagrammatic approach within second-order perturbation theory, explicitly accounting for the finite-range nature of the ion-atom interaction. We show that the interaction range introduces a characteristic momentum scale at which many-body dressing and dissipation are maximized, leading to a non-monotonic behavior of the damping rate and quasiparticle energy. In the high-momentum regime, we uncover a scaling law $ \Gamma_p \sim 1/p$ , signaling the suppression of many-body dressing and the recovery of quasi-free impurity dynamics, in stark contrast to the divergent behavior predicted by contact-interaction perturbative treatments.
Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas), Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)
9 pages and 7 figures. Comments are very welcome
Droplets sitting on thin elastic sheets: A study with the boundary element method
New Submission | Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Salik Sultan, Josua Grawitter, Gonçalo C. Antunes, Holger Stark
Elasto-capillarity of a droplet wetting an elastic sheet provides an interesting system, both for fundamental and applied research. The droplet sinks into the sheet and assumes the shape of a lens. To determine the equilibrium shape in simulations, we formulate a boundary element method (BEM) extending our earlier approaches, and apply the BEM to three specific protocols for the boundary conditions of the sheet. For a clamped elastic sheet, we use various morphological metrics to demonstrate that the lens shape crucially depends on the sheet thickness. Stretching the sheet isotropically, allows for an additional control parameter to influence the droplet shape and the tension in the sheet, which we quantify by radial profiles of the azimuthal and radial elastic stresses. We further demonstrate how the focal length of a liquid lens can be tuned by varying the applied tension. Finally, stretching the sheet along one direction, elongates the droplet, and the sheet shows folds and dimples.
Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
18 pages, 9 figures
Valley-polarized Orbital and Spin Magnetism Induced by Femtosecond Optical Pulses in Two-Dimensional Semiconductors
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
M. S. Mrudul, Peter M. Oppeneer
We theoretically investigate the ultrafast generation of spin and orbital magnetism in a two-dimensional gapped Dirac system with spin-orbit coupling. This system is representative of two-dimensional hexagonal semiconductors, such as transition-metal dichalcogenides that exhibit valley-selective optical selection rules arising from the valley-contrasting magnetic texture of their band structure. Using a time-dependent density-matrix formalism, we demonstrate that circularly polarized laser pulses generate nonequilibrium magnetization under both resonant and multiphoton resonant conditions. We show that the induced spin and orbital magnetic moments can be distinctly controlled via the photon energy and polarization of the driving field. Furthermore, spin and orbital dynamics originate from fundamentally different light-matter coupling mechanisms, leading to qualitatively dissimilar temporal behaviors. The orbital magnetic moment couples directly to the external electric field, resulting in faster dynamics and pronounced Rabi-like oscillations, whereas the spin response develops gradually through spin-orbit coupling. Consequently, orbital dynamics is significantly more sensitive to electron-hole dephasing than the spin response. Our results highlight the importance of properly accounting for orbital contributions in future technologies that utilize femtosecond control of magnetism.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall), Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Limits of the Non-Linear Generalized Langevin Equation: Cross-Correlations, Irreversibility and Desynchronization
New Submission | Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
The generalized Langevin equation (GLE) is widely used to model complex soft-matter systems, including biomolecular dynamics, by incorporating memory effects and colored noise into coarse-grained descriptions. However, recent results suggest that combining memory with non-linear forces, ubiquitous in soft matter, introduces fundamental analytical inconsistencies. Here, using a simplified model, we investigate the practical numerical consequences of these analytical results. We show that non-linear forces generate cross-correlations with the noise, modifying the fluctuation-dissipation theorem and rendering the noise position-dependent and irreversible. This implies that the commonly assumed reversible Gaussian noise in GLE simulations fails to capture essential features of the microscopic fluctuations. For weak non-linearities, these issues can be partially resolved either by using an iterative optimization of memory or by using microscopically consistent noise, which unexpectedly synchronizes GLE trajectories with the underlying microscopic dynamics. For stronger non-linearities like high barriers or shoulders in the external potential, however, iterative reconstruction fails and we observe desynchronization, indicating that the non-linear GLE no longer correctly reproduces the microscopic dynamics. Our results show in which situations non-linear GLEs can be accurately applied and when they fail, thus providing practical guidance for their application to coarse-grain soft-matter systems.
Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
A Practical Guide for Diagnosing Imaginary Phonon Modes in Metal–Organic Frameworks: The Case of MOF-5
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Julia Santana-Andreo, Caterina Cocchi
Assessing the dynamical stability of computationally predicted metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) is essential to distinguish synthetically feasible structures from dynamically unstable ones. However, reliable first-principles phonon calculations on these systems remain challenging: their large, flexible unit cells and soft collective modes make the vibrational spectrum highly sensitive to the numerical settings. Using MOF-5 as a representative case study, we establish a finite-displacement workflow to identify and isolate the origins of imaginary phonon modes. We demonstrate how numerical force convergence thresholds, real-space grid resolutions, symmetry-standardization protocols, and alternative unit-cell representations can qualitatively and spuriously alter the predicted lattice stability. Once numerical noise is confidently excluded, the remaining imaginary modes can be analyzed through mode mapping or stochastic Monte Carlo symmetry-breaking distortions to locate lower-energy local minima. This protocol provides a robust, transferable strategy for the reliable assessment of dynamical stability and lattice vibrations in flexible porous frameworks.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Feasibility study of continuous electronic Pomeranchuk cooling with a flavor-degenerate Wigner crystal
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Robin J. Dolleman, Ammon Fischer, Lennart Klebl, Alexander Rothstein, Dante M. Kennes, Bernd Beschoten, Florian Libisch, Christoph Stampfer
Achieving sub-millikelvin electron temperatures in nanoelectronic devices could unveil new transport phenomena, extend quantum coherence times, and enhance the precision of quantum metrology. However, maintaining such low temperatures continuously remains a long-standing challenge. Here, we propose and simulate an on-chip cooling cycle that harnesses the entropy difference between an electron liquid (EL) and a Wigner crystal (WC) in flavor-degenerate flat-band materials. Cooling is driven by a current through a device with a locally gated region. Within this region, the charge carrier density is tuned such that a WC forms beneath the gate. As carriers transition from an EL to WC phase, their entropy increases, extracting heat and the sliding WC advects this heat along the device. The heat is then released when carriers transition back to the EL phase, which establishes distinct hot and cold regions and a steady temperature gradient over the device. Simulations show net cooling for sufficiently low current densities, typically below $ 1\mathrm{nA}/\mu\mathrm{m}$ , whereas Joule heating dominates at higher currents. Within the gated region, we estimate cooling powers of up to $ 8.4\mathrm{aW}/\mu\mathrm{m}$ at a bath temperature of $ 4\mathrm{mK}$ . Our approach can achieve electron temperatures well below $ 1\mathrm{mK}$ under suitable conditions, promising a route towards continuous on-chip cooling in this temperature regime. Our approach applies to any flat-band material with low-energy flavor degeneracy (valley and/or orbital) and low disorder, including gapped Bernal-stacked bilayer graphene, rhombohedral-stacked multilayer graphene, and magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall), Applied Physics (physics.app-ph)
Co-optimization of spin coherence and valley splitting in Si/SiGe heterostructures
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Peihong Zhang, Xuedong Hu, Saif Ullah, Jason R. Petta
Single electron spins can be used to encode and process information in semiconductor quantum devices. Progress has been hindered by materials challenges, such as the small energy splitting between low-lying valley states and hyperfine coupling to nuclear spins. Here we use density functional theory to optimize the valley splitting and spin dephasing time in realistic Si/SiGe heterostructures. Reductions in the Si quantum well width generally increase the valley splitting. However, in narrow quantum wells, a larger fraction of the electronic wavefunction resides in the SiGe buffer layers, which increases the hyperfine coupling with spinful $ ^{73}$ Ge. Our work shows that Si/SiGe heterostructures with 3–4nm wide quantum wells and $ ^{73}$ Ge and $ ^{29}$ Si concentrations of 50 ppm should support average valley splittings $ E_{v}$ ~$ >$ ~500$ \mu$ eV and spin dephasing times $ T_2^\ast$ exceeding 15~$ \mu$ s assuming an effective quantum dot area of 700 nm$ ^2$ . In addition, sharper Si/SiGe interfaces in general result in larger valley splittings and longer spin dephasing times.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
Spontaneous flows and interfacial instabilities in oxygen-sensitive living active matter
New Submission | Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Azam Gholami, Sangram Gore, Sai V.R.Ambadipudi, Iraj Gholami, Albert J. Bae
Active fluids generate motion and stress internally, but in living systems this
activity is often regulated by environmental fields that the organisms consume
or produce. Here we show that oxygen gradients organise and destabilise dense
suspensions of the flagellated microswimmer \textit{Euglena gracilis}. In
circular chambers open to air at the periphery, oxygen exchange and cellular
consumption generate a radial chemical gradient. An initially homogeneous
suspension spontaneously forms a dense cellular ring through oxygen-dependent
motility and bidirectional oxytaxis. The ring then develops collective
rotation and destabilises into a long-lived corona of protrusions. We reproduce
this sequence with an oxygen-coupled polar active-fluid model in which oxygen
controls both the direction and speed of cell motion, while dipolar active
stresses drive the instability of the dense interface. The simulations show
that oxygen taxis creates the annular active interface, but the subsequent
corona is an activity-driven interfacial instability. Our results reveal how a
self-generated chemical gradient can position and activate a living fluid,
providing a route to environmental control of active-matter flows and
interfaces.
Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft), Biological Physics (physics.bio-ph)
Direct Observation of Chemical Short-Range Order in CoCrNi Alloy Using Neutron Diffraction
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Vinícius P. Bacurau, Camilo Salvador, Guilherme C. Stumpfa, Angelo F. Andreolli, Caroline B. Stocoa, Eric M. Mazzer, Lewis Owen, Yifan Cao, Rodrigo Freitas, Daniel Miracle, Francisco G. Coury
This study provides experimental evidence of chemical short-range order (CSRO) in the equiatomic CoCrNi alloy, identified through neutron diffraction. The phenomenon manifests as a distinct diffuse peak at Q = 1.85 A-1, the intensity increases under thermodynamically favorable conditions for CSRO development such as prolonged aging (100 h and 240 h) at 748 K or shorter aging (24 h) at slightly higher temperature (798 K). The degree of ordering was measured by integrating the diffuse scattering intensity, revealing that the gas-atomized sample, i.e. the sample with the least amount of CSRO, still displays approximately 70% of the CSRO level observed in the sample subsequently aged for 240 h at 748 K, i.e. the sample with the highest amount of CSRO produced in this study. Predictive atomistic simulations reproduced both the presence and position of the diffuse peak, while two-dimensional fast Fourier transform (FT-2D) analyses indicated that reflections at (1 1/2 0) within the <001> zone axis originate from some structural projections associated with like D022, Pt2Mo and D1a motifs. Complementary small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) measurements identified Ni-rich, disk-shaped domains with radii of approximately 11 A and thicknesses of about 1 A, consistent with nanoscale CSRO characteristic length scale. These findings demonstrate that CSRO is an intrinsic and energetically favorable feature of the CoCrNi system, remaining stable even under rapid solidification and further enhanced by low-temperature aging. Combined use of neutron diffraction and atomistic modeling provides a framework for probing local ordering phenomena in multi-principal element alloys (MPEAs).
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Crystallisation kinetics of supercooled liquid palladium
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Zuzanna Kostera, Przemyslaw Dziegielewski, Konstantinos Georgarakis, Oleksii I. Liubchenko, Adam Olczak, Ryszard Sobierajski, Klaus Sokolowski-Tinten, Peihao Sun, Robert W.E. van de Kruijs, Peter Zalden, Jerzy Antonowicz
In this study, we employ classical molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to investigate the crystallisation kinetics of supercooled liquid palladium and relate the results to time-resolved X-ray diffraction measurements on rapidly quenched Pd thin films. Crystal nucleation and growth rates are determined over the temperature range $ 700$ –$ 1150\mathrm{K}$ ($ 0.38$ –$ 0.65 T_{\mathrm{m}}$ ) by analysing the evolution of the microstructure during the liquid-to-crystal transition. The self-diffusion coefficient of Pd, obtained from the atomic mean-squared displacement, follows Arrhenius behaviour over the investigated temperature range, with an activation energy of $ 467(6)\mathrm{meV/atom}$ , consistent with available data for supercooled liquid metals. The steady-state homogeneous nucleation rate exhibits a maximum of approximately $ 4 \times 10^{35}\mathrm{m^{-3} s^{-1}}$ near $ 0.5 T_{\mathrm{m}}$ . Crystal growth occurs at velocities of the order of metres per second, with a temperature dependence consistent with diffusion-limited Wilson-Frenkel kinetics rather than the collision-limited regime. Based on multiple statistically independent simulations, a time-temperature-transformation (TTT) diagram for crystallisation onset is constructed. The TTT curve exhibits a nose near $ 0.5 T_{\mathrm{m}}$ and $ 100\mathrm{ps}$ , corresponding to a critical cooling rate for vitrification on the order of $ 10^{13}\mathrm{K s^{-1}}.$ The simulations reproduce the crystallisation onset time and temperature observed in time-resolved X-ray diffraction experiments on optically molten Pd thin films quenched at $ 5 \times 10^{11}\mathrm{K s^{-1}}.$ These results indicate that homogeneous, rather than heterogeneous, nucleation governs the achievable supercooling in the experimentally studied films.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Chemical Physics (physics.chem-ph)
26 pages, 6 figures plus 4 pages of Supplementary Material
Odd-Parity Magnons
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Pu Zhang, Sun-Bo Xie, Junxi Yu, Yichen Liu, Cheng-Cheng Liu
Magnons, as charge-neutral spin excitations, can transport spin information without Joule heating and therefore offer a promising platform for low-power spintronics. However, in collinear magnets, the effective time-reversal symmetry forbids odd-parity magnon band splitting. Here we propose odd-parity magnons and establish a general mechanism for realizing them in collinear antiferromagnets. We provide a complete spin-point-group classification of odd-parity magnon splitting in two-dimensional collinear antiferromagnets by identifying the leading splitting types and their symmetry-allowed basis functions. This classification serves as a practical guide for searching for odd-parity magnons. We show that breaking effective time-reversal symmetry, for example by circularly polarized light or loop currents, can induce highly tunable $ p$ - and $ f$ -wave magnon splitting. In bilayer systems, the dynamical modulation can drive a topological magnon phase transition, accompanied by chiral edge modes and an abrupt jump in the magnon thermal Hall conductivity. Material-specific first-principles calculations further demonstrate the feasibility of this mechanism in real van der Waals antiferromagnets. Our study identifies the odd-parity magnons as a new class of spin excitations and provides a theoretical foundation for odd-parity magnons and ultrafast optically controlled topological magnonic devices.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)
9+20 pages, 4+5 figures, 1 table
Optimization of multisite reactions in complex compartmentalized media
New Submission | Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
In complex media, transport and geometric properties deeply influence the kinetics of random encounters between reactants. Here, we consider the situation where a random walker, moving in a regularly diffusing medium, has to reach and activate a target located inside a compartment characterized by fractal (obstructed) sub-diffusion. We focus on dual-site reactions, which end when two activation events occur within a given time window. Each activation event happens with a finite probability whenever the random walker visits the target. For weakly reactive targets, we demonstrate that the reaction time can be minimized for an optimal compartment size and can even be accelerated when compared to the same system without compartment. Our analytical predictions are validated through simulations of a random walker on a cubic lattice, where some sites inside the compartment are obstructed at the critical percolation threshold. Our theory illustrates the fact that adding a crowded compartment around a target, even if it slows down the motion in its vicinity, can accelerate the kinetics of complex reactions, especially for weakly reactive targets.
Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)
Phys. Rev. E 113, 054129 (2026)
Strain-Engineered s-C$_3$N$_6$ Monolayer for Efficient Water Splitting: A first-principles study
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Photocatalytic water splitting offers a sustainable route for solar-to-hydrogen energy conversion, yet identifying stable, metal-free semiconductors with suitable electronic, optical, and band-alignment properties remains challenging. Here, we investigate the structural, mechanical, electronic, optical, and photocatalytic properties of the two-dimensional s-C$ _3$ N$ _6$ monolayer using first-principles calculations. Ab initio molecular dynamics and elastic constant analysis confirm its thermal and mechanical stability. Hybrid HSE06 calculations reveal pristine s-C$ _3$ N$ _6$ is a direct-band-gap semiconductor (2.62 eV). However, its conduction-band minimum lies below the hydrogen reduction potential, preventing spontaneous hydrogen evolution. To overcome this limitation, we employ biaxial and uniaxial strains (-10% to +10%) to modulate its electronic structure. We find that compressive biaxial strains of -8% and -10% uniquely tune the band edges to straddle the redox potentials, enabling spontaneous overall water splitting. Crucially, these photocatalytically active states remain mechanically and thermally stable. Optical properties calculations show the fundamental gap in both pristine and strained structures is optically dark, with the primary absorption peak in the UV region. Furthermore, a strain-induced mobility mismatch between electrons and holes facilitates efficient charge separation. However, thermodynamic modeling of surface kinetics reveals that the s-C$ _3$ N$ _6$ surface binds intermediates strongly, necessitating a co-catalyst to overcome kinetic barriers. Our results establish strain engineering as an effective strategy to tailor band-edge alignment, carrier dynamics, and optical transitions in s-C$ _3$ N$ _6$ , highlighting its potential for stable 2D photocatalytic water splitting.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
50 pages, 11 figures in the manuscript and 10 figures in the SI
Solving models with generalized free fermions II: Path-product expansion and conserved charges
New Submission | Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Kohei Fukai, Balázs Pozsgay, István Vona
Free-fermion solvability in quantum spin systems is increasingly understood to be governed by a graph Clifford algebra defined from the frustration graph of the Hamiltonian. When the frustration graph belongs to certain classes, such as the even-hole-free and claw-free (ECF) class, the Hamiltonian is solvable by hidden free fermions: it admits a free-fermion solution although it does not reduce to a Majorana bilinear under the Jordan-Wigner transformation. However, unlike in the Jordan-Wigner case, where each mode is a linear combination of single Majorana fermions, the explicit operator structure of the hidden free-fermion modes – and that of the local conserved charges – has remained obscure. In this work, we derive a path-product expansion that expresses each free-fermion mode as a linear combination of path products along induced paths in the extended frustration graph. The expansion is obtained from the generating function of the Krylov basis and yields the modes directly, without using the transfer matrix or the nonlocal conserved charges as input. As an application, the mode decomposition computes infinite-temperature dynamical correlation functions for arbitrary ECF frustration graphs. We further obtain explicit expressions for local conserved charges as linear combinations of path products along induced paths; these charges apply beyond the free-fermion (ECF) class to more general claw-free frustration graphs. We also identify a unified family of generalized conserved charges that contains both the previously known nonlocal conserved charges and these local conserved charges as special cases. For Fendley’s original FFD chain with homogeneous couplings and periodic boundary conditions, in a suitable basis, the structure of these local conserved charges exhibits the same Catalan-tree pattern as in the spin-$ 1/2$ XXX chain.
Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech), Mathematical Physics (math-ph), Exactly Solvable and Integrable Systems (nlin.SI)
66 pages, 12 figures
What controls the superconducting dome of electron-doped FeSe?
New Submission | Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Paul T. Malinowski, Chad J. Mowers, Yaoju Tarn, Darrell G. Schlom, Brendan D. Faeth, Kyle M. Shen
Superconducting domes are conspicuous features of the phase diagrams of most unconventional and high-temperature superconductors. The superconducting transition temperature ($ T_{c}$ ) of FeSe can be dramatically enhanced with electron doping, but unlike all other high-temperature and unconventional superconductors, its full phase diagram and superconducting dome have yet to be fully explored. Here, we employ a combination of molecular beam epitaxy synthesis, alkali surface doping, in-vacuum electrical transport, and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy to investigate the entire superconducting dome of electron-doped FeSe, achieving a fully metallic state where superconductivity is suppressed in the heavily overdoped regime. We discover a robust scaling between $ T_{c}$ and the residual resistivity ($ \rho_{0}$ ) which holds across the entire superconducting dome, suggesting that the evolution of $ T_{c}$ is heavily influenced by the evolution of the elastic scattering rate in the high-$ T_{c}$ electron-doped phase. This in turn suggests that the superconducting dome in electron-doped FeSe appears to be fundamentally different than that of other unconventional superconductors where doping plays the primary role, and may be driven primarily by the sensitivity of the superconductivity to disorder.
Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con), Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
20 pages, 4 figures
Cooperative Conformational Transitions in Macromolecules under Mechanical Stretching. An Exactly Solved Model for Single Molecule Experiments
New Submission | Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Javier Orradre, Pablo M. Blanco, Sergio Madurga, Marina I. Giannotti, Francesc Mas, Josep L. Garcés
The stretching behavior of linear macromolecules undergoing conformational transitions is investigated. An exact solution is provided for a two-state system within the elastic freely jointed chain model. This minimal framework contains the smallest set of parameters required to describe such transitions: two Kuhn lengths, two elastic force constants, a free energy difference between both states and a nearest-neighbor interaction energy accounting for cooperativity. Explicit analytical expressions are derived for the chain extension and the probabilities of each state as functions of the applied this http URL approach accurately reproduces the experimental force-extension curves of poly(ethylene-glycol) (PEG) and hyaluronic acid (HA), revealing no cooperativity for PEG and negative cooperativity for HA. It also describes the B-DNA to S-DNA conformational transition, a process that exhibits positive this http URL analyze the mathematical conditions required for a transition and identify two fundamental driving mechanisms: differences in Kuhn lengths and differences in force this http URL of the model to systems with more than two conformational states per Kuhn segment are also discussed. The results presented here apply equally to transitions that are intrinsic to the macromolecular structure or induced by ligand-receptor interactions, unifying both cases within a single thermodynamically consistent framework.
Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft), Chemical Physics (physics.chem-ph)
Ab Initio Spinor Kadanoff-Baym Approach to Nonequilibrium Electron, Phonon and Magnon Dynamics in Itinerant Ferromagnets
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
This work introduces a theoretical framework based on the Kadanoff-Baym equations in spinor space to study ultrafast magnetization dynamics in itinerant ferromagnetic systems from first principles. By incorporating spin-orbit coupling into the ab initio Hamiltonian and generalizing the self-energies to include terms beyond the charge sector, I derive scattering integrals within the Markov approximation and quasiparticle renormalizations for electrons and phonons in the presence of spin-dependent effective interactions within a many-body perturbation theory approach. I explicitly discuss how magnons emerge in this framework, and derive, through suitable approximations, a close and tractable set of equations for coupled electron,phonon and magnon dynamics that can be solved from first principles. This approach allows to treat coherent and incoherent magnetic dynamics on an equal footing, paving the way for a first principles understanding of ultrafast magnetic dynamics and demagnetization, and opening to a truly predictive theory of femtomagnetism in periodic systems.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)
Nonequilibrium scaling of drag forces in counterdriven fluid mixtures
New Submission | Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Jonas Köglmayr, Florian Sammüller, Matthias Schmidt
We address the effective nonequilibrium drag force field that emerges from the microscopic interparticle interactions in steady states of counterdriven binary fluid mixtures. Using power functional scaling arguments for adaptive Brownian dynamics computer simulation results, we establish quantitatively the crossover between near-equilibrium linear response and far-nonequilibrium square root asymptotics. An algebraic expression captures both limiting cases and remains applicable in the crossover regime. Using simulation results as benchmarks, we verify that a local power functional approximation based on the scaling law reproduces the spatial nonequilibrium structure formation in inhomogenously driven systems. The crossover scenario transcends dynamical density functional theory and it sheds light on general nonequilibrium scaling of driven fluids.
Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft), Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)
7 pages, 3 figures
General-purpose LLMs as Constrained Crystal Composition Generators
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Hedda Oschinski, Maximilian L. Ach, Konstantin S. Jakob, Christian Carbogno, Karsten Reuter
The targeted discovery of inorganic materials remains challenging due to the vastness of compositional design spaces and the high cost of exhaustive screening. Task-specific generative artificial intelligence represents a particularly efficient alternative to screening, yet demands tedious collection of training data before providing real benefit. General-purpose large language models (LLMs) have recently shown tremendous potential for the targeted generation of single, optimal materials compositions without the need for task-specific fine-tuning. However, it is unclear whether LLMs generally pose an advantage compared to specialized generative models, in particular in large design spaces. Here, we demonstrate that such models are capable of covering entire regions of the targeted property space effectively and systematically. Using Elpasolite materials as an established benchmark for generative tasks in large chemical spaces, we find that an iterative prompt-and-response framework is able to recover on average 96% of all low-energy Elpasolites in the target region. This performance, driven mainly by iterative in-context learning, surpasses the generative abilities of previous, task-specific models. Our results establish general-purpose LLMs as flexible and accessible components for inverse materials design workflows.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Kohn-Luttinger Superconductivity of Weyl Fermi Arcs in PtBi$_2$
New Submission | Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Reuel Dsouza, Nikolaos Parthenios, Brian M. Andersen, Morten H. Christensen
Recent experimental observations in the noncentrosymmetric Weyl semimetal PtBi$ _2$ indicate unconventional superconductivity hosted by topological surface states – Weyl Fermi arcs – with a node at the center of each arc. Focusing on these Fermi arcs, we calculate the electronically mediated pairing interaction using a Kohn-Luttinger approach and find that, in a large region of the phase diagram, the leading superconducting instability has an $ i$ -wave symmetry featuring precisely such an intra-arc node. We study the dependence of the leading superconducting instabilities on electronic interaction parameters and chemical potential and show that the $ i$ -wave state is robust to changes in the model parameters. Our results provide a possible mechanism for the observation of topological $ i$ -wave superconductivity on the surface of PtBi$ _2$ and may have implications for the broader landscape of superconducting instabilities arising from repulsive interactions on the surfaces of Weyl semimetals.
Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con)
8 pages, 4 figures
Multiplet-Selective Photoelectron Diffraction from an Altermagnet
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Direct real-space probes of altermagnetic order remain scarce. Here we introduce multiplet-selective photoelectron diffraction (PED), a methodology in which different regions of a transition-metal core-level multiplet act as distinct photoemission source waves. Using multiple-scattering calculations for the metallic altermagnet candidate CrSb, we show that selected Cr $ 3p$ multiplet features with predominantly $ Y_1^{+1}$ and $ Y_1^{-1}$ character generate robust diffraction asymmetries sensitive to altermagnetic domains. We demonstrate that both circularly and linearly polarized light provide access to the effect, while suitable combinations of domains, light polarizations, and multiplet-energy windows suppress nonmagnetic diffraction backgrounds. The proposed approach can be implemented using standard momentum-resolved photoemission instrumentation and establishes core-level PED as a practical route toward domain-resolved studies of altermagnets.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
6 pages and 3 figures in the main text. 6 pages, 8 figures, and one table in the supplement
Discovering Thermodynamically Admissible Dissipation Potentials via Grammar-Based Symbolic Regression
New Submission | Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Federico Califano, Jacopo Ciambella
Constitutive laws for inelastic materials must satisfy strict thermodynamic admissibility requirements, yet current data-driven approaches sacrifice interpretability, even when formal guarantees are provided by physics-encoded architectures. We propose a symbolic regression framework for the data-driven discovery of dissipation potentials governing the evolution of internal variables within the Generalized Standard Materials (GSM) formalism. Starting from the Clausius–Duhem inequality, we enforce the thermodynamic requirements, convexity and non-negativity, that the dual dissipation potential must satisfy to guarantee non-negative mechanical dissipation. These requirements are formulated in the general subdifferential setting, encompassing rate-dependent (viscoelastic) and viscoplastic dissipative mechanisms, including potentials with genuine elastic domains, within a unified framework. Candidate potentials are generated by a composition-extended convexity-preserving grammar that guarantees thermodynamic admissibility \emph{by construction}. The framework is validated on synthetic datasets spanning Newtonian, power-law, and Bingham viscoplastic ground truths under process and measurement noise, and on experimental oscillatory shear measurements of a synthetic elastomer across multiple strain amplitudes and frequencies, where the discovered potentials reproduce the amplitude-dependent softening of the dynamic moduli and outperform a calibrated linear Zener baseline.
Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft), Machine Learning (cs.LG)
Nonperturbative renormalization of Haldane pseudopotentials from the exact two-electron spectrum
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
G.-Q. Hai, M. T. Matsubara, L. Cândido, B. G. A. Brito
Haldane pseudopotentials $ V_{|m|}$ provide the effective interaction parameters governing correlated states in the fractional quantum Hall regime. In conventional formulations, these quantities are obtained by projecting the Coulomb interaction onto relative-angular-momentum states within the lowest Landau level, thereby neglecting virtual transitions to higher Landau levels. Here, we formulate a nonperturbative description of effective interactions directly from the exact two-electron spectrum in a magnetic field. By solving the relative-motion problem beyond the lowest-Landau-level approximation, we define renormalized pseudopotentials $ V^\ast_{|m|}$ from the exact eigenenergies and introduce dynamical corrections $ \Delta_{|m|}=V^\ast_{|m|}-V_{|m|}$ . The corrections remain systematically negative and depend strongly on both interaction strength and relative angular momentum, reflecting dynamical correlation effects associated with higher-state virtual admixture. The exact results reproduce the perturbative Landau-level-mixing limit at weak coupling while exhibiting substantial deviations in the strong-mixing regime, signaling the breakdown of low-order perturbative expansions. In particular, the short-range interaction channels relevant to Laughlin-type correlations undergo strong renormalization, leading to substantial modification of the effective interaction hierarchy in strongly interacting systems such as ZnO/MgZnO heterostructures. The present formulation establishes a microscopic framework for incorporating nonperturbative Landau-level-mixing effects into effective interaction theories of quantum Hall systems.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall), Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
7 pages, 4 figures
Migdal-Eliashberg and SUS-$Y^2$-SYK
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
This note addresses a number of subtle issues pertaining to the long-standing problem of strong phonon-like fermion-boson coupling. Among the central topics are the customary Migdal-Eliashberg approximation in the pertinent Schwinger-Dyson gap equation and its solutions. The previously gained insight is assessed by contrasting it against the various (non-)supersymmetric variants of the Yukawa-Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model. Also, some previously discussed (pseudo-)holographic aspects of fermion pairing in such models are commented upon.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el), High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th)
Recovering the Shape of a Contact Line
New Submission | Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Ashbell Abraham, Audrey Profeta, Jeanette Smit, Esmeralda Orozco, Charity Lizardo, Dani Medina, Aidan McGuckin, Bri Kroger, Shae Cole, Nathan C.Keim
We study the conditions for a three-phase contact line to return to a previous position. We drive a water-air-glass contact line between two horizontal plates, by slowly adding and removing water with a constant volume amplitude. For the first several cycles, the contact line ends each cycle with a different shape, in contrast with previously published work. Eventually the shapes begin to repeat, and the system has memory: a cycle with a smaller amplitude ends in a different shape, but even one cycle at the original amplitude recovers the steady-state shape. After a cycle at a larger amplitude, the steady-state shape is erased. We find that our tight control of the enclosed volume creates a global interaction, wherein only the least stable part of the contact line can move. Using theory and minimal models, we show that this interaction gives rise to the transient behaviors. Our study sheds light on the origins of reversibility and memory in a system where neither is guaranteed, and shows that the physics of contact line motion changes in a confined environment.
Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft), Fluid Dynamics (physics.flu-dyn)
7 pages, 6 figures
Floquet Engineering of Quantum Transport through two Driven Impurities
New Submission | Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Vincenzo Bruno (1 and 2), Corinna Kollath (1), Roberta Citro (2 and 3), Ameneh Sheikhan (1) ((1) University of Bonn, (2) University of Salerno and INFN Sezione di Napoli gruppo collegato di Salerno, (3) CNR-SPIN)
Floquet engineering offers powerful tools to manipulate quantum states by periodically driving physical parameters. In this work, we investigate the quantum transport through two periodically driven impurities in a mesoscopic one-dimensional channel. By mapping the time-dependent Hamiltonian into an effective multichannel scattering problem, we unveil a rich landscape of transport phenomena arising from the interplay between Fabry-Perot cavity modes and Fano interference. We demonstrate that the inter-impurity distance acts as a critical control parameter, allowing for the formation of Bound States in the Continuum (BICs). Furthermore, we identify Quasi-BICs, extremely narrow resonances with finite lifetimes, that can be dynamically tuned by the drive amplitude. We show that these states enable a robust coherent trapping mechanism, allowing the system to switch from perfect transparency or reflection to strong localization with giant Wigner time delays. Our results suggest possible applications for tunable delay lines and quantum memories, with feasible experimental realizations in the context of cold atoms.
Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas), Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
Twin Phases: Phase Transitions Without Hidden Symmetry Breaking
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Alison Warman, Yuhan Gai, Sakura Schafer-Nameki
We introduce the concept of twin phases for a symmetry $ \mathcal{S}$ , defined as inequivalent phases, whose order parameters are part of the same generalized charge under $ \mathcal{S}$ . Stable, direct transitions between such twin phases are never spontaneous-symmetry-breaking transitions, even after (partially) gauging the initial symmetry $ \mathcal{S}$ : they are phase transitions without hidden symmetry breaking. We illustrate this with an (anomalous) finite group symmetry in 1+1d, which exhibits such intrinsically beyond Landau transitions.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el), High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th), Category Theory (math.CT), Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
5 pages + appendices and ancillary data file
Twin Algebras: Condensable Algebras beyond Anyons
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2026-06-01 20:00 EDT
Yuhan Gai, Sakura Schafer-Nameki, Alison Warman
Condensable algebras in 2+1d non-chiral topological orders characterize gapped boundary conditions and interfaces. Applied to the Symmetry Topological Field Theory, they allow classification of symmetric gapped phases and impose sharp constraints on possible phase transitions. A condensable algebra is specified not only by its underlying set of anyons, which end on the boundary or interface, but also by its algebra structure. We introduce the concept of twin condensable algebras, which have the same anyon decomposition, but inequivalent algebra structure. We revisit the classification of condensable algebras in $ \mathcal{Z}(\text{Vec}_G^\omega)$ , i.e. in group-theoretical topological orders for finite groups $ G$ with anomaly $ \omega$ . In this context we are able to identify twin algebras that arise from different mechanisms, such as subgroup data, SPT cocycles, and symmetry actions. In particular, we construct infinite families of examples of twins from so-called Gassmann triples, and exhibit cases in which the reduced topological orders are inequivalent despite having identical anyon content. Physically, twin algebras describe distinct symmetric phases that have isomorphic spaces of ground states, but inequivalent order parameters. Such twin phases never exhibit relative spontaneous symmetry breaking, and can be used to construct phase transitions without hidden symmetry breaking, which are intrinsically beyond Landau transitions.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el), High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th), Quantum Algebra (math.QA)
37 pages, 3 ancillary files