CMP Journal 2026-07-09
Statistics
Nature Nanotechnology: 1
Nature Physics: 4
Nature Reviews Physics: 1
Science: 17
Physical Review Letters: 13
Physical Review X: 1
arXiv: 91
Nature Nanotechnology
Lysosome self-sorting nanodegraders for hepatic clearance of pathogenic serum mediators
Original Paper | Drug delivery | 2026-07-08 20:00 EDT
Jiayan Wu, Xiaoang Liu, Yuxuan Hu, Cheng Xu, Jingtian Zhang, Dan Ding, Yan Zhang, Kanyi Pu
Extracellular targeted protein degradation is an emerging therapeutic strategy but has been rarely explored for clearing circulating pathogenic mediators. Here we report stiffness-oriented lysosome self-sorting nanodegraders (SOLIDs) for hepatic lysosomal degradation of serum immune mediators. SOLIDs feature a rigid semiconducting polymer core that is revealed for the first time to confer near-quantitative lysosomal accumulation across diverse cell types. After surface bioconjugation, SOLIDs capture the immune mediators of interest from blood via controlled protein corona formation. The resulting corona composition directs biodistribution, producing predominant accumulation in the liver, where they get degraded in hepatic lysosomes. We show that IL-6-capturing SOLIDs reduced serum IL-6 by an additional 70% versus IL-6 antibody therapy and increased 7-day survival in a murine sepsis model from 0% to 66.7%. In an acute lung injury model, CpG-capturing SOLIDs reduced pulmonary immune cell infiltration 1.7-fold relative to CpG neutralization and suppressed expression of co-stimulatory molecules. This work identifies nanoparticle mechanics as a critical factor in organelle targeting and proposes a nano-therapeutic approach for the degradation of pathogenic serum biomolecules.
Drug delivery
Nature Physics
Emergence of Fermi’s golden rule in a quantum many-body system
Original Paper | Quantum mechanics | 2026-07-08 20:00 EDT
Jianyi Chen, Songtao Huang, Yunpeng Ji, Grant L. Schumacher, Alan Tsidilkovski, Alexander Schuckert, Gabriel G. T. Assumpção, Nir Navon
Fermi’s golden rule links certain measurable observables–such as transition rates–to fundamental microscopic properties such as the density of states or spectral functions. Understanding the regime of validity of Fermi’s golden rule is critical for the proper interpretation of spectroscopic experiments. Although its assumptions are straightforward in simple models, assessing their validity in quantum many-body systems remains difficult. Here we demonstrate the emergence and breakdown of Fermi’s golden rule in a strongly interacting homogeneous spin-1/2 Fermi gas coupled to a radio-frequency field. By measuring the transition probability into an outcoupled internal state, we map the system’s dynamical response diagram as a function of pulse duration t and probe coupling strength. For weak drives, we identify an early time regime where the transition probability takes off as t2, an intermediate-time regime consistent with Fermi’s golden rule regime and a long-time non-perturbative regime. Beyond a threshold coupling strength, Rabi oscillations appear. Our results provide a blueprint for the applicability of linear response theory to the spectroscopy of quantum many-body systems.
Quantum mechanics, Ultracold gases
Principles of optics in Fock space for the scalable manipulation of large quantum states
Original Paper | Quantum information | 2026-07-08 20:00 EDT
Yifang Xu, Yilong Zhou, Ziyue Hua, Lida Sun, Jie Zhou, Weiting Wang, Weizhou Cai, Hongwei Huang, Lintao Xiao, Guangming Xue, Haifeng Yu, Ming Li, Chang-Ling Zou, Luyan Sun
The principles of wave optics provide elegant and scalable control over classical light in spatial and temporal domains. However, in the quantum regime, engineering Fock states of photons has been largely restricted to only a few photons at a time, hindered by the computational and experimental challenges of large Hilbert spaces. Here we introduce a conceptual framework of wave propagation in the quantum domain by treating the photon number in a microwave resonator as a synthetic dimension. In the large-photon limit, the coupling between adjacent Fock states becomes approximately uniform, allowing us to establish an analogy to light propagation. Using a superconducting cavity, we experimentally demonstrate Fock-space analogues of optical propagation, refraction, lensing, dispersion and interference with up to 180 photons. By mapping intuitive optical concepts onto the domain of high-dimensional quantum state engineering, our work provides an approach to scalable control of large-scale quantum systems with thousands of photons and advanced bosonic information processing.
Quantum information, Quantum optics, Qubits
Millisecond coherence times in gigahertz-frequency mechanical oscillators
Original Paper | Acoustics | 2026-07-08 20:00 EDT
Yizhi Luo, Hilel Hagai Diamandi, Hanshi Li, Runjiang Bi, David Mason, Taekwan Yoon, Xinghan Guo, Hanlin Tang, Ryan O. Behunin, Frederick J. Walker, Charles H. Ahn, Peter T. Rakich
High-frequency mechanical oscillators with long coherence times are essential for realizing a variety of high-fidelity quantum sensors, transducers and memories. However, the coherence times needed for quantum applications require advances in probing and mitigating the origins of phonon decoherence in the materials used for mechanical oscillators. Here we identify key sources of phonon decoherence in crystalline media by combining non-invasive laser spectroscopy with materials analysis. Using micro-fabricated high-overtone bulk acoustic-wave resonators as an experimental test bed, we find that phonon-surface interactions are the dominant source of phonon decoherence in crystalline quartz. The probable causes are lattice distortion, subsurface damage and a high concentration of elemental impurities. We use an optimized polishing process to remove the compromised surface layer and produce resonators with quality factors exceeding 240 million at 12 GHz, corresponding to phonon coherence times of over 6 ms. We verify that these mechanical oscillators have negligible dephasing. Building on these results, we propose a path that could reach coherence times beyond 100 ms as the basis for high-frequency quantum memories. These findings demonstrate that enhanced control over surfaces enables a substantial reduction in dissipation and noise.
Acoustics, Information storage, Quantum information, Sensors
Bose-Einstein condensate of ultracold sodium-rubidium molecules with tunable dipolar interactions
Original Paper | Bose-Einstein condensates | 2026-07-08 20:00 EDT
Zhaopeng Shi, Zerong Huang, Fulin Deng, Wei-Jian Jin, Su Yi, Tao Shi, Dajun Wang
Ultracold polar molecules offer electric dipole moments, rich rotational structure and long coherence times in a single quantum gas, giving access to interaction regimes that are difficult to reach with atoms. However, realizing Bose-Einstein condensation in these systems has remained difficult because two-body collisional losses usually prevent efficient evaporative cooling. Here we produce a condensate of ground-state sodium-rubidium molecules using dual microwave shielding, in which two microwave fields suppress loss while allowing control of the long-range interactions. Starting from an optically trapped gas of ground-state sodium-rubidium molecules, we cool the molecules to quantum degeneracy and obtain condensates containing about 500 molecules. By tuning the dipolar interactions, we also observe both gas-phase condensates and a self-bound quantum droplet, with the gas-to-droplet transition identified from time-of-flight expansion. These results establish sodium-rubidium molecules as a platform for studying strongly dipolar quantum matter with tunable long-range interactions.
Bose-Einstein condensates, Ultracold gases
Nature Reviews Physics
Non-idealities in artificial synapses
Review Paper | Electrical and electronic engineering | 2026-07-08 20:00 EDT
Shafin Bin Hamid, Jean Anne C. Incorvia, Samuel Liu
The increasing energy and latency demands of artificial intelligence workloads in data-intensive applications are limited by the traditional von Neumann computer architecture, in which the memory and processing units are physically separated. Non-volatile memory technologies offer opportunities for analog in-memory computing that can go beyond these limits. These architectures consist of artificial synapses in dense crossbar arrays in which processing and memory can be combined. However, artificial synapses have various non-ideal effects, including nonlinearity, asymmetry, variability, limited endurance and retention loss which affect their capacity to be integrated into reliable accelerator platforms. In this Review, we consider the ideal synapse model and classify the effects that deviate from this ideality. In addition to discussing techniques to counter non-idealities that span material, device, circuit-level and algorithm-level design, we also consider cases that leverage deviations from the ideal towards specific applications. We make the case that the most effective synapse is one whose imperfections are well understood and can be harnessed in synergy with system-level goals.
Electrical and electronic engineering, Electronic devices, Information technology
Science
A phase microscope for quantum gases
Research Article | Quantum matter | 2026-07-09 03:00 EDT
J. C. Brüggenjürgen, M. S. Fischer, C. Weitenberg
Coherence properties are central to quantum systems and are at the heart of phenomena such as superconductivity. In this work, we studied coherence properties of an ultracold Bose gas in a two-dimensional optical lattice across the thermal phase transition. To infer the phase coherence and phase fluctuation profiles, we used direct matter-wave imaging of higher Talbot revivals and introduced a phase microscope based on a site-resolved mapping of phase fluctuations to density fluctuations during matter-wave imaging. We observed the algebraic decay of the phase correlations in the superfluid phase and a linear temperature increase of the exponent. These techniques may enable studying coherence properties in strongly correlated quantum systems with full spatial resolution.
C1q and immunoglobulins mediate activity-dependent synapse loss in the adult brain
Research Article | Neuroimmunology | 2026-07-09 03:00 EDT
Gerard Crowley, Minjung Kim, Nathanael O’Neill, Emir Turkes, Fateme Ghasemi, Luca Giudice, Sebastiaan De Schepper, Benjy J. Y. Tan, Benito Maffei, Laís S. S. Ferreira, Julie Rebejac, Javier Rueda-Carrasco, Margarita Toneva, John Christian Fajardo, Judy Z. Ge, Zhengyue Grace Yang, Paula Korhonen, Phillip Muckett, Damaris Bennett, Camille Paoletti, Tammie T. M. Sow, David A. Posner, Annerieke Sierksma, Dimitra Sokolova, Viktoras Konstantellos, Leen Ali, Kiavash Movahedi, Andrew F. MacAskill, Victor L. J. Tybulewicz, Tarja Malm, Gabriele Lignani, Menna R. Clatworthy, Soyon Hong
Complement component 1q (C1q), the initiator of the classical complement cascade, mediates synaptic elimination in development and disease, yet the triggers for its deposition on synapses remain unclear. Using in vivo chemogenetics, we demonstrate that neuronal hyperactivity induces region-specific, C1q-dependent synapse loss in the adult hippocampus. Suppressing perforant pathway hyperactivity in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease reduced local amyloid-β amounts and C1q deposition and partially rescued synapse loss. Combining spatial transcriptomics, live cell tracking, and super-resolution microscopy, we identified association of antibody-secreting B-lineage cells in the adult hippocampus with activity-dependent, C1q-mediated synapse loss under physiological conditions. Together, these findings link neuronal hyperactivity to C1q-mediated synapse loss in the adult brain and implicate immunoglobulins as players in this process.
Roots navigate around decay regions by sensing local pH gradients
Research Article | Plant science | 2026-07-09 03:00 EDT
Zhulatai Bao, Huihui Wang, Ai Zhang, Ruxi Gao, Wen Gu, Ni Fan, Jiří Friml, Yuzhou Zhang
Plant tropisms enable roots to navigate complex soils by responding to directional environmental cues. Biological decay, although central to nutrient cycling, also creates microbially active and potentially hostile niches. In this work, we identified “saprotropism,” a previously unrecognized growth response that enables roots to actively bend away from decaying plant-derived matter. Fungal-driven microbial decomposition released organic acids and formed stable pH gradients in surrounding soil, allowing roots to pinpoint decay without direct contact. Root epidermal cells sensed this acidic gradient through the root meristem growth factor peptide-receptor module, converting external pH asymmetry into asymmetric abscisic acid (ABA) distribution. ABA asymmetry drove microtubule reorganization, which was decoded into decay-avoidant root bending. Together, these findings establish microbial decay-derived chemical gradients as an instructive signal for root navigation and expand the framework of microbe-soil-plant communication.
The origin, history, and resistance architecture of an invasive urban malaria mosquito in Africa
Research Article | Mosquito genetics | 2026-07-09 03:00 EDT
Tristan P. W. Dennis, Jihad Eltaher Sulieman, Mujahid Nouredayem, Temesgen Ashine, Yehenew Ebstie, Adane Eyasu, Eba A. Simma, Endalew Zemene, Nigatu Negash, Abena Yigeremu, Muluken Assefa, Hamza Elzack, Alemayehu Dagne, Biniam Lukas, Mikiyas Gebremichael Bulto, Michael C. Fontaine, Loïc Talignani, Ahmadali Enayati, Fatemeh Nikpoor, Ashwaq M. Al-Nazawi, Mohammed H. Al-Zahrani, Bouh Abdi Khaireh, Samatar Guelleh, Abdoul-Ilah Ahmed Abdi, Richard Allan, Seline Omondi, Bernard Abong’o, Sylvia Milanoi, Eric Ochomo, Ayman Ahmed, Jeanne N. Samake, John E. Gimnig, Cristina Rafferty, Faisal Ashraf, Patricia Pignatelli, Marion Morris, Sanjay C. Nagi, Eric R. Lucas, Anastasia Hernandez-Koutoucheva, Chris S. Clarkson, Patricia Doumbe-Belisse, Adrienne Epstein, Rebecca Brown, Anne L. Wilson, Alison M. Reynolds, Ellie Sherrard-Smith, Delenasaw Yewhalaw, Endalamaw Gadisa, Elfatih Malik, Hmooda Toto Kafy, Martin J. Donnelly, David Weetman
The invasive urban malaria vector Anopheles stephensi threatens 126 million city dwellers in Africa. Controlling An. stephensi requires greater understanding of its origin, invasion dynamics, and insecticide resistance mechanisms. Analysis of 645 whole genomes sampled across Africa, the Middle East, and Asia supports an invasion scenario in which an initial South Asian introduction established a bridgehead population in Djibouti, which seeded distinct invasion fronts in Sudan, Ethiopia/Kenya, and Yemen. These incursions show contrasting rates and routes of spread shaped by landscape topology. Insecticide resistance is predominantly mediated by metabolic detoxification genes, with resistance haplotypes and copy-number amplifications introduced from South Asia. These findings, alongside a companion genomic resource, enable genomic surveillance of An. stephensi spread and resistance to aid control strategies.
Neural circuits for valence updating in social memory
Research Article | Neuroscience | 2026-07-09 03:00 EDT
Narutoshi Suto, Mu-Yun Wang, Shota Morikawa, Myung Chung, Kentaro Tao, Ziyan Huang, Yuji Ikegaya, Haruki Takeuchi, Shinichiro Kira, Teruhiro Okuyama
Social animals recognize familiar conspecifics and selectively avoid harmful ones. As social relationships shift, continuous updating of social valence is essential, yet the underlying neural mechanisms remain unclear. Here, by artificially transforming a previously neutral conspecific into an aggressive one, we show that valence updating depends on enhanced synaptic connectivity and physiological changes within the hippocampal ventral CA1 (vCA1)-basolateral amygdala (BLA)-nucleus accumbens (NAc) circuit. Following defeat, social memory engram neurons in the vCA1 strengthened their connections with BLA neurons carrying negative valence. The vCA1-BLA-NAc neural circuit flexibly regulates adaptive social behaviors.
Autonomous biomedical research with an artificial intelligence agent
Research Article | 2026-07-09 03:00 EDT
Kexin Huang, Serena Zhang, Hanchen Wang, Yuanhao Qu, Yingzhou Lu, Ryan Li, Yusuf Roohani, Lin Qiu, Shiyi Cao, Gavin Li, Junze Zhang, Di Yin, Rick Wierenga, Deniz Kavi, Sherry Liu, Tianwei She, Shruti Marwaha, Jennefer N. Carter, Xin Zhou, Matthew T. Wheeler, Jonathan A. Bernstein, Mengdi Wang, Peng He, Jingtian Zhou, Michael P. Snyder, Le Cong, Aviv Regev, Jure Leskovec
Biomedical research is increasingly constrained by repetitive, fragmented workflows that slow discovery. We introduce Biomni, a general-purpose biomedical artificial intelligence agent that autonomously executes diverse research tasks. To map the biomedical action space, Biomni’s action-discovery agent mines tools, databases, and protocols from thousands of publications across 25 domains, building a unified agentic environment. Its general-purpose architecture integrates large language model reasoning with retrieval-augmented planning and code-based execution, dynamically composing workflows without predefined templates. Systematic benchmarking shows strong generalization across heterogeneous tasks–causal gene prioritization, drug repurposing, rare-disease diagnosis, microbiome analysis, and molecular cloning–without task-specific tuning. Real-world case studies demonstrate Biomni interpreting multi-modal datasets, optimizing protein stability, orchestrating wet-lab instruments, and generating experimentally testable protocols. Biomni envisions artificial intelligence augmenting human scientists and accelerating discovery.
The CARM1 epigenetic enzyme inhibits cross-presenting dendritic cell function in cancer immunity
Research Article | Cancer immunotherapy | 2026-07-09 03:00 EDT
Xixi Zhang, Sherin Xirenayi, Ye Zhao, Wen Wang, Yuyang Han, Miguel Sobral, Shawn Kang, Chi Zhang, Graham L. Barlow, Jason Pyrdol, Jae-Won Cho, Kun Huang, Xiaohan Ning, Martin Hemberg, Guo-Cheng Yuan, Eliezer M. Van Allen, David J. Mooney, Kai W. Wucherpfennig
The cancer-immunity cycle requires cross-presenting type I conventional dendritic cells (cDC1s) that induce T cell-mediated immunity, but therapeutic strategies for enhancing intratumoral cDC1 function are currently inadequate. We found the epigenetic enzyme CARM1 (coactivator-associated arginine methyltransferase 1) to be a selective negative regulator of cancer antigen presentation by cDC1s but not cDC2s. Inactivation of the Carm1 gene promoted cDC1 antigen cross-presentation, activation, and accumulation in tumors, and a CARM1 inhibitor enhanced cDC1-mediated priming of T cells by means of a cancer neoantigen vaccine. CARM1 inhibition increased chromatin accessibility at BATF3-Jun and RelA sites that are critical for cDC1 function and activation. Transforming growth factor-β regulated Carm1 expression, which suggests that CARM1 inactivation enhanced intratumoral cDC1 function without altering cDC1 homeostasis. These studies identify CARM1 as a potential therapeutic target for enhancing the antitumor function of mouse and human cDC1s.
Leaping out of the water: Aerial-aquatic locomotion with flapping wings
Research Article | Robotics | 2026-07-09 03:00 EDT
Raphael Zufferey, Simon L. Jeger, Moritz Hüsser, Fernando Ruiz, Anthony Lapsansky, Auke Ijspeert, Dario Floreano
Wing-propelled diving birds flap their wings to move through air and water, yet the wing morphology and kinematics that enable this behavior remain poorly understood because of the difficulty of collecting in situ data. The impact of flapping frequency, wing size, and stiffness on locomotion in–and transition between–the two media are still unknown. We compared data from diving birds against experiments using a flapping-wing robot capable of flying, swimming, plunge diving, and exiting the water. We show that frequency adaptation, flexible wings, and powerful actuation enable seamless transitions without folding wings or legs, that large wings enhance flight without substantially reducing underwater efficiency, and that tail-body distance and egress angle affect water exit. These results clarify how birds (and robots) balance multifluid locomotion constraints.
A statistical test for the benefits of personalizing interventions
Research Article | Applied statistics | 2026-07-09 03:00 EDT
Zhaoqi Li, Emma Brunskill
From medicine to marketing to social sciences, the promise of tailoring interventions to individuals is undeniable. However, practical applications force weighing personalization’s potential benefits with its possible increased cost and fragility. We introduce a statistical hypothesis test that evaluates, given historical data, evidence that a personalized intervention policy’s performance will surpass deploying the best single intervention. The test maintains strict Type I error control while achieving asymptotic normality with the minimal possible variance under specified conditions. Results on diverse datasets from job training, depression treatment, education, and recommendation systems demonstrate the test’s versatility and its superior performance over alternatives. This test can support decision-makers throughout the intervention sciences by providing a simple and powerful quantification of the potential benefits of personalization.
Virome-wide ubiquitin ligase discovery reveals diverse mechanisms of immune evasion
Research Article | 2026-07-09 03:00 EDT
Caleb R. Glassman, Kheewoong Baek, Gaopeng Hou, Qiru Zeng, Christopher Nardone, Kate B. Juergens, Eric Fujimura, Colin N. O’Leary, Mamie Z. Li, Joao A. Paulo, Eric S. Fischer, Siyuan Ding, J. Wade Harper, Stephen J. Elledge
Viruses are intracellular parasites that reprogram the host proteome to promote replication and evade immune recognition. We applied a virome-wide library of ~10,000 open reading frames to discover viral ubiquitin ligases, mapping their mechanisms of degradation and host substrates using targeted CRISPR screens and proteomics. These viral effectors could be classified as canonical ligases that mimic host E3s, hijackers that redirect host E3s, and non-canonical ligases that rewire Cullin-RING ligase machinery. These diverse strategies of virus-mediated degradation converged on immune-related substrates, including JAK1 and CUL1β-TrCP, underscoring immune evasion as a major driver of viral ubiquitin ligase evolution. Our findings elucidate viral strategies for exploiting the ubiquitin-proteasome system with potential for therapeutic targeting.
Adaptation across an extreme elevational gradient in Andean leaf-eared mice, the world’s highest-dwelling mammal
Research Article | Comparative physiology | 2026-07-09 03:00 EDT
Schuyler Liphardt, Naim M. Bautista, Marcial Quiroga-Carmona, Nathanael D. Herrera, L. Moritz Blumer, Juan C. Opazo, Federico G. Hoffmann, Ranim Saleem, Derek A. Somo, Francisco Del Basto Llancaqueo, Timothy J. Thurman, Timothy B. Wheeler, Daniel E. Shaw, Hunter K. Walt, Till S. Harter, Grant B. McClelland, Graham R. Scott, Pablo Sabat, Zachary A. Cheviron, Guillermo D’Elía, Jeffrey M. Good, Jay F. Storz
Andean leaf-eared mice (Phyllotis vaccarum) live at the highest elevations of any mammal, and they also have the broadest elevational range, from sea level to mountain summits of >6700 meters. Highland populations have evolved an enhanced thermogenic capacity in hypoxia relative to lowland conspecifics, and this improved physiological performance is associated with an increased mitochondrial respiratory capacity in skeletal muscle. Population genomic analyses identified mechanisms of hypoxia adaptation and revealed an unanticipated dimension of environmental adaptation in P. vaccarum because selection on biotransformation pathways suggests an evolved capacity to metabolize plant-derived dietary toxins. The world’s highest-dwelling mammal has adapted to habitats at both the low- and high-elevation limits of its range, and much of the elevation-related selection relates to previously unappreciated aspects of feeding ecology.
Bacteria sense virus-induced genome degradation via methylated mononucleotides
Research Article | 2026-07-09 03:00 EDT
Ilya Osterman, Bohdana Hurieva, Sarit Moses, Alla H. Falkovich, Maxim Itkin, Sergey Malitsky, Eliane Hadas Yardeni, Erez Yirmiya, Rotem Sorek
Phages often degrade the genome of their bacterial host to individual nucleotides. Here we describe Metis, a bacterial defense system that directly senses phage-mediated host genome degradation. Metis aborts phage infection once it detects the modified mono-nucleotide m6dAMP. As methylation of deoxyadenosines usually occurs on the DNA polymer, accumulation of m6dAMP signals that the host genome has been degraded. In type I Metis, sensing of m6dAMP activates an NAD+ diphosphatase, leading to NAD+ depletion and cessation of the infection process; while the effector in type II Metis is a membrane-spanning protein whose toxicity is triggered in response to the modified mono-nucleotide. We further show that Metis defense depends on endogenous DNA methylases, and that phages can escape Metis via mutations that inactivate host genome degradation.
A single freeze cycle redirects iron mineral transformation
Research Article | Mineralogy | 2026-07-09 03:00 EDT
Tao Luo, Tao Chen, Tra My Bui Thi, James Behan, Crispin Hetherington, Khalil Hanna, Jean-François Boily
Polycrystalline ice formation concentrates mineral nanoparticles into liquid boundaries between growing ice crystals. Here we show that minutes of freezing dictate iron mineral fate over subsequent months of aqueous aging. A single freeze-thaw cycle irreversibly aggregates ferrihydrite through converging physical and chemical mechanisms. Freeze concentration collapses electrostatic barriers while cryosuction strips hydration layers and compresses nanoparticles into micrometer-scale planar aggregates. Chemical evidence points to interfacial (hydr)oxo bridging, alongside hydrogen bonding, that resists disaggregation. These mechanisms lock nanoparticles into mesocrystal-like assemblages that retain their nanoscale identity but inhibit dissolution-reprecipitation to goethite, instead favoring solid-state transformation to hematite. Ice formation thus acts as a geochemical reactor, driving aggregation and interfacial bonding that redirect iron speciation, with broad implications for nutrient cycling and carbon preservation across the cryosphere.
Vicinal disubstitution of alkyl C-X synthons via alkene radical cation generation
Research Article | 2026-07-09 03:00 EDT
Yufei Zhang, Tamal Das, Zi Xuan, Mrinmoy Das, Hammed O. Bisiriyu, Alon Nudler, Ben D. Parasch, Matthew D. Resmini, Aubrey E. Graham, David F. Watson, Jennifer S. Hirschi, Patricia Z. Musacchio
In organic chemistry, functionalization of two adjacent carbons often starts from alkenes or already disubstituted precursors. Herein, we report an exergonic activation mode that directly generates alkene radical cation intermediates from monofunctional C(sp3)-X handles through a photoredox-triggered hydrogen-atom abstraction (HAT) and spin-center shift (SCS) process. Computations show that electron delocalization and a network of hydrogen-bonding solvent molecules facilitate a concerted [HAT+SCS] mechanism. The catalytic platform was used to design a transfer of electrophilic reactivity (C-X) from one carbon to another, which we refer to as electrophilic shuttling. Thus, two nucleophiles can be used in the construction of 1,2-difunctionalization adducts from homobenzylic C-X synthons, delivering bisazole architectures and demonstrating compatibility with other nucleophile classes. A suite of transformations is developed that departs from conventional synthetic logic, for which alkyl C-X scaffolds are confined to single-site substitutions, now transforming them into nonintuitive precursors for building vicinal complexity.
Degron-independent recruitment of KAT2A expands the target space of CRBN molecular glues
Research Article | Molecular glues | 2026-07-09 03:00 EDT
Samuel Ojeda, Meng Wang, Kheewoong Baek, Wallace Bourgeois, Alba Sommerschield, Hong Yue, Rebecca J. Metivier, Panos Karagiannis, Talya S. Levitz, Yuan Xiong, Katherine A. Donovan, Scott A. Armstrong, Eric S. Fischer
Lysine acetyltransferases (KATs) cooperate with oncogenes such as c-Myc, estrogen receptor, and lysine methyltransferase 2A (KMT2A) fusions to sustain malignant programs. Targeting of KAT proteins has shown clinical efficacy; however, achieving homolog selectivity for most KATs remains a major challenge. By extending cereblon (CRBN)-based molecular glues beyond the canonical degron space, we developed an exquisitely selective degrader of KAT2A. Cryo-electron microscopy revealed that CRBN recruits KAT2A independently of a degron; instead, the molecular glue engages a surface-exposed tyrosine, mimicking antibody-like molecular recognition. Selective KAT2A degradation leads to potent ablation of histone H3 lysine 9 acetylation (H3K9Ac), antiproliferative effects in acute myeloid leukemia cell lines, and in vivo efficacy in a patient-derived xenograft model, establishing KAT2A as a targetable vulnerability to treat a wide range of malignancies. More generally, degron-independent recruitment extends the CRBN-targetable proteome.
Transient assembly of precision-tuned platinum-skin intermetallic catalysts for fuel cells
Research Article | Nanocatalysts | 2026-07-09 03:00 EDT
Jia Ding, Tao Zhang, Wanqing Song, Zezhou Li, Xin Wang, Xinyi Yang, Jiahui Feng, Ming Wen, Yanan Chen, Zhong Wu, Jihan Zhou, Bin Liu, Wenbin Hu
Highly efficient catalysts require precisely engineered intricate structures, yet conventional thermodynamically controlled syntheses often involve cumbersome procedures and limited structural precision. We report a nonequilibrium transient assembly strategy for the ultrafast synthesis of intricately structured nanocatalysts, including core-shell platinum (Pt)-skinned intermetallic nanocrystals exemplified by Pt@PtFe-i. By using a periodic thermal-pulse protocol to drive the continuous evolution of high-energy transient PtFe configurations, we achieved the synchronous assembly of a high-order PtFe intermetallic core and an atomic-layer-precise Pt skin. The Pt@PtFe-i catalyst exhibits coordination-dependent compressive strain within the Pt skin, creating a high density of highly active sites for the oxygen reduction reaction. The H2-air fuel cell with Pt@PtFe-i delivers a peak power of 1.25 watts per square centimeter at a cathode Pt loading of 0.1 milligrams per square centimeter, with a small peak power loss of 3.2% after 30,000 accelerated durability testing cycles.
Relativistic collapse of the classical triple bond in the CBi- molecular ion
Research Article | Physical chemistry | 2026-07-09 03:00 EDT
Deniz Kahraman, Jie Hui, Xin-Yu Zhang, Neil A. Ellis, Hyun Wook Choi, Kirk A. Peterson, Lai-Sheng Wang
The conventional framework for chemical bonding between main-group elements involves separate σ and π orbitals to describe multiple bonds. However, relativistic effects mix these orbitals in molecules containing heavy elements through spin-orbit coupling, leaving the total angular-momentum projection (ω) as the only good quantum number. Direct experimental evidence that relativistic effects change the σ-π bonding framework has remained elusive. Here, we probe the carbon-bismuth triple bond in the CBi- anion using high-resolution cryogenic photoelectron spectroscopy, coupled with relativistic four-component Dirac-Coulomb coupled-cluster calculations. Even though the CBi- anion is isovalent to the well-known CN- species, we demonstrate that the traditional σ + 2π triple-bond picture collapses into a pure π-like |ω| = 3/2 and two |ω| = 1/2 Kramers pairs containing substantial σ/π mixing.
Physical Review Letters
Minimal Trade-Off and Optimal Measurement for Multiparameter Quantum Estimation
Article | Quantum Information, Science, and Technology | 2026-07-08 06:00 EDT
Lingna Wang, Hongzhen Chen, and Haidong Yuan
A fundamental challenge in multiparameter quantum estimation arises from the incompatibility of optimal measurements for different parameters, leading to intricate precision trade-offs that obscure the understanding of ultimate quantum limits. Here, we present an approach that precisely quantifies t…
Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 020804 (2026)
Quantum Information, Science, and Technology
Quantum-Error-Correction-Inspired Noise Mitigation for Wavelike Dark Matter Searches with Quantum Sensors
Article | Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Gravitation | 2026-07-08 06:00 EDT
Hajime Fukuda, Takeo Moroi, and Thanaporn Sichanugrist
We propose a quantum-error-correction-inspired noise mitigation protocol for enhancing the sensitivity of wavelike dark matter searches with quantum sensors. Our protocol uses multiple sensors to mitigate the noise affecting each sensor individually, allowing for the suppression of excitation noise …
Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 021001 (2026)
Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Gravitation
Regge Trajectories from the Adjoint Sector of Matrix Quantum Mechanics
Article | Particles and Fields | 2026-07-08 06:00 EDT
Igor R. Klebanov, Henry W. Lin, and Pavel Meshcheriakov
We reexamine the large limit of symmetric quantum mechanics of a Hermitian matrix whose singlet sector is well known to be exactly solvable via free fermions. When the Fermi level approaches a maximum of the potential, there is critical behavior corresponding to string theory in two dimensio…
Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 021603 (2026)
Particles and Fields
Comprehensive Analysis of the ${B}^{0}→{K}^{*0}{μ}^{+}{μ}^{-}$ Decay
Article | Particles and Fields | 2026-07-08 06:00 EDT
R. Aaij et al. (LHCb Collaboration)
Does a new measurement of a rare decay of the neutral meson portend new physics?
Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 021802 (2026)
Particles and Fields
Observation of the Doubly Charmed Baryon ${\mathrm{Ξ}}_{cc}^{+}$ with the LHCb Run 3 Detector
Article | Particles and Fields | 2026-07-08 06:00 EDT
R. Aaij et al. (LHCb Collaboration)
The first observation of the doubly charmed baryon is reported through its decay to the final state, with a statistical significance exceeding seven standard deviations. The observation is made using proton-proton collision data collected in 2024 with the LHCb Run 3 detector at a center…
Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 021902 (2026)
Particles and Fields
Diffusion Equation is Compatible with Special Relativity
Article | Nuclear Physics | 2026-07-08 06:00 EDT
L. Gavassino
Because of its parabolic character, the diffusion equation exhibits instantaneous spatial spreading and becomes unstable when Lorentz boosted. According to the conventional interpretation, these features reflect a fundamental incompatibility with special relativity. In this Letter, we show that this…
Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 022302 (2026)
Nuclear Physics
Exponential Linewidth Narrowing and Enhancement of Sensitivity in Ramsey Interferometry with an Optically Thick Ensemble of Atoms
Article | Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics | 2026-07-08 06:00 EDT
S. A. Moiseev, K. I. Gerasimov, M. M. Minnegaliev, I. V. Brekotkin, and E. S. Moiseev
Ramsey resonance is a high-resolution technique used in spectroscopy, precise measurement of time and frequency, and the creation of modern clocks. The Ramsey experiments are typically done in optically dilute samples of atoms to improve homogeneity and avoid backaction of atoms on excitation pulses…
Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 023603 (2026)
Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
Quantum Geometric Fluctuation-Dissipation Relation for Nonlinear Transport
Article | Condensed Matter and Materials | 2026-07-08 06:00 EDT
Rui Wang, Xinyue Liu, Fuming Xu, Jun Chen, Lei Zhang, and Jian Wang
The fluctuation-dissipation theorem connects equilibrium noise to linear response and forms a cornerstone of statistical and quantum physics, yet its extension to geometry-driven nonlinear transport remains largely unexplored. Here we establish a geometric fluctuation-dissipation relation linking dc…
Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 026301 (2026)
Condensed Matter and Materials
Unified First-Principles Formula for Time-Resolved ARPES Spectra of Coherent and Incoherent Excitons beyond the Dilute Limit
Article | Condensed Matter and Materials | 2026-07-08 06:00 EDT
Gianluca Stefanucci and Enrico Perfetto
Despite major experimental progresses in time-resolved and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, a quantitative, microscopic framework for interpreting exciton-induced modifications of electronic band structures--applicable even beyond the low-density limit--is still lacking. Here, we close this …
Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 026402 (2026)
Condensed Matter and Materials
Decoupled-Subspace-Induced Flat Bands in a Photonic Superlattice
Article | Condensed Matter and Materials | 2026-07-08 06:00 EDT
Guoxia Yang, Jiayi Zhang, Siyan Jiang, Anwen Jiang, Chenying Huang, Yihe Li, Haojie Li, Xiaoran Zhang, Dahe Liu, and Jinwei Shi
Flat bands in photonic systems enable strong light confinement and enhanced light-matter interactions, yet realizing flat dispersion across an entire Brillouin zone (BZ) remains nontrivial. Here, we propose a practical mechanism for generating BZ-spanning flat bands through the coupling between pr…
Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 026902 (2026)
Condensed Matter and Materials
Tailoring Pure Valley-Zeeman Spin-Orbit Coupling in ${\mathrm{WSe}}_{2}$-Encapsulated Monolayer Graphene
Article | Condensed Matter and Materials | 2026-07-08 06:00 EDT
Yaqing Han, Siqi Jiang, Jingkuan Xiao, Jiawei Jiang, Yulu Liu, Jiabei Huang, Yu Du, Di Zhang, Fuzhuo Lian, Wanting Xu, Siqin Wang, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, Xiaoxiang Xi, Alexander S. Mayorov, Renjun Du, Kai Chang, Hongxin Yang, Lei Wang, and Geliang Yu
Clearly resolved Landau levels reveal a symmetry-enforced Landau-level reordering driven by competition between fixed valley-Zeeman splitting and magnetic-field-dependent cyclotron energy.
Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 027001 (2026)
Condensed Matter and Materials
Comment on “Photoinduced Dynamics and Momentum Distribution of Chiral Charge Density Waves in $1T\text{-}{\mathrm{TiSe}}_{2}$”
Article | 2026-07-08 06:00 EDT
Chenhang Xu, Jackson McClellan, Patrick Liu, Sheng-Chih Lin, Shuaiwei Pan, Henry G. Bell, Patrick L. Kramer, Randy Lemons, Sharon S. Philip, Cameron J. R. Duncan, Brian Kaufman, Mianzhen Mo, Alexander H. Reid, Giulio Cerullo, Alfred Zong, and Michael W. Zuerch
Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 029601 (2026)
Qiu et al. Reply
Article | 2026-07-08 06:00 EDT
Qingzheng Qiu, Sae Hwan Chun, Jaeku Park, Dogeun Jang, Li Yue, Yeongkwan Kim, Yeojin Ahn, Mingi Jho, Kimoon Han, Xinyi Jiang, Qian Xiao, Tao Dong, Jia-Yi Ji, Nanlin Wang, Jeroen van den Brink, Jasper van Wezel, and Yingying Peng
Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 029602 (2026)
Physical Review X
Agentic Exploration of Physics Models
Article | 2026-07-08 06:00 EDT
Maximilian Nägele and Florian Marquardt
ꜱᴄɪᴇxᴘʟᴏʀᴇʀ, a generalist artificial scientist agent based on a large-language model, automates the process of scientific research and discovery and uncovers underlying models of diverse physical systems without task-specific fine-tuning.
Phys. Rev. X 16, 031002 (2026)
arXiv
BatteryMat: a hierarchical machine-learning and DFT framework for average-voltage screening of lithium-ion cathode materials
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Jaehyung Lee, Charles Rhys Campbell, Kent Zhang, Kamal Choudhary
Density functional theory (DFT) predicts cathode voltages accurately but does not scale to the combinatorial chemical spaces of modern materials databases, while pure machine-learning surrogates are fast but cannot guarantee thermodynamic consistency. We introduce BatteryMat, a three-tier framework that promotes single-pass average-voltage prediction with the Atomistic Line Graph Neural Network (ALIGNN) as the primary screening signal across JARVIS-DFT, then validates survivors with ALIGNN-FF force-field delithiation profiles and automated PBE+U or optB88-vdW+U supercell DFT. The exchange-correlation functional is selected automatically by spacegroup, and the lithium metal reference is recomputed in the same plane-wave basis as the cathode runs, removing a systematic offset of about 1 V present in tabulated values. Trained on 7,610 ALIGNN-FF delithiation voltages, the ALIGNN predictor reproduces the force-field labels with a mean absolute error of 0.17 V and a coefficient of determination of 0.94; this measures distillation fidelity to the force-field protocol, not agreement with DFT or experiment. On four commercial chemistries (LiFePO4, LiMnPO4, LiMn2O4, LiCoO2) the DFT tier reproduces the experimental average voltage to within 0.3 V and the theoretical volumetric capacity to within 5%; a fifth, non-stoichiometric layered entry is carried as an edge case. The pipeline prioritises, rather than generates, existing structures: it ranks the lithium-containing JARVIS-DFT pool into 71 candidates and a scan of about 4.49 million Alexandria structures into 213, all surrogate-level leads awaiting DFT validation rather than confirmed cathodes. BatteryMat is available at this https URL with a demo at this https URL.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
31 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables
Origin of the reaction temperature in solid-state materials synthesis
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Shibo Tan, Gabrielle E. Kamm, Alex Stangel, Paul Chao, Alexander Mensah, Varun Srinivas Venkatesh, Eymana Maria, Nishkarsh Agarwal, Woohyeon Baek, John Ferrari, Katsuyo Thornton, Ashwin Shahani, Robert Hovden, Karena W. Chapman, Wenhao Sun
Temperature plays a crucial role in solid-state materials synthesis, but there is currently no mechanistic theory to explain or predict which temperature is best to conduct a solid-state reaction. Reactions between powder precursors are conventionally assumed to be slow diffusion-limited processes; however, recent in situ experiments show that solid-state reactions can complete in minutes above a critical onset temperature. Here, we present evidence that a transient liquid phase forms above the metastable eutectic temperature, and that this non-equilibrium liquid serves as a fast diffusion medium to intermix precursors and initiate a solid-state reaction. This thermodynamic principle is agnostic to the structure or chemistry of the reactants, and can be applied towards the synthesis and manufacturing of a wide range of complex materials.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Local Markov Order and Global Inference in Many-Body Dynamics
New Submission | Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
We consider how the presence of conserved charges affects memory in a classical stochastic process, the symmetric exclusion process, with an observer constantly measuring a single site. We find that the observer’s measurement record becomes Markovian (i.e., loses memory) on a timescale that depends on their knowledge of the global charge, namely the total particle number. In particular, when the global charge is unknown a priori, the observer’s time series Markovianizes on a timescale constrained by their ability to learn it from their measurement record. Augmenting the observer’s record with bulk measurements drives a charge-learnability transition between charge-fuzzy and -sharp phases. We show that the memory timescale tracks the learnability timescale, diverging in the fuzzy phase and remaining finite in the sharp phase.
Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech), Cellular Automata and Lattice Gases (nlin.CG), Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
5+2 pages, 4+2 figures
Fluctuation-Driven Enhancement of Spin-Orbit Torque near the Curie Temperature of Ultrathin Ferromagnets
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Mateusz Szurek, Sergei Ivanov, Sergei Urazhdin
We investigate how magnetic fluctuations influence spin-orbit torque in ultrathin-film magnetic heterostructures whose Curie temperature $ T_C$ is suppressed by confinement. Above $ T_C$ , the damping-like contribution to spin-orbit field is significantly enhanced while the field-like contribution is suppressed, with the two contributions exhibiting opposite field dependencies. We show that these behaviors are consistent with fluctuation driven mixing between the longitudinal and transverse interfacial spin conductances, which enhances absorption of transversely polarized spin current by the ferromagnet. This mechanism can be activated below $ T_C$ by engineering the microscopic magnetic state and by harnessing spin current-generated short-wavelength magnons, suggesting a spintronic analog of heat-assisted magnetic recording.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)
Moiré Phonon Condensation in Magic-Angle Twisted Bilayer Graphene
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Zhanghao Zhouyin, Jyun-jie Jiang, Xianghua Kong, Hong Guo
Twisted bilayer graphene reconstructs from weak breathing corrugation to large common bending near the magic angle, but the origin of this collective crossover has remained unclear. Here we show that the crossover is a soft-mode condensation of layer-symmetric $ A_1$ moiré flexural phonons: these modes soften on the breathing branch, lose stiffness near the magic angle, and freeze into the bending morphology. We call this mechanism Moiré Phonon Condensation (MPC). At $ \theta=1.08^\circ$ , it is extremely surprising that displacements of all 11164 atoms in the moiré supercell, with a maximum atomic position shift of 2.30 Angstrom, is captured by only two $ A_1$ phonon modes at more than $ 99.5%$ spectral weight. A first-harmonic continuum theory identifies a dimensionless control parameter of the phenomenon, showing that as the twist approaches the magic angle, the growing moiré length scale amplifies a smooth stress-bending competition until the flexural stiffness changes sign. Mode-resolved tight-binding calculations further show that the condensed phonon coordinates are electronically active. This work identifies MPC as a twist-controlled structural order parameter for moiré reconstruction.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall), Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el), Computational Physics (physics.comp-ph)
7 pages, 4 figures
Mesoscopic routers and single-pole double-throw switches for electronic heat
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
The unavoidable dissipation of heat in electronic nanostructures is a crucial problem, specially when their operation requires low temperatures. It demands finding devices able to control and redirect the excess heat, ideally without perturbing the electrostatic environment. We propose three-terminal junctions working either as thermal routers or as thermal single-pole double-throw switches controlled by a single external knob. Two models are discussed based on resonant tunneling energy filters and different couplings to the heat source: (i) Phase-coherent contact via a scanning tip modulates the relative amount of the two output currents via position-dependent quantum interference; (ii) Coupling via a gate voltage tunable filter selectively switches one of the currents in the presence of dephasing. In the later case, we find that the heat flow using ideal filtering is bounded by fourth the open conductor current.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall), Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
13 pages, 15 figures
Physical exact conditions as regularizers for exchange-correlation in solids and surface chemistry
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Density functional theory (DFT) often is the method of choice for simulating the electronic properties of extended solids and surfaces from first principles due to a favorable compromise between accuracy and computational cost. In the field of heterogeneous catalysis, DFT is indispensable for deriving mechanistic insights and understanding trends in surface reactivity. The accuracy of DFT for surface reaction energetics depends strongly on the exchange-correlation (XC) approximation. We show here that optimization of such XC functionals for surface binding energies can lead to a worse description of surface reaction barriers, unless important physical exact conditions are fulfilled.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Chemical Physics (physics.chem-ph)
Spin-orbit magnetism in altermagnets
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Ruojia Wang, Yuntian Liu, Renzheng Xiong, Xiaobing Chen, Qihang Liu
The mechanism enabling antiferromagnets, including altermagnets, to exhibit a prominent anomalous Hall effect despite a vanishingly small net magnetization has long remained elusive. Here, by employing oriented spin group theory and spin-orbit-coupling tensor expansion, we systematically disentangle the perturbative behaviors of orbital and spin magnetizations with respect to spin-orbit coupling. Remarkably, we find that only if the opposite-spin sublattices are connected through a fourfold rotation, the orbital and spin magnetizations exhibit distinct perturbative orders. In these altermagnets, we further discover a coaxial Hall effect characterized by the induced spin and orbital magnetizations aligning parallel to the Néel vector, which we further demonstrate by first-principles calculations in the altermagnet KV$ _{2}$ Se$ _{2}$ O. This effect holds great promise for achieving deterministic switching of the Néel order under weak external fields. Our work provides a systematic symmetry approach to identify potential altermagnetic candidates combining a large anomalous Hall effect with minimal net magnetization, paving the way for high-performance, stray-field-free spintronic applications.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
6 pages, 3 figurs, 1 table
First-Principles Investigation of the Al-V Phase Diagram
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
AKM Sadman Mahmud, Hassan Albuhairan, Marek Mihalkovic, Michael Widom
The Al-V alloy system contains a number of phases including several with complex structures and at least two exhibiting sites of partial occupation. Through electronic density functional theory-based total energy calculations combined with methods of statistical mechanics, we examine the relative stability of phases at finite temperatures. We construct composition-continuous free energy models for the V-rich solid solution and for one of the complex intermetallic phases. In the V-rich region, we identify three ground states that transform to the solid solution at elevated temperatures. We also suggest that \phase{Al}{V_3} takes the Al15 structure as an intermediate-temperature phase stabilized by anharmonic vibrational free energy.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Majorana physics in a Luttinger liquid with attractive interactions
New Submission | Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Francesco Debortoli, Nitya Cuzzuol, Luca Barbiero, Fabian Grusdt
Majorana zero modes are the hallmark of topological superconductivity. In one-dimensional systems, these zero modes are usually introduced in the context of gapped, mean-field models that do not conserve particle number, such as the Kitaev chain. By non-locally encoding a conventional fermion across spatially separated Majorana zero modes, these systems become inherently immune to local decoherence. In this work, we show that signatures of Majorana edge physics persist in a number-conserving, gapless Luttinger liquid of spinless fermions with short-range attractive interactions. We identify the two-point correlator as a sharp diagnostic, revealing an edge-to-edge revival whose sign depends on the fermion-number parity. This revival is robust in the thermodynamic limit, and persists in the excited states of the system and at different fillings. A simple particle-hole ansatz for the ground state of the system with an odd number of fermions captures the physics of the system for a wide range of interaction strengths, interpolating between the free-fermion limit and the strongly interacting Majorana regime. Finally, we propose a concrete protocol to realize this model with ultracold dipolar molecules or atoms in an optical lattice, and to detect the revival via beam-splitter interferometry, opening an experimental route to Majorana physics beyond the conventional gapped-superconductor paradigm.
Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas), Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el), Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
Topological charge, helicity and vorticity conservation and the reverse spin-current model in the II-nd type multifferoics
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
The topological charge and its density are related to the spin vorticity, while the spin vorticity is a part of full vorticity of the medium. The full vorticity is related to an integral of motion called the hydrodynamic helicity. Relation between two integrals of motion (the topological charge and the hydrodynamic helicity) is traced. The role of the spin-current model of the electric polarization formation due to the specific spin distribution in the helicity conservation is demonstrated. The reverse spin-current model is suggested to demonstrate the contribution of the polarization in the spin evolution equation, its importance for the helicity conservation is shown as well. Spin-field model of the electric polarization is the second model for the electric polarization (the deformation, firstly) formation due to the specific spin distribution, which appears from the same principles, but it has nonstationary origin. Moreover, the reverse spin-current model gives a mechanism for the spin structure formation due to the electric polarization in the system. It also appears as the requirement for the conservation of the helicity and the topological charge.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
14 pages, 1 figure
Microscopic Dynamical Entropy I: Quantifying Hamiltonian Irreversibility in Large and Small Systems
New Submission | Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Mingnan Ding, Michael E. Cates
We introduce a Microscopic Dynamical Entropy (MDE) for Hamiltonian systems, defined with respect to a chosen partition of degrees of freedom into a system X and its environment Y. The construction is based on the conditional phase-space volume (CPV), or conditional Boltzmann entropy, associated with the unmonitored degrees of freedom Y. The MDE is a microscopically defined entropy functional of the marginal distribution $ \rho_X(t)$ , obtained by discarding conditional microscopic information associated with Y from the Gibbs entropy of the joint XY system, while retaining exact Hamiltonian dynamics. This construction clarifies the microscopic origin of thermal entropy. The dependence of MDE solely on $ \rho_X(t)$ is consistent with the thermodynamic assumption that the entropy increment of a heat bath Y depends on its heat content and temperature, not on details of its probability distribution. Indeed, the MDE recovers dS = dQ/T connecting entropy increments to heat flow between system and environment. More generally, it provides a consistent description of irreversible relaxation under exact Hamiltonian dynamics, while permitting transient entropy decreases in small systems and in spin-echo type protocols. Under time-scale separation between X and Y, the MDE becomes strictly monotonic in time, recovering the familiar structure of irreversible thermodynamics. The MDE can foreshadow thermodynamics even in a small isolated Hamiltonian system, if X is a well chosen subset of its degrees of freedom. An example is the centre of mass of interacting particles confined to a box. Even for as few as N=10 particles, the MDE increases during relaxation towards a maximum at equilibrium, with increasing monotonicity at larger N. Taken together, our results show that the MDE offers a microscopic interpretation of nonequilibrium thermal entropy and its time dependence within exact Hamiltonian dynamics.
Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)
18 pages, 7 figures; substantially expanded and rewritten version of arXiv:2503.11334
Symmetry-Enforced Chiral Phonons in Altermagnets via Magnon-Phonon Coupling
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Philipp Rieger, Markus Weißenhofer, Sergiy Mankovsky, Peter M. Oppeneer
Chiral phonons are attractive for spintronics applications, however, their zero-field generation in conventional antiferromagnets is forbidden by combined parity and time-reversal ($ \mathcal{PT}$ ) symmetry. Here we demonstrate the emergence of chiral phonons in $ \mathcal{PT}$ -breaking altermagnetic systems at zero field arising from relativistic magnon-phonon coupling. Focusing on the prototypical altermagnet CrSb, we utilize first-principles methods to calculate the hybridized magnon-polarons across the complete Brillouin zone. We show that this coupling imprints an altermagnetic $ g$ -wave symmetry directly onto the phonon angular momentum. Furthermore, we demonstrate anomalous spin and phonon angular momentum Nernst responses arising from finite Berry curvatures. These findings establish that chiral lattice dynamics can arise in compensated magnetic ground states without requiring external fields, positioning bulk altermagnets as material candidates for zero-field spin caloritronics and chiral phononics.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Evaporation-Driven Nanowire Self-Assembly in an Elongated Droplet
New Submission | Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Johannes Schöttner, Qingguang Xie, Jens Harting
Drying of nanowire-laden elongated droplets is a ubiquitous process in printed electronics fabrication, where the resulting deposition pattern critically determines device performance by controlling nanowire alignment, connectivity, and percolating charge-transport pathways. However, the physical understanding of evaporation-driven deposition is still largely derived from studies of spherical droplets on homogeneous substrates. This gap limits the ability to predict and control deposit morphology in realistic printing scenarios. Here, we use mesoscale lattice Boltzmann simulations to investigate the drying of nanowire-laden elongated droplets on wettability-patterned substrates, focusing on the effects of droplet geometry, nanowire interactions, and nanowire length. The elongated droplet geometry is found to intrinsically induce distinct axial and transverse inhomogeneities in the final deposit. Increasing the effective attraction between nanowires, which mimics changes in surface chemistry or solvent conditions, can improve electrical connectivity but also promotes clustering and local ordering, reducing structural uniformity. In contrast, increasing nanowire length yields a dual benefit by improving long-range connectivity while simultaneously enhancing deposit homogeneity. Our findings provide design guidance for balancing electrical transport and structural uniformity in evaporation-driven printed electronics.
Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft), Fluid Dynamics (physics.flu-dyn)
13 pages, 7 figures
Driven square lattice of quantum dots in a magnetic field coupled to a cylindrical FIR-photon cavity
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Vidar Gudmundsson, Vram Mughnetsyan, Hsi-Sheng Goan, Jeng-Da Chai, Nzar Rauf Abdullah, Chi-Shung Tang, Wen-Hsuan Kuan, Valeriu Moldoveanu, Andrei Manolescu
We present a comprehensive computational study of driven quantum dot arrays in a square lattice configuration, subject to an external magnetic field and coupled to a cylindrical far-infrared photon cavity. The driving is introduced through a harmonic modulation of the full electron-photon interaction, therefore including both paramagnetic and diamagnetic contributions. The electron-electron Coulomb interactions are treated within density functional theory, while the electron-photon coupling is modeled using a many-body configuration interaction approach at each iteration of the density functional. By exploiting the unique properties of the cylindrical TE$ _{011}$ cavity mode, we demonstrate selective enhancement of diamagnetic two-photon transitions. Our results reveal that the effectiveness of harmonic modulation of the electron-photon interaction is strongly dependent on both the driving frequency and the electron occupation number per dot. When the driving frequency approaches twice the cavity photon frequency, the system exhibits resonant behavior characterized by efficient photon pumping, occupation of higher-order photon replicas, and activation of collective radial Coulomb breathing modes. These findings establish a controllable mechanism for manipulating photon states in coupled quantum dot-cavity systems and provide insights into the interplay among harmonic modulation, photonic excitations, magnetic confinement, and many-body electron correlations in dimensionally reduced nanostructures.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)
RevTeX - pdfLaTeX, 16 pages with 12 included pdf figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2510.06862
Microscopic Dynamical Entropy II: Statistical and Stochastic Thermodynamics of Hamiltonian Systems
New Submission | Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Mingnan Ding, Michael E. Cates
The Microscopic Dynamical Entropy (MDE) introduced in Ref. [1] describes irreversible relaxation of selected variables x within a finite closed Hamiltonian system of fixed total energy E. Here we extend the framework to arbitrary total-energy distributions and time-dependent Hamiltonians. This allows work interactions with external agents or protocols, crucial in stochastic and classical thermodynamics, and driven systems more generally, to be addressed directly. The central step is to reduce the full microscopic description in terms of selected variables x and unmonitored variables y to one in terms of the selected variables and the instantaneous total energy (x,E). The unmonitored degrees of freedom y in Y enter through their conditional phase-space volume (CPV) $ \Omega_Y(x,E,t)$ . This construction allows work and heat to be defined directly for finite Hamiltonian composites, including cases where Y is so small that its temperature is not well defined. We demonstrate monotonic MDE growth, corresponding to the macroscopic second law, under mixing and time-scale separation even for driven systems with arbitrary energy distributions. At trajectory level, we derive detailed and integral fluctuation relations for the MDE, generalising standard large-bath results. We verify these numerically in a driven few-particle Hamiltonian system, showing the emergence of stochastic thermodynamics for collective coordinates, such as the centre-of-mass position, even in closed systems with only ten or twenty degrees of freedom. Physically, these fluctuation relations connect irreversibility to the change in the number of unmonitored microstates compatible with initial and final data for the observed coordinates. Together, our results provide a finite-system Hamiltonian foundation for the emergence of classical and stochastic thermodynamics and extend their applicability to surprisingly small heat baths.
Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)
15 pages, 1 figure
Synthesis of Bulk Superconducting LiNbO$_2$ Crystals through CaH$_2$ Reduction
New Submission | Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Ryan Paxson, Stephanie J. Hong, Bicky Moirangthem, Parham Kabirifar, Saya Takeuchi, Tianyu Li, Chih-Yu Lee, Haotong Liang, Keenan Avers, Kamal Joshi, Amlan Datta, Makariy Tanatar, Shanta Saha, Peter Zavalij, Ruslan Prozorov, Alexander J. Grutter, Efrain E. Rodriguez, Ichiro Takeuchi
We have synthesized layered superconducting LiNbO$ _2$ crystals through a bulk phase transformation from LiNbO$ _3$ single crystals via CaH$ _2$ reduction. As the Nb valence is reduced from 5+ to 3+, the material undergoes a structural transformation to the resulting product, LiNbO$ _2$ , which is accompanied by metallic behavior and a superconducting transition, Tc onset, as high as 14.4 K. Secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) show that the resulting phase is hole-doped through de-lithiation during the reduction. Magnetization and AC susceptibility measurements from a tunnel diode resonator confirm the bulk nature of superconductivity with a superconducting volume fraction of approximately 77% and an upper critical field approaching 26 T. Our study demonstrates extreme hydride reduction as an effective method to induce phase transformations with non-topotactic pathways and can be used to synthesize bulk materials with exotic properties.
Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con)
17 main text pages, with 5 figures. Supporting information section which is 3 pages and 3 figures
A neural-network Maxwell’s demon learns cold damping for work extraction
New Submission | Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Stephen Whitelam, Sergio Ciliberto, Ludovic Bellon
We train a neural-network Maxwell’s demon to extract work from a model of an underdamped micromechanical cantilever subject to thermal noise. The demon, which periodically adjusts the position of a harmonic trap, is trained to maximize the power extracted under steady-state operation. When the demon is given the cantilever position and trap position as inputs it learns a refined version of an existing hand-designed protocol, yielding a substantial improvement in performance. When the demon receives the oscillator velocity as input it discovers a qualitatively different strategy that extracts substantially more work, close to the theoretical power bound. Analysis of the protocol shows that it implements {\em cold damping}: the trap position is displaced approximately linearly with velocity, producing an effective increase of the oscillator’s damping coefficient and a reduction of its effective temperature. Thus a neural-network Maxwell’s demon rediscovers a well-known cooling strategy from optomechanics, revealing a simple physical mechanism underlying near-optimal work extraction from thermal fluctuations in an underdamped system.
Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)
High-frequency nonlinear conductivity of a Wigner crystal
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
A.J. Schleusner, M.T. Elewa, N.R. Beysengulov, C.A. Mikolas, J. Pollanen
Electrons trapped above the surface of superfluid helium are a disorder-free platform for investigating the formation and dynamics of low-dimensional Wigner crystals. A characteristic nonlinear transport feature of this electronic solid suspended above the helium surface is the Bragg-Cherenkov effect, in which the mobility of the smoothly moving crystal is limited by the coherent emission of helium surface waves (ripplons). The effect has been understood in the conventional Cherenkov setting in which the crystal moves at a constant speed. Here we report on transport measurements of electrons on helium confined in a microchannel geometry to investigate the non-equilibrium response of the Wigner solid when it is subjected to a high-frequency driving field. Surprisingly, the experiments reveal a strongly nonlinear transport response of the confined Wigner solid at frequencies nearly an order of magnitude larger than the ripplon frequencies contributing to the conventional Bragg-Cherenkov effect. We relate this observation to the coupling of the Wigner solid to ripplons with higher-order Bragg vectors, which gives rise to a dynamical friction that provides a mechanism for the observed high-frequency pinning.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)
7 pages, 4 figures
Large-scale pseudopotential density functional theory calculations using orthogonalized enriched finite element basis
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Avirup Sircar, Bikash Kanungo, Sambit Das, Vikram Gavini
We present an efficient and scalable computational framework for pseudopotential Kohn-Sham density functional theory (KS-DFT) calculations using an enriched finite element (EFE) basis. The EFE basis is formed by augmenting the classical finite element (CFE) basis with compact atom-centered functions, which we term enrichment functions. The key idea is to combine the completeness of a finite element basis with the efficiency of an atom-centered basis. We orthogonalize the enrichment functions with respect to the underlying CFE basis to simultaneously improve the conditioning of the EFE basis and the efficiency of evaluating the inverse of the overlap matrix. To efficiently solve the Kohn-Sham eigenvalue problem, we employ a residual-based Chebyshev subspace iteration approach that is tolerant to approximations in the evaluation of the inverse of the overlap matrix. We demonstrate the accuracy of the framework as compared to the widely available DFT packages. For benchmark non-periodic calculations, ranging up to 39,083 electrons, the EFE basis offers a $ 5-7\times$ reduction in degrees of freedom over the CFE basis. As a result of this, EFE achieves a $ 5-9\times$ reduction in computational cost over the CFE basis. The EFE basis also provides a $ 4-5\times$ reduction in the required memory compared to the CFE basis, thus allowing for optimal utilization of computational resources. Finally, we demonstrate that the EFE basis affords good parallel scalability. Overall, the EFE basis offers a systematically convergent, fast, scalable, resource-efficient basis for pseudopotential DFT calculations.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Disorder signatures in coherent electronic waveguides
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Microscopic disorder in a coherent conductor is encoded in the magnitude of the transmitted current and in the energy- and channel-resolved structure of the scattering response. We develop a conductance-balanced learning framework for identifying microscopic disorder mechanisms from coherent quantum-transport spectra. Using armchair graphene nanoribbons as controlled multichannel tight-binding waveguides, we generate ensembles in which distinct disorder classes occupy the same intervals of integrated transmission, removing the dominant shortcut associated with average conductance. Within this constrained setting, we compare scalar transmission spectra with transmission-eigenvalue spectra, and use supervised classification, scale-normalizing controls, plateau-resolved tests, and principal-component analysis to identify the spectral structures that remain informative. The learned distinctions persist after normalization of the conductance envelope and are strongest in multichannel energy windows, where mode mixing and channel redistribution shape the scattering response. Principal components provide interpretable transport coordinates whose loadings identify the energy and eigenchannel sectors responsible for the dominant spectral deformations. The results establish a controlled AI-assisted protocol for learning disorder signatures from nonlinear quantum-scattering data.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall), Disordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn)
14 pages, 6 figures
Thermoelectric and Magnetic Properties in Doped Fe$_2$VAl within a Bipolar Random Anderson Model
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Takami Tohyama, Hidetoshi Fukuyama
We investigate the thermoelectric and magnetic properties of Si-substituted $ n$ -type and Ti-substituted $ p$ -type Heusler alloy Fe$ _2$ VAl using the bipolar random Anderson model, which has been introduced recently to study antisite-defect effects associated with the sign change of the Seebeck coefficient in thermally quenched Fe$ _2$ VAl. Based on the electronic states of both $ n$ -type and $ p$ -type compounds, with the rigid-band shift of the Fermi energy and a temperature-dependent scattering rate taken into account, we elucidate how antisite defects simultaneously influence thermoelectric transport and local magnetic moments. We find that the magnetic moments are enhanced in $ n$ -type Fe$ _2$ VAl, whereas they are suppressed in $ p$ -type Fe$ _2$ VAl compared with the undoped compound. These contrasting magnetic responses highlight the impact of antisite spin polarization on thermoelectric properties and demonstrate the crucial role of antisite defects in realizing magneto-thermoelectric functionalities in Heusler-type alloys.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
7 pages, 9 figures
Scanning tunneling microscopy of resonant-impurity in altermagnets: dual Fano resonance and Landau-quantization-induced nodal spin contrast
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Yuan Hong, Zhigang Wang, Zhen-Guo Fu, Feng Chi, Cong Wang, Wei Zhang, Ping Zhang
Using a Green’s-function formalism, we study the spin-resolved local spectral function of a resonant impurity coupled to a two-dimensional $ d$ -wave altermagnetic substrate. It is found that the interplay between the direct impurity-STM tip tunneling and altermagnet-mediated tunneling leads to dual Fano resonance in the absence of external magnetic field. Moreover, the anisotropic spin-dependent oscillation of the local density of states and/or Fano factor provide the information of the altermagnetic splitting strength from the local/global perspective. In addition, spin-selective tunneling can be achieved by tuning the Fermi energy and the tip position. In the presence of strong magnetic field with Landau level quantization, the dominant STS signature becomes a spin-dependent nodal structure of the real-space pattern: the nodal mismatch between opposite spin channels produces a large local spin contrast. These results establish resonant-impurity STM/STS as a phase-sensitive local probe of altermagnetic band anisotropy.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)
19 pages, 10 figures. Comments are welcome
Connecting Microseismicity to Lithology via a Model of Slip Avalanches
New Submission | Other Condensed Matter (cond-mat.other) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Ethan A. Mullen (1), Yanbo Wang (2), Jordan J. Sickle (1), Frank W. DelRio (3), Pania Newell (2), Anastasia G. Ilgen (4), Karin A. Dahmen (1) ((1) Department of Physics and Anthony J. Leggett Institute for Condensed Matter Theory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, USA, (2) Integrated Multi-Physics Lab, Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, USA, (3) Material, Physical, and Chemical Sciences Center, Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, USA, (4) Geothermal Research Department, Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, USA)
Fluid injection into the earth’s crust can induce small and frequent earthquakes in the subsurface. Predicting their sizes and temporal occurrences via statistical analysis is crucial for safe operations in unconventional oil and gas recovery, enhanced geothermal systems, and geologic carbon storage. Here we show that a simple micromechanical model of slip avalanches in slowly deforming solids predicts the slip statistics observed over drastically different spatial scales, namely meter-scale microseismic observations and nanometer- to micrometer-scale nanoindentation experiments can be described with this model. Microseismic catalogs extracted from high-pressure fluid injection operations into geological basins with various lithologies and nanoindentation experiments on shale across a wide range of temperatures and mineral compositions yield statistics consistent with model predictions. This universality across materials, temperatures, and scales is consistent with the prediction that the slip statistics result from only a few basic properties. Previously debated deviations of the statistics in layered sedimentary formations are explained by finite-size and stress-integrative effects resulting from mechanically weak bedding planes. The slip statistics therefore provide important information about the structure and scales of the bedding planes. Conversely, the basin structure can also be used to predict the probability distribution for the sizes of triggered microseismic events.
Other Condensed Matter (cond-mat.other), Geophysics (physics.geo-ph)
Negative and Zero Linear Compressibility in MCN (M = Ag, Au, Cu): A First-Principles Study
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Arlies Valdespino, Abduljelili Popoola, Sergey Lisenkov, Inna Ponomareva
Negative linear compressibility (NLC) is the counterintuitive phenomenon in which a crystallographic axis expands under hydrostatic pressure. A related phenomenon, zero linear compressibility (ZLC), occurs when an axis shows no length change under pressure. Both responses are rare and arise in materials with highly anisotropic mechanical properties. Motivated by recent reports of anomalous behavior in metal cyanides - including negative thermal expansion and NLC - we use first-principles calculations to investigate the potential of the MCN family (M = Ag, Au, Cu) to exhibit ZLC or NLC. Our simulations reveal three main findings. First, we predict the existence of previously unreported phases: the P6mm phase for AgCN and CuCN, and the R3m phase for AuCN. Second, all six members of the MCN family studied exhibit extreme elastic anisotropy, which indeed leads to ZLC or NLC in each case. Third, we identify a mechanism for these responses distinct from previously reported ones. The mechanism arises from the unique “bamboo forest” geometry of the material: weakly interacting rigid rods whose sparse packing allows pressure to be accommodated through changes in packing density rather than rod compression. This mechanism enables the anomalous response to persist over a wide pressure range, contrasting favorably with other materials that exhibit similar behavior. Our findings expand the relatively small family of materials known to exhibit ZLC or NLC and provide deeper insight into the microscopic origin of these unusual mechanical responses.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Visualizing modified spin-wave wavefronts near magnetic defects and domains using nitrogen-vacancy centers
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Wenxin Cheng, Chang Liu, Dekun Shen, Jiaxin Li, Shangyuan Wang, Hongyu Wang, Miming Cai, Jihao Xia, Peng Chen, Caihua Wan, Ka Shen, Xiufeng Han, Yuelin Zhang, Jinxing Zhang, Yangmu Li
Direct, real-space imaging of spin-wave propagation and wavefronts in magnetic materials is crucial for advancing both fundamental understanding of spin dynamics and the development of functional devices. This, however, remains a significant challenge, especially in materials with complex magnetic characteristics at the nanoscale. Here, we employ scanning nitrogen-vacancy center spectroscopy to achieve visualization of spin waves in two archetypical magnetic films: yttrium-iron-garnet and lanthanum strontium manganese oxide. We reveal a wavelength-dependent spin-wave filtering effect near point-like magnetic scatterers and a modified spin wavefront in antiferromagnetically coupled stripe domains. The spin-wave characteristics are explained using micromagnetic simulations and analytical calculations. These findings point to possible fine control of spin-wave propagation near complex magnetic structures and extend the scope of spin-wave imaging based on nitrogen-vacancy centers beyond uniform magnets.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall), Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
Anomalous Hall and Nernst effects driven by static and fluctuating spin chiralities on Kagome lattice
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
He-Lin Li, Zhen-Gang Zhu, Gang Su
We theoretically investigate the anomalous Hall and Nernst effects (AHE and ANE) in a two dimensional Kagome lattice to uncover the distinct roles of static and fluctuating scalar spin chi ralities. Employing Monte Carlo simulations incorporating with a tight binding Hamiltonian via the s-d exchange interaction, we explicitly evaluate the anomalous transport coefficients. A key finding is the systematic disentanglement of the macroscopic responses into an intrinsic contribu tion, governed by momentum space Berry curvature induced by static chirality, and an extrinsic skew scattering contribution driven by real space dynamical spin fluctuations. We demonstrate a pronounced mechanistic crossover: deep in magnetically ordered phases like the skyrmion crystal, the intrinsic Berry curvature dictates the transport behavior. However, approaching the magnetic order-disorder critical regime, strong thermal fluctuations disrupt static noncoplanar spin configu rations, drastically suppressing intrinsic responses. Here, dynamical chiral fluctuations emerge as the dominant driving force. By delineating the phase regimes governed by static versus fluctuating chiralities, this work elucidates the distinct microscopic mechanisms dictating anomalous transport in frustrated magnetic systems.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
AI2Pot: A scalable and unified framework for machine-learning interatomic potential development and large-scale molecular dynamic simulations
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Hanyu Liu, Linggang Zhu, Xuanguang Zhang, Ning Yang, Jian Zhou, Zhimei Sun
Machine-learning interatomic potentials (MLIPs) bridge the accuracy of first-principles calculations and the efficiency required for large-scale molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. However, existing MLIP software remains fragmented across different model architectures, making it difficult to establish unified workflows that support flexible model development, efficient training, and scalable MD deployment. Here, we present AI2Pot, a scalable and unified MLIP framework that seamlessly integrates model training, evaluation, and large-scale MD simulations with PyTorch-compatible ecosystem. Instead of relying on generic automatic differentiation for expensive atomistic operators, AI2Pot re-engineers the core computations of Moment tensor potential (MTP) and Neuroevolution potential (NEP) for both training and inference using hand-crafted C++/CUDA code. These specialized operators constitute a unified computational backend shared by training and inference, improving training-inference consistency and reducing memory usage by avoiding large intermediate caches. As a result, AI2Pot enables fast inference for large-scale atomic systems containing millions of atoms on a single GPU, while retaining the flexibility of PyTorch for model construction, training, and evaluation. Trained models can be deployed in ASE and LAMMPS for MD simulations. Furthermore, AI2Pot provides a companion command-line toolkit (AI2Pot-cli) and Python APIs to facilitate practical MLIP workflows. By unifying high-performance atomistic computing with modern machine-learning ecosystems, AI2Pot offers an user-friendly end-to-end framework for the developing, training, and deploying MLIPs for large scale MD.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Surface-Reconstruction-Driven Insulating Behavior in Metallic Charge-Density-Wave 1T-TaSe$_{2}$
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Bulk 1T-TaSe$ 2$ is metallic, yet its surface consistently exhibits an insulating gap – a dichotomy long attributed to a surface Mott insulator driven by enhanced electron correlations. Here, using density functional theory calculations, we show that this insulating surface instead originates from a charge-density-wave (CDW) stacking reconstruction. Whereas the bulk stabilizes a single-layer CDW stacking that supports metallic transport, the surface energetically favors a bilayer stacking, in which interlayer hybridization of Ta $ 5d{z^2}$ orbitals opens a $ \sim$ 0.4 eV gap – a band insulator requiring no on-site Coulomb repulsion. This reconstruction is the thermodynamic ground state for slab thicknesses from two to eight layers, and the calculated surface density of states quantitatively reproduces scanning tunneling spectra for both insulating and metallic domains. Our results establish CDW surface reconstruction, rather than Mott physics, as the mechanism governing the surface electronic structure of 1T-TaSe$ _2$ and provide a unified explanation for the experimentally observed coexistence of metallic and insulating domains.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
20 pages, 4+4 figures
Size focusing in core-shell precipitates: A phase-field study
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Soumya Mishra, T. A. Abinandanan
Due to their enhanced resistance to coarsening and/or creep, aluminium alloys with precipitates of two distinct phases in a core-shell morphology are of great contemporary interest. In this paper, we focus on the curious observation in two recent studies on Al-Sc-Li and Al-Yb-Li alloys that growth of the shell phase leads to a narrowing of the size distribution. We have studied this phenomenon, known as size focusing, using a theoretical framework (which extends Zener’s theory of diffusional growth to a core-shell precipitate) and multi-precipitate simulations based on a phase field model. Our results yield key theoretical insights as well as conclusions with practical significance. (a) On the theoretical front, we show clearly that size focusing is a growth phenomenon: it ends when shell growth ends, and coarsening begins. (b) On the practical front, our results offer guidelines for designing alloys with narrower size distributions: size focusing is promoted in alloys with greater shell volume fractions and greater inter-precipitate spacing.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Minimizing propagated density errors of atomic core-electron for simultaneously accurate bandgaps and lattice constants in closed-shell Copper semiconductors
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Kuiyu Ye, Haitao Liu, Yuanchang Li, Shengbai Zhang
Density functional theory struggles to accurately determine electron density of atoms, whose error is inevitably encoded into the pseudopotential and propagated into solid-state calculations. However, little is known about how this affects accuracy nor how to remedy it. In this work, through a systematic study of the effect of Cu atomic density on bandgap and lattice constants of over 50 Cu-containing simple closed-shell semiconductors, we find that core-electron density can drastically affect nuclear attraction to valence electrons and subsequent charge distribution and energy position of Cu 3$ d$ electrons. The error can be eliminated at its source by employing modified Hartree-Fock pseudopotentials for Cu core while retaining (semi-)local functionals for valence electrons. This real-space partitioning approach leads to simultaneous high-accuracy in bandgap and lattice constants across the entire material class.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
A low-energy effective Hamiltonian for Landau quasiparticles: II Application to the contact Fermi gas
New Submission | Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Pierre-Louis Taillat, Hadrien Kurkjian
This article follows up on arXiv:2511.15938, in which we developed a new renormalization scheme to construct a quantized theory of Fermi liquids. Here, we apply this formalism to a low-temperature atomic Fermi gas where the short-range interactions are fully parametrized by the s-wave scattering length $ a$ . We benchmark our renormalized theory by recovering known perturbative results on the static properties of the Fermi gas, such as the Lee-Huang-Yang expansion of the equation of state, the Galitskii expansion of the momentum distribution, and the Gor’kov- Melik Barkhudarov preexponential correction to the critical temperature. We then turn to the transport dynamics and demonstrate the presence of a preexponential correction to the speed of zero sound when including corrections of second order in $ a$ . Finally, we develop an efficient numerical method to solve the transport equation exactly, and we apply to study the crossover from the collisionless to the hydrodynamic regime in the density and polarisation response functions.
Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas)
Second part of “A low-energy effective Hamiltonian for Landau quasiparticle”. First part: [arXiv:2511.15938]
Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya Gradients Unlock Topological Dimensional Reduction in Magnetic Hopfions
New Submission | Other Condensed Matter (cond-mat.other) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Kui Yuan, Hailong Shen, Jiawei Dong, Xin Zhang, Longqing Chen, Yihan Wang, Bo Liu, Qing Zhang, Zhengshang Wang, Wenbin Qiu, Xiaoyi Wang, Bing Han, Yang Qiu, Kun Zhang, Xudong Cui
Three-dimensional magnetic solitons retain topological protection only while their spin field remains continuous. Here we show that chemical inhomogeneity can break this protection in a controlled way, converting a hopfion-like toroidal texture into an effectively two-dimensional skyrmion string. Tilt-dependent Lorentz transmission electron microscopy, electron energy-loss spectroscopy, and micromagnetic simulations of pristine, uniformly Y-doped, and nonuniformly Y-doped disordered TiO2 nanoparticles embedded in a FeCrNiMn host reveal two regimes. Uniform Y doping enriches Ti3+/oxygen-vacancy localization centers and stabilizes closed rings with Hopf invariant QH approximately 1. Nonuniform Y doping forms a Ti4+-rich, vacancy-depleted boundary that creates a sharp q=D/(2A) gradient and a weak-moment leakage channel. This coupled mismatch torque and continuity leakage split the ring, leaving a skyrmion-string remnant and a field-sensitive helicity texture.
Other Condensed Matter (cond-mat.other)
Ab initio thermodynamic statistical modeling of the miscibility gap and the metal-insulator phase transition in SrTi$_{1-x}$V$x$O${3}$
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Luka Wibmer, Chiara Ostendorf, Dominik Spath, Christoph Heil, Pedro N. Ferreira, Markus Aichhorn
The substitutional alloy SrTi$ _{1-x}$ V$ _x$ O$ _3$ interpolates between the band insulator SrTiO$ _3$ and the correlated metal SrVO$ _3$ , exhibiting a composition-driven metal–insulator transition whose origin combines Mott physics with local chemical disorder. Previous first-principles studies relied on individual supercells, which cannot capture the thermally disordered solid solution, since configurations of identical composition can display very different electronic properties. Here we treat the alloy within a generalized quasi-chemical approximation, a thermodynamically consistent statistical framework in which every property is obtained as an ensemble average over all symmetry-inequivalent clusters, weighted by occurrence probabilities that minimize the Gibbs mixing free energy. This provides a well-defined procedure to average over different supercells, and places the structural and electronic descriptions on an equal footing. From the mixing thermodynamics we obtain a miscibility gap with a critical temperature of 1443 K, consistent with experimental evidence. Combining the cluster ensemble with dynamical mean-field theory, we track the density of states at the Fermi level across the full composition range: whereas density-functional theory alone predicts a metal for all $ x>0$ , the correlated spectral function reproduces the transition, evolving from insulating below $ x\approx0.3$ to metallic near $ x=1$ . Finally, classifying clusters as metallic or insulating and performing site percolation on a simple cubic lattice yields a sharp onset of system-spanning conduction near $ x\approx0.4$ . These results establish a thermodynamically consistent, configuration–averaged framework applicable to the broader class of correlated materials.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el), Disordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn)
A modified Moss rule highlights underexplored classes of high refractive index materials
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Eugène Bertin, Finja Tadge, Andrea Crovetto
High refractive index dielectrics are central to photonic applications, yet the empirical Moss rule imposes a fundamental trade-off between refractive index and optical transparency. We introduce a modified Moss rule anchored to the optical absorption edge rather than the fundamental bandgap, capturing materials where various physical mechanisms suppress absorption well above the electronic gap. Screening the Materials Project database with this metric reveals recurring chemical compositions and structural prototypes in the materials with the most promising refractive index/transparency trade-offs. These materials include chalcopyrites, Zintl pnictides, and early transition metal multi-anion chalconitrides and oxychalcogenides compounds. Hybrid density functional theory calculations reveal that the chalconitride (Hf,Zr)2(S,Se)N2 family can achieve a combination of ultra-high refractive indices, low effective masses and transparency windows extending deep into the UV, surpassing state-of-the-art TiO2 and SiC. Our results establish (Hf,Zr)2(S,Se)N2 compounds as a unique and largely unexplored material family for next-generation photonic applications.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Phonon scattering mechanisms in WTe$_2$ observed by ultrafast coherent phonon spectroscopy
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Mizuki Akei, Yu Mizukoshi, Muneaki Hase
Revealing the mechanisms of phonon scattering is crucial for understanding material properties such as transport characteristics and optical responses. It can be discussed by measuring the temperature dependence of the phonon energy and lifetime. To gain insight into these mechanisms in Weyl semimetal T$ _d$ -WTe$ _2$ , we investigated coherent phonons using time-resolved pump-probe spectroscopy in a wide temperature range from 4.6 to 300 K. The temperature dependence of the frequency and decay rate of the two high-frequency optical modes was described by the conventional anharmonic phonon-phonon scattering model. In contrast, the low-frequency mode at 2.4 THz exhibited anomalous behavior, which can be interpreted as the contribution of phonon-electron scattering.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
8 pages, 5 figures
Ethaline deep eutectic solvent under nanoconfinement: Unveiling structural and dynamical changes
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Kamar Mohammad Nadim (IPR), Mozhdehei Armin (IPR), Lefort Ronan (IPR), Moréac Alain (IPR), Ollivier Jacques (ILL), Appel Markus (ILL), Viviana Cristiglio (ILL), Denis Morineau
Hybrid nanomaterials incorporating deep eutectic solvents (DES) in porous hosts or at solid interfaces are gaining increasing attention for their potential interest across a wide range of applications. Under these conditions, the performances of DESs may be influenced by interfacial effects and spatial restrictions. In this study, we examined the effects of nanoconfinement on both the structure and molecular dynamics of the prototypical DES ethaline (a mixture of choline chloride and ethylene glycol) when confined within the cylindrical mesopores of SBA-15 (Dp $ \approx$ 8.1 nm) and MCM-41 (Dp $ \approx$ 3.5 nm) silicas, using neutron diffraction and quasielastic neutron scattering. It demonstrates that ethaline remains structurally homogeneous under confinement, showing no evidence of core-shell segregation within the pore cross-section. The molecular dynamics of the confined ethaline preserve the key characteristics observed in its bulk state. Translational diffusion follows a jump-diffusion mechanism, with diffusion coefficients that remain remarkably close to the bulk values, showing only a modest reduction in MCM-41. A more pronounced increase in the residence time t0 between translational molecular jumps is observed. It corresponds to roughly a factor of 3-8 under confinement in SBA-15, and reaches up to a tenfold enhancement in MCM-41 relative to bulk. Similarly, the characteristic relaxation time, tL, associated with the localized in-cage motion of ethaline, increases by approximately 20% in SBA-15 and up to 50% in MCM-41. However, the molecular trajectories, modeled from the elastic incoherent structure factor, remain largely preserved under confinement, showing only a marginal reduction in intra-basin motional amplitudes.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
To appear in The Journal of Chemical Physics
Unveiling Nanoscale Surface Damage Dynamics in Swift Heavy Ion Irradiated Gallium Nitride
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Jiayu Liang, Shaowei He, Wenlong Liao, Tan Shi, Hang Zang, Yonghong Li, Wenbo Liu, Xiaojun Fu, Chuanjian Yao, Huan He, Jianan Wei, Chaohui He
This work systematically unveils the nanoscale surface damage dynamics in gallium nitride by investigating the atomistic mechanisms of hillock formation. The results identify two distinct hillock morphologies dependent on electronic energy loss (Se) values. Bell-shaped hillocks form under 18.2 keV/nm Kr irradiation, whereas crater-rim hillocks with central holes emerge under 40.2 keV/nm Ta irradiation. Microstructural analysis reveals that Ga-rich hillocks are accompanied by the generation of metastable zincblende nanodomains. These nanodomains preferentially aggregate around the periphery or sidewalls of the hillocks and exhibit a high spatial correlation with screw dislocations. Further temperature-dependent studies indicate that elevated temperatures significantly enlarge the overall dimensions of the hillock structures without altering their fundamental morphologies. Notably, under Ta irradiation above 1200 K, the high temperatures drastically reduce the viscosity and surface tension of liquid gallium. This enhanced fluidity of the transient molten phase promotes the formation of penetrating nanochannels.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Density-Induced Reentrant Coarsening in a Two-Temperature System
New Submission | Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Partha Sarathi Mondal, Anish Kumar, Nayana Venkatareddy, Prabal K. Maiti, Shradha Mishra
Understanding how nonequilibrium driving modifies phase-separation kinetics remains a fundamental challenge. Here we show that phase separation in a two-temperature system exhibits a striking density-induced reentrant coarsening behavior. Using Brownian dynamics simulations and a coarse-grained field-theoretic model, we find that the characteristic domain size grows as $ L(t)\sim t^{1/z}$ , displaying a reentrant sequence $ (t^{1/3} \rightarrow t^{1/4}\rightarrow t^{1/3})$ with increasing density. While the low- and high-density regimes are governed by classical curvature-driven bulk diffusion, the intermediate-density regime exhibits anomalously slow growth. We show that this slowdown originates from a transport bottleneck arising from the interplay of particle diffusivity, particle availability, and attachment kinetics, which suppresses the effective mass flux between domains. Unlike equilibrium phase separation, where density primarily affects morphology and crossover scales, the two-temperature drive renders density a key control parameter for coarsening pathways. Our results uncover a nonequilibrium mechanism for anomalous domain growth in two-temperature systems.
Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft), Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)
5 Pages, 5 Figures
Interplay of Umklapp scattering and Sb-Au hybridization in surface-reconstructed Sb/Au(111)
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Zhe Zheng, Celine Wassenberg, Stefanie Hilgers, Carsten Westphal, Mirko Cinchetti
Surface reconstructions induced by atomic adsorption can strongly reshape metallic surface states, providing a direct pathway to tune their electronic structure. Using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, we investigate the electronic structure of Sb/Au(111) during the coverage-driven evolution from the clean Au(111) surface to the $ (14\times14)$ and Rec$ (3\times\sqrt{3})$ phases. In the Rec$ (3\times\sqrt{3})$ phase, triangular Fermi pockets emerge at the Brillouin-zone boundary. Their momentum positions are consistent with a reciprocal-space folding construction, but their reduced size near the Fermi level indicates a modification of the Au-derived $ sp$ dispersion. The substantial modifications of deeper Au $ d$ -derived bands observed in ARPES further indicate significant mixing between Sb $ p$ orbitals and Au $ d$ states. These results show that the electronic structure of Sb/Au(111) is governed by the interplay between reconstruction-induced Umklapp scattering and interfacial orbital hybridization, highlighting adsorbate-substrate hybridization as a key mechanism for tuning and engineering surface electronic structures.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Emergent superconductivity upon disordering a topological insulator
New Submission | Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Carlos Eduardo S. P. Corsino, Hermann Freire, Anurag Banerjee
We study the emergence of superconductivity in a quantum spin Hall insulator and identify a disorder-driven enhancement of pairing arising from quantum geometry. Using sign-problem-free quantum Monte Carlo simulations of the attractive Bernevig-Hughes-Zhang (BHZ) Hubbard model, we obtain a quantum phase transition as a function of interaction strength for different impurity densities. In the clean limit, the system develops bulk superconductivity for Hubbard interaction $ \vert U \vert$ above a finite critical strength. Interestingly, strong impurities significantly reduce such $ \vert U \vert$ required for the onset of superconductivity. Our calculations indicate that Cooper pairing first nucleates in subgap ring states surrounding the impurities and then evolves into a globally coherent superconducting phase. Our results demonstrate that impurity-generated bound states can promote superconductivity in systems with strong quantum geometry. This mechanism is expected to be relevant in nearly flat-band systems like moiré materials where quantum geometry plays a dominant role.
Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con), Disordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn), Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
9 pages 8 Figures
Floquet-Weyl states at one-photon resonances in three-dimensional topological insulators
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Keiya Uehara, Ryo Okugawa, Takami Tohyama, Shun Okumura
Quantum materials exhibit exotic phases and electronic responses under irradiation by circularly polarized light, which breaks time-reversal symmetry and generates Floquet replica bands. Recently, Floquet topological states arising from direct resonances have attracted much attention, e.g., the emergence of Floquet-Weyl points at a one-photon resonance, rather than topological features within the modulated original bands via high-frequency expansion. In this study, we investigate the effects of a one-photon resonance in a representative three-dimensional topological insulator, Bi$ _2$ Se$ _3$ , applying Floquet theory under circularly polarized light. We find that four pairs of Floquet-Weyl points emerge in the intermediate-frequency regime, mediated by hybridization between the original and one-photon-resonant Floquet bands, preserving the threefold rotational symmetry of the crystalline structure. Our numerical calculations demonstrate that tuning the chemical potential via hole doping yields a large anomalous Hall conductivity, directly associated with these Floquet-Weyl points. This work provides a highly accessible route toward the experimental realization of one-photon-resonant Floquet-Weyl semimetals.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
14 pages, 7 figures
Wall tension of a Bose-Einstein condensate: Effects of quantum fluctuations and finite-range interactions
New Submission | Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Pham Duy Thanh, Nguyen Van Thu
We investigate the effects of quantum fluctuations (QFs) and finite-range interatomic interactions on the ground state and wall tension of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) at zero temperature by means of modified Gross-Pitaevskii equations. The QFs are shown to stiffen the condensate near the hard wall, narrowing the density profile and raising the wall tension above its mean-field value by an amount proportional to square-root of the gas parameter. Finite-range corrections always reduces the wall tension relative to the QFs correction value regardless of the effective range. We find the ordering $ \gamma_0 < \gamma_{\rm II} < \gamma_{\rm I}$ in the dilute regime and identify a crossover condition under which the two beyond-mean-field contributions mutually cancel. These results provide an experimentally accessible way for probing beyond-LHY physics through precision measurements of the wall tension in ultracold Bose gases.
Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas)
Nucleation and Enhancement of Superconductivity under Tip-Induced Strain Fields
New Submission | Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Ghulam Mohmad, Vishal Tripathi, Goutam Sheet
A metallic point contact formed on a non-superconducting or weakly superconducting material often nucleates or enhances superconductivity confined under the contact. However, no unified theoretical description of the phenomenon exists. We show that the spatially inhomogeneous, predominantly uniaxial nature of the stress field under a point contact is fundamental for such tip-induced and tip-enhanced superconductivity (TISC/TESC). We also show that the coupling of such a stress field to the electronic structure can be estimated through an experimentally measurable uniaxial coupling scale $ C^{\mathrm{exp}}$ . Combining Hertzian contact mechanics with a Ginzburg-Landau variational analysis, we derive a criterion for the nucleation of TISC/TESC and determine $ C^{\mathrm{exp}}$ for twenty-one materials. For topological semimetals with ungapped band crossings, the framework explains observed critical temperatures with no free parameters and for all others, $ C^{\mathrm{exp}}$ provides a direct experimental determination of the uniaxial strain sensitivity and a target scale for microscopic this http URL work predicts TISC in elemental Sb and Y with $ T_c \approx 2.8$ ,K and $ T_c \approx 12$ ,K respectively.
Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con)
16 pages,03 figures
Terahertz Phase Inversion via Field-Free Spin-Orbit Torque Switching in an Antenna-Integrated Spintronic Heterostructure
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Amir Khan, Tiago de Oliveira Schneider, Suraj Joshi, Mohammad Faraz Abdullah, Reshma Rajeev Lekha, Sascha Preu, Markus Meinert
We demonstrate microsecond-timescale electrical control of the terahertz (THz) emission phase in broadband field-free spintronic THz emitters, enabling megahertz-rate phase inversion while overcoming the kilohertz limitations of conventional mechanical and field-driven approaches. Our device integrates an H-dipole antenna with a spintronic heterostructure exhibiting uniaxial magnetic anisotropy, enabling deterministic spin-orbit torque induced in-plane magnetization switching without external magnetic fields. The corresponding THz phase inversion is directly observed in the time domain signal, by applying $ 1,\mu \mathrm{s}$ electrical pulses on the bias striplines of the H-dipole. This field-free operation reduces system complexity while significantly extending modulation bandwidth. Our results establish electrically programmable spintronic THz emitters that could be used to develop a compact and scalable platform for integrated on-chip THz devices and ultrafast applications, including phase-sensitive spectroscopy and near-field imaging, where high-speed and precise control of THz waveforms is essential.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
15 pages, 6 figures
Understanding surface potential dynamics of passivated perovskites via Kelvin Probe Force Microscopy
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Rehmat Sood-Goodwin, Xue-Li Cao, Benjamin C. Kinvig, Robert D. J. Oliver, Yen-Hung Lin, Nic Mullin, Alexandra J. Ramadan
Molecular passivation has become central to reducing photovoltage losses in metal-halide perovskite solar cells, but its electronic action is still often inferred from device-level metrics rather than directly resolved at the nanoscale. Here, we use amplitude-modulated Kelvin probe force microscopy to examine how [3-(2-aminoethylamino)propyl]trimethoxysilane (AEAPTMS) modifies the surface potential and photovoltage dynamics of mixed-cation, mixed-halide perovskite thin films. AEAPTMS homogenises the dark contact potential difference (CPD), narrowing its distribution from ~45.7 to ~14.6 mV without obvious morphological changes. Under illumination, passivated films show a larger steady-state surface photovoltage (SPV) and faster stabilisation, with the SPV increasing from ~345 to ~417 mV and the stabilisation time constant decreasing from ~840 to ~470 s. Wavelength-dependent SPV further indicates reduced sub-bandgap electronic disorder. By separating grain-boundary and grain-interior contributions, we show that AEAPTMS suppresses grain-boundary potential barriers, linking amino-silane passivation to a more homogeneous and stable carrier landscape.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Applied Physics (physics.app-ph)
Critical SO(5) scaling of entanglement entropy at honeycomb lattice deconfined criticality
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Sankalp Kumar, Jonathan D’Emidio, Sumiran Pujari
The deconfined quantum critical point (DQCP) in square lattice S=1/2 quantum antiferromagnets has been extensively studied with a large body of evidence pointing to a weakly first-order transition scenario. Recent studies, which focused on entanglement at this nearly continuous DQCP in square lattice J-Q models, have observed conflicting bipartite entanglement entropy (EE) scaling behavior. One bipartition choice gave scaling coefficients in remarkable agreement with predictions from the unitary CFT corresponding to the putative DQCP. While another equally natural choice gave scaling coefficients in complete violation of unitary CFT that may be attributed to lack of scale invariance at the known weakly first-order behavior of the model. This motivates the exploration of DQCP behavior via entanglement measures in lattice models with distinct crystalline symmetries. Here we study a S=1/2 honeycomb model that hosts a nearly continuous transition between Néel and valence-bond-solid ground states relevant to probing DQCP. Using large-scale quantum Monte Carlo simulations, we compute the Rényi EE for a variety of bipartitions and test the CFT based description of the DQCP on the honeycomb lattice. For smooth bipartitions, we find no evidence of logarithmic corrections, in accordance with CFT, thereby essentially ruling out contributions from Goldstone modes. For subsystems with corners, CFT predicts universal logarithmic contributions, which we extract for corners with 60 and 120 degree angles and find close agreement with an emergent SO(5) CFT. While we observe scaling consistent with a critical system in the majority of cases, we also demonstrate an intriguing counterexample of the hexagon subsystem that exhibits a subtle period three oscillation. This results in three separate finite-size series, where the sign of the logarithmic term apparently changes depending on the series.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el), Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech), High Energy Physics - Lattice (hep-lat)
12 pages, 4 figures, 1 table
Improving feature resolution and pore back effect in focused ion beam tomography of porous GaN thin films
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Ben Thornley, Thom R. Harris-Lee, Menno J. Kappers, Simon M. Fairclough, Rachel A. Oliver
Porous gallium nitride (GaN) is a mesoporous crystalline material, typically in the form of a thin film on an unlike substrate, prepared by electrochemically etching conductive GaN. The use of porous GaN in electronics and optoelectronics is rapidly expanding, but is held back significantly by a lack of structural control and understanding of the principles of pore formation from underlying electrochemical mechanisms, where high-quality characterisation of pore morphology is essential to understanding these principles. Focused ion beam (FIB) tomography is an invaluable tool for such characterisation, but is hindered greatly by the pore back effect, where unwanted contrast appears in an image due to electrons scattering out from the back wall of a pore. No major attempts to formally quantify or assess the extent of the effect for different tomography experiments has been demonstrated. In this work, we demonstrate an advanced methodology for performing FIB tomography on porous GaN thin films, where the experiment is rotated to image pores perpendicular to the surface of the sample, and introduce new voxel intensity-based formalisms for assessing the impact of the pore back effect based on voxel intensities for individual features and the whole dataset. The new approach, which requires more complex preliminary setup, is found to significantly mitigate the pore back effect in porous GaN thin films with a range of pore morphologies without increasing the total experimental duration. The pore back effect can thus be quantified and mitigated in FIB tomography of porous GaN and similar mesoporous thin films.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
48 pages, 26 figures
Bayesian Optimization of Genetic Algorithm Hyperparameters in a Multi-Fidelity Framework for Efficient Lattice Material Design
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Sergei Zorkaltsev, Maciej Haranczyk, Christina Schenk
This study presents a multi-fidelity framework for the systematic optimization of genetic algorithm (GA) hyperparameters. The framework integrates three fidelity levels: high-fidelity Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) homogenization for validation, a medium-fidelity 3D convolutional neural network surrogate for rapid property evaluation, and a low-fidelity Gaussian process (GP) surrogate within a Bayesian optimization (BO) framework to guide the hyperparameter search. Various acquisition functions are evaluated, with logNEI achieving the best performance by effectively accounting for the noise inherent in GA evaluations. The proposed framework identifies hyperparameter configurations that enable a 25-generation GA run to achieve elastic modulus values comparable to those obtained in a full 75-generation optimization. Furthermore, introducing a penalized BO objective significantly reduces the number of required lattices with only minor decreases in absolute achieved elastic modulus, revealing a practical trade-off between performance and the number of structures that must be evaluated. High-fidelity FFT validation verifies the effectiveness of the surrogate-driven optimization strategy. The optimized hyperparameters allow for rapid convergence, eliminate the need for lattice mutation, and reduce the overall computational cost by 24% (from 225 to 171 hours) while preserving mechanical performance. These results demonstrate the potential of multi-fidelity optimization as an efficient and practical approach for GA hyperparameter tuning and future experimental lattice design studies.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Disordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn), Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI), Machine Learning (cs.LG), Optimization and Control (math.OC)
20 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables
A Topotactic Phase Transition in the Uranium Oxide System
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Jacek Wasik, Renaud Podor, Jarrod Lewis, Niamh Cuffe, Connor Beer, Christopher Bell, Ross Springell
A topotactic phase transition involves the transformation of one crystalline solid to another, which may include the loss or gain of material, where the orientation of the parent crystal determines the orientation of the daughter. We set out an experimental approach, based on polyepitaxial thin film deposition, where the precise transformation mechanism in important physico-chemical processes can be revealed in brilliant detail. Here, we find a reversible topotactic transition from (001) cubic UO2 to a (130) orthorhombic U3O8 structure; a >35% expansion/contraction. This remarkable result solves a puzzle that has eluded researchers for decades, and presents a method for determining the mechanism of crystallographic transformation in many other compounds.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
4 figures, 17 pages
Electrical manipulation and detection of perpendicular altermagnetic order via proximitized Dirac semimetal
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Zhaohui Li, Wenqing He, Hua Bai, Yang Wang, Alexander J. Grutter, Guoyi Shi, Xiwen Zhang, Christy Kinane, Andrew Caruana, Hui Ru Tan, Yuchen Pu, Chenhui Zhang, Yongxi Wang, Hanbum Park, Anjan Soumyanarayanan, Lei Shen, Hyunsoo Yang
Altermagnets, which combine antiferromagnetic-like magnetic compensation with ferromagnetic-like broken time-reversal symmetry, hold great promise for high-density and ultrafast spintronic applications. However, the detection and switching of perpendicular altermagnetic order are fundamentally constrained by magnetic symmetry, restricting both fundamental studies and practical implementation. We realize robust electrical reading and deterministic switching of perpendicular altermagnetic order by designing a Dirac semimetal/altermagnet heterostructure of PtTe2/CrSb. This engineered interface enables anomalous Hall readout via altermagnetic proximity effect and delivers efficient spin-orbit torque for manipulating the epitaxial perpendicular Neel vector in CrSb. These findings significantly broaden the functional scope of altermagnetic heterostructures and pave the way for highly scalable altermagnetic memory.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
4 figures
Magnetocaloric properties of centered molecular quantum spin systems
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
H. Meel, J. Schnack (Bielefeld University)
We investigate the magnetocaloric properties of a class of centered magnetic molecules that are very similar in their magnetic properties. In particular, we study the magnetocaloric response of these molecules in the space of two exchange parameters and as function of the spin quantum numbers. Major figures of merit such as adiabatic temperature change and isothermal entropy change as well as theoretically achievable low temperatures show that overall ferromagnetic interactions are preferential as long as this does not lead to dipolar ordering.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
8 pages, 12 figures; please contact authors for the animation
Pressure-induced PT Symmetry Breaking in LaMnSi
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Takuya Aoyama, Hikaru Taneoka, Takemi Yamada, Hiroshi Tanida, Kenya Ohgushi
We investigate the magnetotransport properties of the antiferromagnetic metal LaMnSi, in which the collinear magnetic order breaks both spatial inversion (P) and time-reversal (T) symmetry yet preserves their combined PT symmetry. High pressure is found to suppress this PT-symmetric antiferromagnetic phase, inducing a transition into a PT-broken state characterized by a large anomalous Hall effect. Based on symmetry analysis, we propose a candidate magnetic structure for the high-pressure phase. Subsequent band calculations for this structure reveal the emergence of band splitting and orbital-dependent spin polarization. Our results establish LaMnSi as an ideal platform for controlling PT symmetry breaking via external parameters.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
Thermodynamic description of worldwide distribution of energy and carbon emission
New Submission | Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Klaus M. Frahm, Dima L. Shepelyansky
Based on public data, we analyze the distributions of energy and carbon emission over world countries on a scale of the last 40-50 years using their presentation via Lorenz and Pareto curves. These curves in rescaled format remain remarkably stable on this time period being characterized by high values of the Gini coefficient indicating a strong inequality of energy distribution. To explain these distributions, we introduce the ENergy Thermalization Hypothesis (ENTH) according to which these distributions result from the Rayleigh-Jeans (RJ) thermalization and condensation of agents representing different countries. We show that this hypothesis provides an excellent description of Lorenz and Pareto curves obtained from data on the above time period. It also gives natural grounds for inequality relating it to the RJ condensation at low energy states. We additionally trace parallels with the wealth inequality in the world.
Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech), General Economics (econ.GN), Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph)
11 pages, 8 figures, may include certain unpublished parts of arXiv:2512.06420, arXiv:2506.17720, arXiv:2606.17965
Perspectives on inverse design for AI magnonics
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Franz Vilsmeier, Florian Bruckner, Claas Abert, Dieter Suess, Andrii V. Chumak
Inverse design - specifying a desired functionality and letting a computational algorithm find the optimal structure - has emerged as a powerful paradigm for magnonic device engineering. In this article, we survey the rapidly growing field of inverse-design magnonics, organising it along two axes: the design variables (topology, material parameters, and magnetic field landscape) and the algorithmic toolbox (gradient-free, gradient-based, and neural-network-based methods) together with the differentiable micromagnetic solvers that enable them. We then identify open frontiers that we consider most promising for the next phase of the field: sensitivity analysis and robust design to bridge the gap between simulation and experiment; input shaping and transducer optimisation; the incorporation of nonlinear spin-wave effects as an explicit design resource; spatially structured amplification; self-adapting media and machine-learning-based design; and the long-term vision of a universal, reconfigurable magnonic platform. We argue that magnonics and artificial intelligence are converging from two directions - machine-learning tools for designing magnonic devices, and magnonic devices as hardware for neuromorphic computation - and propose the term AI magnonics to describe this emerging paradigm.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)
Taming nonlinear energy diffusion: The case of time-crystal energy condensates
New Submission | Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
P.I. Hurtado, G. Cortés-Guillén
We study a bulk-driven nonlinear variant of the Kipnis-Marchioro-Presutti model of stochastic energy diffusion in which local collisions are biased to induce a net energy flow, resembling the effect of an external field. Starting from the microscopic master equation, we derive the hydrodynamic description of the driven system via a local equilibrium approximation, obtaining explicit expressions for the energy current and the associated diffusivity and mobility transport coefficients, which are nonlinear functions of the local energy density. We test our findings in kinetic Monte Carlo simulations of the model and, as a proof of concept, we demonstrate the versatility of this driving mechanism to control nonlinear energy transport by inducing time-crystalline phases. In particular, we show that appropriately designed packing fields induce the spontaneous formation of traveling energy condensates, exhibiting robust long-range temporal order reminiscent of continuous time crystals. Our results provide a simple yet powerful framework to study bulk-driven nonlinear energy diffusion in stochastic many-body systems, offering a bridge between microscopic dynamics, macroscopic transport, and controlled spatiotemporal order.
Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech), Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft), Mathematical Physics (math-ph), Pattern Formation and Solitons (nlin.PS), Fluid Dynamics (physics.flu-dyn)
12 pages, 4 figures
Magnetotransport Properties of Iron-Based Ladder Compounds BaFe2S3 and BaFe2Se3 under High Pressure
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
The magnetotransport properties of the iron-based ladder compounds BaFe2S3 and BaFe2Se3 under various pressures were investigated. BaFe2S3 had a T^2 dependence in electrical resistivity and a normal magnetoresistance near an insulator-metal transition. Therefore, it had Fermi-liquid-like properties in the normal phase. However, BaFe2Se3 had a T^3/2 dependence in electrical resistivity and a negative magnetoresistance. This suggested that BaFe2Se3 had non-Fermi-liquid properties near the insulator-metal transition. For both materials, the Hall resistivities indicated a hole-dominant magnetic field dependence. During a pressure-induced insulator-metal transition, BaFe2Se3 had a rapid decrease in electrical resistivity above 15 GPa attributed to an isomorphic structural transition previously reported in X-ray diffraction experiments. This transition had a strong impact on the electronic properties.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
Spin-polarized electron transport for the altermagnet CrSb
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
V.D. Esin, D.Yu. Kazmin, A.V. Timonina, N.N. Kolesnikov, E.V. Deviatov
We experimentally investigate spin-polarized electron transport for the centrosymmetric altermagnet CrSb, which is known to reveal both altermagnetic and topological features. We demonstrate pronounced first-harmonic anomalous and second-harmonic non-linear Hall effects for a single-crystal CrSb flake with ferromagnetic nickel contacts, while both effects can not be seen for the reference samples with non-magnetic gold ones. For the anomalous Hall effect, we demonstrate bow-tie hysteresis loop in Hall voltage, which is usually ascribed to surface spin textures in magnetic materials. The slope of the Hall curve changes a sign for two orientations of the Hall-bar contact configuration for the same sample, i.e. for the same sign of the charge carriers. We interpret the observed sign inversion and bow-tie hysteresis as the joint effect of the alternating bulk spin splitting and spin-polarized topological surface states in CrSb. The pronounced non-linear Hall effect with hysteresis in magnetic field confirms finite Berry curvature dipole under injection of spin-polarized electrons, i.e. the topological features for the altermagnetic candidate CrSb.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)
Machine Learning Materials Properties by Encoding Orbital-Projected Density of States
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Paulo Pires, Pierre-Paul De Breuck, Mauro Fava, Hai-Chen Wang, Miguel A. L. Marques
Graph neural networks have become the dominant machine-learning architecture for predicting materials properties from crystal structures. Yet the initialization of atomic node features has received comparatively little attention, and conventional approaches rely on static elemental descriptors that carry no information about the quantum-mechanical electronic environment of each atom in its crystalline host. Here we show that augmenting atomic node representations with site-projected orbital density of states (pDOS) fingerprints, computed directly from density functional theory calculations, yields systematic and substantial improvements in predictive this http URL representations are fused with Pettifor elemental embeddings at each atomic site before message passing. For the superconducting critical temperature $ T_c$ and the optical dielectric constant $ \epsilon_{\infty}$ ,the pDOS augmentation reduces prediction errors by 22.9% and 27.9%, respectively, relative to the elemental-descriptor baseline. These improvements are comparable to those achieved by doubling the training-set size. The gains are, however, contingent on training-set size. For the magnetic exchange energies of Heusler compounds, a substantially smaller dataset, the improvement is reduced,indicating that pDOS augmentation is most effective when the training data exceeds the length of the pDOS feature vector. We introduce an interpretable spectral attention-gating mechanism that reveals that the model autonomously learns to prioritize the orbital channels and energy windows most physically relevant to each target property. These results establish pDOS-augmented graph nodes as a broadly applicable strategy for infusing first-principles electronic-structure knowledge into graph networks, opening a practical route to high-accuracy property prediction in data-scarce regimes.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Ab Initio Investigation of Pressure Effects in the Spin-Liquid Candidate Y-Kapellasite
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Federico Abbruciati, Aleksandar Razpopov, Joao Elias F. S. Rodrigues, Gaston Garbarino, Matthieu Le Tacon, Roser Valenti, Pascal Puphal, Björn Wehinger
Motivated by recent experiments showing pressure-induced suppression of magnetic order and the emergence of a dynamical ground state in the anisotropic kagome antiferromagnet Y-kapellasite Y3Cu9(OH)19Cl8, we perform ab initio density functional theory (DFT)calculations to investigate the evolution of magnetic exchange interactions under hydrostatic pressure. We show that pressure efficiently tunes the magnetic Hamiltonian by altering the CuOCu bond geometry, thereby driving the system towards a spin-liquid regime. This evolution is governed by a nonlinear dependence of the dominant exchange coupling on the CuOCu bond angle. We further examine the influence of hydrogen positions and find that both the OH bond length and the hydrogen out-of-plane angle strongly affect the magnetic interactions. Our results provide a microscopic explanation for the experimentally observed pressure-induced enhancement of frustration and highlight the key role of hydrogen geometry.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
Competing ferroelectric and smectic order: modulated structures through molecular design
New Submission | Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Grant J. Strachan, Ewa Górecka, Jadwiga Szydłowska, Damian Pociecha
We demonstrate that the balance between polar and positional order can be systematically tuned through molecular engineering, providing direct control over the emergence of polar and modulated liquid-crystalline phases, allowing for versatile strategy for the design of functional ferroelectric soft materials. We show that polar orthogonal smectic phases (SmAF and SmAAF), promoted by the self-segregation of aromatic cores and sufficiently long terminal chains, are readily destabilized by strong longitudinal dipolar interactions that energetically penalize parallel alignment of molecular dipoles within a smectic layer. In contrast, the tilted ferroelectric SmCF phase is remarkably robust across the entire homologous series, indicating that molecular tilt efficiently relieves dipolar frustration within the smectic layers. We further demonstrate that the interplay between microsegregation and electrostatic interactions stabilizes the new modulated SmCM phase, characterized by incommensurate electron-density waves, particularly for compounds with short terminal chains. For longer homologs controlling the spatial distribution of fluorinated molecular fragments and terminal-chain length enabled the targeted formation of broken-layer-type modulated polar phases (2D or 3D).
Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
Force-Isosurface Simulations Probe the Limits of High-Resolution AFM on Three-Dimensional Molecules
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Edward J Dunn, Robert J Young, Samuel P Jarvis
High-resolution atomic force microscopy has transformed molecular imaging by revealing intramolecular structure directly in real space. A major remaining challenge is to extend this capability from largely planar molecules to non-planar molecular systems, where the most important structural information may be distributed across different heights above the surface. Here we use probe-particle-model simulations to predict the constant-force contours expected above molecules with increasing structural complexity. By extracting force isosurfaces from simulated three-dimensional force fields, we compare the molecular information retained in constant-height and constant-force images. For tilted benzene and pyrrole, constant-force images preserve the molecular framework across a range of adsorption angles and allow the molecular orientation to be recovered quantitatively. For larger non-planar and three-dimensional systems, simulations identify characteristic force-isosurface contrast associated with adsorption geometry, lower-lying molecular structure and curved molecular surfaces. These results provide target contrasts for force isosurfaces that could be extracted from three-dimensional force-mapping experiments, evaluating the molecular information retained by ideal force-isosurface imaging across progressively non-planar systems.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall), Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
10 pages, 7 figures; Supporting Information: 2 pages, 1 figure
Quantitative DFT+DMFT description of spectra and transport in the moderately correlated metal SrVO$_3$
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Gurshidali P., N. S. Vidhyadhiraja
A quantitative, material-specific account of spectral and transport properties remains a central challenge in the theory of strongly correlated materials. Combining density functional theory with dynamical mean-field theory (DFT+DMFT) has proven to be a powerful approach for treating electron correlation effects and material specificity on an equal footing. Here, we examine the single-particle spectra and the dc and optical conductivity of SrVO$ 3$ , a prototypical, moderately correlated metal, within this framework. The degenerate $ t{2g}$ active space of SrVO$ _3$ , together with its well-established Fermi-liquid behavior, admits an effective-mass description governed by a single quasiparticle weight, yielding a nearly universal picture of the low-frequency, low-temperature regime. Employing a computationally efficient, real-frequency multi-orbital iterative perturbation theory (MO-IPT) impurity solver, we find reasonable agreement with experimental measurements of dc resistivity and optical conductivity across the entire experimentally relevant $ (\omega, T)$ range within a single, unified scheme. The agreement is shown to not depend on specific interaction parameters provided the quasiparticle weight is kept constant. These results indicate that, in SrVO$ _3$ , the $ \mathbf{k}$ -dependence of the self-energy may be weak, and vertex corrections may not dominate the dc and optical transport in this material.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
19 pages, 13 figures
Optimizing high-temperature electron mobility in single-crystal Bi$_2$O$_2$Se based on its unconventional dependence on concentration
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Antonín Sojka, Petr Knotek, Jan Zich, Martin Míšek, Roman Tesař, Kyo-Hoon Ahn, Petr Levinský, Jiří Navrátil, Pavlína Ruleová, Jiří Hejtmánek, Karel Knížek, Václav Holý, Čestmír Drašar
Quasi-2D Bi$ _2$ O$ _2$ Se is part of an intensive materials research effort aimed at finding new semiconductors that outperform silicon-based electronics in terms of speed and power consumption. This material exhibits exceptionally high carrier mobility at low temperatures but mediocre mobility at 300 K. Its high mobility is generally associated with its high permittivity ($ \varepsilon_r$ ~500), which is also associated with metallicity persisting down to very low carrier concentrations. This material exhibits a counterintuitive increase in carrier mobility as the concentration increases. The connection between low both carrier concentration and mobility in Se-rich conditions, and both high carrier concentration and mobility in Se-poor conditions suggests that the increase is related to native defects. We demonstrate that these defects can alter the effective mass of charge carriers. Specifically, substitutional Se(Bi) defects, which appear under Se-rich conditions, destroy the Bi$ _2$ O$ _2$ channel and compromise charge transport properties. These defects increase the effective mass of charge carriers transforming the original semiconductor into a semimetal and introducing holes into charge transport. Additionally, we show that single crystals are generally inhomogeneous, particularly those grown under Se-rich conditions. Unlike Se-poor conditions, Se-rich conditions induce a higher concentration of dislocations and extraneous phases. These findings suggest that the perfection of the Bi$ _2$ O$ _2$ channel is crucial for mobility, particularly at room temperature.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Manuscript (13 pages, 6 figures) and Supplementary material (17 pages, 16 figures)
Hyperuniform systems are maximally irreversible
New Submission | Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Mathias Casiulis, Satyam Anand, Stefano Martiniani
Hyperuniform systems, defined by the anomalous suppression of large-scale density fluctuations, are a paradigm of non-equilibrium self-assembly. While mechanisms underlying the self-assembly of hyperuniform states have been widely studied, the energetics of this process remain unexplored. This raises a fundamental question: what is the energetic cost of self-assembling a hyperuniform system? Here, we address this question across several noisy particle systems drawn from soft matter and machine learning, in which hyperuniformity can be induced by tuning noise correlations. Despite their distinct microscopic dynamics, we uncover a universal behavior across all systems: hyperuniform states are maximally irreversible, as quantified by the entropy production rate. Further, we develop a path integral formulation of the entropy production rate directly from the microscopic dynamics, which explains our observations. Our work establishes a direct link between emergent long-range structure and time irreversibility and opens a new avenue of probing the energetic cost of hyperuniform self-assembly, ubiquitous across physics, biology, and materials science.
Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft), Disordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn), Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)
67 pages, 8 figures
Growth of (111)-textured SrTiO3 thin films on Pt(111)/Al2O3(1-102) substrates by rf magnetron sputter deposition
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Ekaterina Taylor, Ethan R. Cronk, Kalani Perera, Nuri W. Emanetoglu, Nicholas S. Bingham
SrTiO3 thin films, 20-30nm, with high quality crystal structure and low roughness can be used as growth templates for complex oxides or as the dielectric materials for capacitor structures. In this work, stoichiometric STO thin films were grown by radio frequency magnetron sputtering on Pt (111) templates grown on rAl2O3 substrates, and the effects of growth parameters as well as the underlying Pt templates structural properties on the quality of STO films were studied. A comparison between room temp grown Pt and Pt grown at elevated temps showed that the latter lead to highly ordered Pt and STO films with quasi 2D surface roughness. Xray diffraction showed that the STO thin films had (111) and (222) crystal orientation. A rocking curve full width at half maximum value of 0.2° was achieved, indicating that the STO films are high-quality. The STO films have a roughness less than 1 nm, as measured using atomic force microscopy, comparable to the underlying Pt templates roughness.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
8 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables
A Multi-Scale Machine Learning Framework for Coupled Chemical, Spin, and Structural Disorder in Alloys
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Understanding the thermodynamic properties of disordered magnetic alloys requires a unified treatment of configurational (chemical, spin, etc.) and structural degrees of freedom, which has remained beyond the scope of existing computational frameworks. Here we present a general framework that integrates machine learning models (such as graph neural networks and machine learning interatomic potentials) and statistical sampling methods (such as Monte Carlo and molecular dynamics simulations) to study the coupled chemical, spin, and structural disorder in alloys. We demonstrate the framework on body-centered-cubic Fe-Co alloys with interstitial carbon dopants, where the Fe-Co host exhibits intrinsic chemical and spin disorder, and the interstitial carbon introduces additional structural disorder through local lattice distortions, making the system a prototypical multi-disorder magnetic alloy. The framework predicts the order-to-disorder phase transition temperature and the melting temperature of Fe-Co alloy to be 1,000 K and 1,690 K, in excellent agreement with the experimentally measured values of 1,006 K and approximately 1,700 K, respectively. It also predicts the tetragonal-to-nearly-cubic structural transitions in Fe-Co-C alloy as temperature increases. These results establish the framework as a reliable tool for studying multi-disorder alloys, with applications to complex disordered systems such as high-entropy alloys, multiferroics, and spintronic devices.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Stress calculation in linear scaling DFT: convergence and dynamics
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Shereif Y. Mujahed, Tsuyoshi Miyazaki, David R. Bowler
We present the approach needed to calculate stress within density functional theory (DFT) using a localised orbital basis, both for exact diagonalisation and linear scaling approaches, and demonstrate our implementation within the large scale DFT code Conquest. For the linear scaling approach, we test the rate of convergence of stress with density matrix range, and compare it to the convergence of energy and forces for different materials with a range of band gaps. We show that excellent convergence is found for modest cutoffs, and show that large-scale isothermal-isobaric molecular dynamics is stable and accurate.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
10 pages, 2 figures, submitted to J. Phys.:Condens. Matter
Non-Hermitian control of helicity-selective antiferromagnetic resonance
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Masato Todani, Satoshi Iihama, Yuto Moritake, Takeo Kato
We study non-Hermitian antiferromagnetic resonance in an antiferromagnetic insulator/nonmagnetic metal junction with sublattice-dependent damping and spin-orbit torque. By formulating the linearized Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert (LLG) equation as a 2x2 non-Hermitian eigenvalue problem, we derive the complex resonance frequencies, the exceptional-point condition, and the stability-threshold condition. We show that the largest absorption response is maximized by approaching the stability threshold from the stable side. Near the threshold on the stable side, the absorption spectrum exhibits strong enhancement and linewidth narrowing, together with pronounced helicity dependence in the sub-THz regime that can be switched by reversing the spin-orbit torque. We also confirm by solving the full LLG dynamics that crossing the threshold leads to gain and self-oscillation. These results identify the stability threshold as the key control principle for enhancing absorption and achieving polarization selectivity in the sub-THz/THz regime.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)
Nonlinear Dynamics of Hopfion for Frequency Multiplication
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Waleed I. Waseer, Yunshan Cao, Peng Yan
Hopfions, associated with higher-dimensional topology through the Hopf fibration, exhibit {exotic} features like {complex knot} and improved stability compared to skyrmions, enhancing their appeal for innovative applications. In this paper, we study the nonlinear response of magnetic Hopfion to microwave fields. {We observe the emergence of higher-order harmonics of the driving microwave field as it interacts with the Hopfion}. By carefully selecting the {driving frequency, the corresponding harmonic can efficiently excite localized magnon state of a Hopfion. Our results demonstrate the promising potential of hopfions in nonlinear magnonics.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)
Crossover and Changeover in Spin-1 Kitaev-$Γ$ Chain with Uniaxial Single-ion Anisotropy
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Qiang Luo, Shijie Hu, Wang Yang, Yuhai Liu, Jinbin Li, Jize Zhao, Xiaoqun Wang
Recent advances in bond-directional spin chains have revealed extensive emergent phenomena and unconventional criticality. Here we investigate the spin-1 Kitaev-$ \Gamma$ chain with uniaxial single-ion anisotropy (SIA) using large-scale density-matrix renormalization group calculations and bosonization analysis. Tuning the SIA strength reveals a crossover from the Kitaev phase to the large-$ D$ phase, evidenced by the excitation gap changing from quadratic to linear, the coexistence and smooth evolution of spin-nematic and string order parameters, and the suppression of the double-peak specific heat. For negative SIA, we uncover a changeover from a first-order transition to a continuous one between the dimerized and Haldane phases. The continuous transition belongs to the \textrm{SU(2)$ _2$ } Wess-Zumino-Witten universality class with central charge $ c=3/2$ , a rare instance in a system without continuous symmetry. Our results establish the Kitaev-$ \Gamma$ chain as a minimal platform for controlling crossover and changeover phenomena.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
8 + 3 pages, 7 + 2 figures. Comments are welcome
Strain-tunable charge localization coupled to complex magnetic orders in EuAl$_4$
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
M. Baumgartner, Xunyang Hong, Tianren Wang, Fazhi Yang, Yuetong Wu, Junzhang Ma, Tian Shang, J. Oppliger, J. Küspert, M. Hücker, O. Ivashko, F. Igoa Saldaña, M. v. Zimmermann, S. Pyon, K. Kudo, M. Nohara, P. Sačer, A. Akrap, N. Barišić, M. Novak, Qisi Wang, J. Chang
Charge localization is particularly interesting when coupled to antiferromagnetic spin structures. Coupled spin-charge orders are well established in elemental chromium and correlated oxide superconductors, yet the interplay between charge order and more complex magnetic textures – such as skyrmion lattices and chiral spin structures – remains largely unexplored. Here we report a comprehensive study of how charge localization couples to the unusually rich sequence of magnetic phases in EuAl$ _4$ . Using x-ray diffraction under applied magnetic field and uniaxial pressure, we demonstrate a direct coupling between the charge and spin order parameters. In the absence of external stimuli, charge localization is markedly enhanced upon entering the magnetically ordered phases. Strikingly, this effect is highly susceptible to strain: uniaxial pressure applied along the charge-order propagation direction further enhances localization, whereas pressure applied perpendicular to it weakens it. Application of magnetic field reveals both competitive and possible collaborative interactions between spin and charge this http URL flexible coupling between spin and charge ordering opens a new route to designing symmetry-breaking states. Chiral charge order may for example be patterned from spin structures with that symmetry.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el), Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Entanglement Asymmetry in Random Quantum Automata
New Submission | Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Olalla A. Castro-Alvaredo, Dávid Szász-Schagrin, Michele Mazzoni
We investigate the subsystem entanglement asymmetry in random quantum automaton ensembles, which are generated by permuting the basis states in the Hilbert space and applying global phase shifts. We compute the ensemble average of the $ U(1)$ subsystem asymmetry in different connectivity geometries, showing that the late-time limit of the ensemble associated to a 2-local circuit geometry coincides with the all-to-all ensemble average. By focusing on different subsystem sizes, we demonstrate that, similarly to Haar-random circuits, the system locally symmetrizes. However, in sharp contrast to the Haar-random setting, the scale at which symmetrization happens depends on the initial state, a phenomenon we associate with the interplay of conservation of the participation entropy and the uniform exploration of charge sectors. Additionally, we connect the growth of the subsystem asymmetry to the subsystem coherence and show that their growth is characterized by the same symmetrization scale.
Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech), Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
24 pages, 7 figures
Tunnel-rate controlled local heat distribution in mesoscopic circuits
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Parvathy Gireesan, Umang Soni, Harikrishnan Sundaresan, Giorgio Biasiol, Madhu Thalakulam
Solid-state quantum technologies, including qubits and quantum metrology circuits, demand milli-Kelvin operation to preserve fragile quantum states from classical noise. While the negligible electron-phonon coupling is the major impediment, reaching 50 mK electron temperature is further suffered by the high electrical resistance and sub-micron-scale dimensions of typical devices, limiting conventional heat dissipation. Though the phonons are effectively frozen, thermoelectric techniques could offer a viable path for heat this http URL work explores thermally driven electrical transport in a gated quantum dot (QD) on a GaAs-AlGaAs two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG), to control heat flow between the source and drain this http URL exploiting the QD’s discrete energy spectrum and tuneable tunnel rates, a precise control over the polarity and magnitude of the resulting thermoelectric current is demonstrated. A temperature difference of 650 mK is maintained across the QD, a separation of 400 nm, by tuning the tunnel-rates. An experimental gate pulsing method is also introduced to directly measure the electron temperature differences across the QD, bypassing the need for any theoretical fits. The results presented here show that tuneable tunnel barriers can be used for local heat control, and could lead to advanced quantum refrigerators that work efficiently in mesoscopic circuits.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)
17 pages including supplimentary materials
Pressure-induced Structural Phase Transition, Metallization, and Superconductivity in layered metalloid dichalcogenide 1T-SiTe$_2$
New Submission | Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Ying-Jie Zhang, Heng Xu, Zhe-Ning Xiang, Zong-Hui Wu, Qing Li, Hai-Hu Wen
Layered transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have attracted considerable attention as promising platforms for exploring emergent physics and potential device applications. In contrast, metalloid-based dichalcogenide counterparts remain largely underexplored. Here, we report the pressure-induced structural phase transition, metallization, and superconductivity in the layered metalloid dichalcogenide 1T-SiTe$ _2$ . At ambient pressure, 1T-SiTe$ _2$ crystallizes in a trigonal crystal structure (space group: $ P\bar{3}m1$ ) and exhibits intrinsic semiconducting transport characteristics. Upon pressurization, in concomitant with the suppression of semiconducting behavior in resistance, superconductivity emerges at around 6.7 GPa. The superconducting transition temperature (T$ _c$ ) rises continuously with increasing pressure and finally saturates at approximately 5.5 K for pressures above 30 GPa. During the compression, 1T-SiTe$ _2$ experiences three structural phase transitions, and the phase transition pressures are highly consistent with the anomalous transport responses observed experimentally, indicating that the changes of transport behavior of 1T-SiTe$ _2$ under pressure are structurally-driven. Our work extends TMD superconductors into the realm of metalloid systems and provides a new platform for exploring novel physics in quasi two-dimensional materials without transition-metal elements.
Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con)
26 pages total; 21 pages of main text with 5 figures, 5 pages of SI with 7 figures
Monolithic GaN Systems Combining Non-Volatile Memory and Analog Computing via Area-Ratio-Engineered Ferroelectric AlScN Gate Stacks
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Hyeong Jun Joo, Jong Min Park, Kieran Barrett-Snyder, Brendan Hanrahan, Geonwook Yoo
Gallium nitride (GaN) transistors have become the platform of choice for power electronics and radio-frequency power amplifiers. To unlock capabilities beyond those of conventional GaN, integrating ferroelectric heterostructure has been considered toward memory, logic and reconfigurable systems. Here, we demonstrate ferroelectric GaN transistors employing an AlScN-based gate stack in which systematic engineering of the area-ratio (SMIS/SMFM) provides unified control over both memory and analog functionality. Precise modulation of the intermediate electrode length yields a record memory window of 27 V and a forward subthreshold swing of 27 mV/dec, driven by ferroelectric polarization reversal of a robust downward-polarization state pre-induced by two-dimensional electron gas. Low area-ratio devices (SMIS/SMFM = 1, 2) achieve 4-bit multi-level cell operation and excellent spatial uniformity across a fabricated 4 x 4 array, benchmarking favorably against established silicon and oxide ferroelectric architectures. High area-ratio devices (SMIS/SMFM = 4, 8) harness continuously tunable conductance states to demonstrate multi-state inverters and the first GaN-based ferroelectric frequency-to-voltage converter, delivering a linear frequency-voltage response across 0.5 - 500 Hz range with a conversion gain of 1.1 mV/Hz. This work establishes routes towards monolithically integrated GaN systems that combine non-volatile memory and analog signal processing on a platform inherently suited to high-power and radio-frequency applications.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
5 figures
Unveiling the Spin-Valley Structure of Dipolar Exciton Ladders in R-stacked WSe$_2$/WS$_2$ Moiré Heterobilayers
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Byeong Wook Cho, Tatyana V. Ivanova, Zhe Li, Takashi Taniguchi, Kenji Watanabe, Brian D. Gerardot, Mauro Brotons-Gisbert
Localized interlayer excitons in moiré heterobilayers can form dipolar exciton ladders, yet their internal spin-valley structure remains unresolved. Here, we use helicity-resolved magneto-photoluminescence to identify the microscopic origin of the ladder in R-stacked WSe$ _2$ /WS$ _2$ at charge neutrality and one-electron filling of the moiré lattice. At charge neutrality, the first two emission peaks correspond to a spin-triplet interlayer exciton and a triplet-triplet two-exciton state separated by 38 meV, reflecting the on-site dipolar interaction. The opposite Zeeman response of the apparent third rung of the ladder rules out its assignment as a spin-conserving three-exciton state and instead identifies it as a triplet-singlet two-exciton configuration with a 22 meV offset set by the WS$ _2$ conduction-band spin splitting. At one-electron filling, the correlated electronic background gives rise to charged one- and two-exciton states and intervalley/intravalley two-exciton configurations, while reducing the effective exciton-exciton interaction. Our results establish a spin-valley-resolved picture of dipolar exciton ladders beyond simple occupation-number physics in moiré heterobilayers.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)
Main text: 9 pages, 4 figures; Supplemental Material included
Geometric Interpretation of Sum Photon Blockade
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
We present a geometric interpretation of the sum photon blockade effect in multimode quantum optical systems, such as semiconductor microresonators. The blockade condition (c^{(n)} \cdot v = 0) reflects the orthogonality of the (n)-photon amplitude vector to a target mode vector in an (N)-dimensional Hilbert space, visualized as the confinement of the state to a hyperplane.
A key result is the calculation of the maximum probability of the system remaining in the blockade subspace under the influence of decoherence processes (in particular, dephasing), which determines the practical feasibility and robustness of the effect. This approach extends to higher-order correlators (g^{(2)}_\Sigma) and cross-correlations, enabling the design of scalable quantum devices.
We introduce the concept of “dark-state typicality”: as the number of modes (M) increases, the dark subspace annihilated by the collective mode operator asymptotically occupies a unit fraction of the (n)-boson Hilbert space. This allows the transition from fragile, finely tuned mechanisms to macroscopically robust non-classical light in large multimode bosonic architectures.
We consider continuum collective modes, hypotheses on correlation zeros and invariant manifolds, as well as the relationship between blockade and entanglement.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall), Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
8 pages, 3 figures
Human and LLM Collaboration for Accelerated Materials Synthesis and Discovery
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Gregory Bassen, Wyatt Bunstine, Sarah Okandey, Sarah Cheung, Elaine Flowers, Ritwik Bose, Joshua Hummel, Christopher D. Stiles, Maxime A. Siegler, Tyrel M. McQueen
Although Large Language Models (LLM) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools have enabled a rapid increase in the generation rate of predicted materials, the rate of new materials discovery has lagged behind. This is due to the challenges associated with designing a sequence of chemical reactions to predictably produce new materials, especially in new structure types. Here, we report a study of human and LLM generated recipes for the synthesis of known and new materials. The success of the recipes is determined through in-lab experimentation, and the results are passed back to the humans and LLMs in a closed-loop process to study the effects of their collaboration. The Ruddlesden-Popper homologous series was selected for all material candidates to provide a materials phase space that is simultaneously well studied and likely to host undiscovered materials. We find that humans (H) and LLM (L) have similar success rates: 83(8)% (H) and 75(9)% (L) [known materials, round one], 17(9)% (H) and 22(10)% (L) [unknown materials, round one], 79(8)% (H) and 71(9)% (L) [known materials, round two], and 22(7)% (H) and 14(6)% (L) [unknown materials, round two]. Through this collaborative human-LLM effort, we discovered Ba3PtO5, a material with a new structural prototype that constitutes the missing 1D member of the herein reported dimensionally tunable Rock-Salt Perovskite (RSP) homologous series of the form (AX)m(ABX3)p, of which the Ruddlesden-Popper series is a subset.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
MLIP Studio: An Open Platform for Interactive Benchmarking and Atomistic Simulations Using Machine Learning Interatomic Potentials
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Manas Sharma, Sudeep Punnathanam, Ananth Govind Rajan
Universal machine learning interatomic potentials (MLIPs) are foundation AI models transforming atomistic simulations, but their practical use remains hindered by fragmented software ecosystems, dependency conflicts, and the lack of accessible benchmarking tools. These models approach first-principles density functional theory (DFT) accuracy at a fraction of the computational cost. We introduce MLIP Studio (available at this https URL), an open and free platform that brings more than 60 universal MLIPs into a unified interactive interface for molecules and materials. The platform enables end-to-end MLIP-driven workflows, including property prediction, geometry optimization, vibrational and equation-of-state analysis, spin-state determination, custom model deployment, and high-throughput benchmarking against reference data. Automated parity plots and sortable error tables facilitate rapid identification of element-wise outliers and problematic data points. We demonstrate that MLIP-based pre-optimization can reduce subsequent DFT optimization effort by ~33$ \times$ . Additionally, the application enables benchmarking of computational performance. Through a comprehensive case study involving the 2D magnetic material CrCl$ _3$ on a sapphire substrate, we show how cross-model comparisons of various properties and potential-energy landscapes can guide task-specific MLIP selection. Overall, MLIP Studio lowers the barrier to the reliable use of foundation models in end-to-end research workflows, benchmarking, and education in computational chemistry and materials science.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Raman spectroscopic signature of Kitaev magnetism and complex spin-lattice coupling in S = 1/2 antiferromagnet SrLaCoNbO$_6$ double perovskite
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Ajay Kumar, Clemens Ulrich, Rajendra S. Dhaka
We report a detailed analysis of temperature-dependent Raman spectroscopy and Co $ K$ -edge extended x-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) for a pseudospin-$ \tilde{S}=1/2$ insulating antiferromagnet SrLaCoNbO$ 6$ , a B-site–ordered double perovskite hosting Co$ ^{2+}$ ($ 3d^7$ ) ions on an {\it f.c.c.} sublattice. Notably, pronounced anomalies in the phonon frequency, linewidth and spectral weight are observed around 60~K, well above the long-range antiferromagnetic transition at $ T{\rm N} \approx 15$ K. These renormalizations indicate a significant coupling between lattice and spin degrees of freedom, although a purely structural contribution cannot be excluded. Additional modifications of both high- and low-energy Raman modes are detected near 160-180 K, including changes in linewidth and intensity, variations of the Fano asymmetry parameter, and the emergence of an additional low-energy feature. The asymmetric Fano line shape of selected low-energy modes, together with a broad low-energy continuum and quasielastic response, suggests coupling between discrete phonons and fluctuating magnetic excitations. Moreover, the EXAFS analysis reveals correlated changes in bond distances and Debye-Waller factors around the Co ions near 60K and 160~K, evidencing subtle local structural distortions and possible magnetostrictive effects. The persistence of anomalous lattice dynamics far above $ T_{\rm N}$ , combined with the excitation-energy–independent continuum, is consistent with fluctuating bond-directional interactions and proximate Kitaev-like correlations.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
submitted
Acoustic-phonon-driven spin-lattice relaxation of the hBN boron vacancy in the sub-THz regime
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Priyo Adhikary, Pramey Upadhyaya
The negatively charged boron vacancy center in hexagonal boron nitride is a premier candidate for quantum sensing, yet its performance is critically limited by longitudinal spin-lattice relaxation time ($ T_1$ ). A microscopic understanding of spin relaxation in the high magnetic field regime remains elusive, as the relevant Zeeman transitions lie far below the optical phonon energies typically invoked to describe the relaxation process. Here, we apply an \textit{ab initio} acoustic mode spin-phonon relaxation theory to this problem and quantitatively reproduce the experimental magnetic field and temperature dependence of $ T_1$ without empirical fitting parameters. We demonstrate that the relaxation dynamics are driven by a direct one-phonon emission and absorption process resonant with the Zeeman splitting. Furthermore, we identify the out-of-plane flexural phonon branch which is unique to two-dimensional hosts, as the primary source of decoherence, creating a distinct low-energy spectral function that facilitates spin relaxation. Our results provide a microscopic interpretation of the experimentally observed non-monotonic field and temperature dependence in two-dimensional quantum defect centers.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
Thermal-response Functions and the Peierls-Boltzmann Equation for Second Sound and Phonon Hydrodynamics in Graphene
New Submission | Other Condensed Matter (cond-mat.other) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Antonio Martinez-Margolles, Patrick K. Schelling
We connect expressions for phonon phase-space distribution functions to microscopic physics of the evolution of heat waves. The role of interference effects that arise as a result of a periodic heating source typically encountered in transient thermal grating (TTG) experiments is then explored. The distribution functions are evaluated as solutions to the Peierls-Boltzmann equation (PBE) in the relaxation-time approximation (RTA). Starting from the PBE, we next develop thermal response functions. The response functions are computed using data from density-functional theory (DFT) calculations. Using this approach, it is shown how solutions to the PBE can be related to the propagation of second phonons as elementary excitations, and within this perspective the necessary conditions for the propagation and observation of second sound is elucidated. The approach developed therefore shows how PBE theory for phonon hydrodynamics and second sound can be modified to properly describe interference and phonon decoherence effects that are likely important at shorter length scales. Finally, we then discuss how many-body theory can be extended to include coupled scattering channels and hence provide a quantitative theory beyond the RTA.
Other Condensed Matter (cond-mat.other)
20 pages, 15 figures, to be submitted to PRB
Time-state superposition in non-equilibrium fluidized granular matter
New Submission | Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Marlo Kunzner, W. Till Kranz, Matthias Sperl, Jan Philipp Gabriel
Despite being intrinsically athermal and strongly driven, granular materials can exhibit remarkably glass-like dynamics. Whether their rheology can be described by the same scaling concepts remains an open question. Here, we investigate the linear viscoelastic response of an air-fluidized granular bed using small-amplitude oscillatory shear over a broad range of fluidization states. We show that the frequency-dependent spectra collapse onto a single master curve when shifted by a state-dependent relaxation time, establishing a time-state superposition principle analogous to time-temperature superposition in molecular glasses. The master curve spans more than five decades in relaxation time and is quantitatively described by a Cole-Davidson relaxation spectrum. By comparison with continuous shear measurements, we identify tribocharging as the origin of history-dependent deviations from universal scaling. Our results demonstrate that fluidization primarily rescales a single structural relaxation time while preserving the underlying relaxation spectrum, establishing a direct connection between the rheology of driven granular matter and molecular glass-forming liquids.
Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
Are Machine Learning Interatomic Potentials Truly Practical? A Benchmark of 23 Mainstream Models
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Hanwen Kang, Tenglong Lu, Sheng Meng, Miao Liu
Most MLIP benchmarks reward static accuracy while ignoring inference efficiency and hardware scalability – driving model bloat with unclear real-world value. We benchmark 23 mainstream open-source MLIPs on a low-cost NVIDIA DGX Spark (128 GB native memory, capped at 80 GB to mimic ordinary lab hardware), using a fixed 192-atom system under a unified ASE-based pipeline. We evaluate three dimensions: predictive accuracy, MD simulation throughput, and atomic scalability. Our results expose a sharp accuracy-efficiency trade-off: large SOTA models deliver only 3-5 meV/atom more accuracy than lightweight ones, but lose orders of magnitude in throughput – in the worst case, becoming only marginally faster than DFT itself. Lightweight MLIPs, by contrast, sit on the Pareto frontier and run on modest hardware. The lesson is that single-dimensional benchmarks mislead the field, and that future MLIP development should value efficiency and scalability alongside accuracy.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science (cs.CE), Computational Physics (physics.comp-ph)
Feller diffusion in an interval: Inhomogeneous fluctuation-induced asymmetric escape
New Submission | Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Prashanta Bauri, Debasish Mondal
We present an inhomogeneous fluctuation-induced asymmetric escape event of a Feller diffusion confined to a finite interval with two competing absorbing boundaries. The dynamics correspond to an overdamped Brownian motion in a shifted harmonic potential with state-dependent diffusivity. We set two exit points (equal potential energies), equidistant from the potential minima: an extinction site near the origin and an outbreak point. The multiplicative fluctuations are suppressed near the extinction boundary, biasing trajectories toward the outbreak state. The mean exit time exhibits a non-monotonic dependence on the initial condition and the drift-to-noise strength ratio, attaining a maximum when the particle is initialized toward the extinction (low-noise) site. The outbreak possibility is more likely even if the process started with a small initial bias towards the low-noise boundary. The spatial location of the lowest coefficient of variation (CV) is nicely corroborated by the maximum exit time, which is the hallmark of a stochastic escape from an interval. The fluctuation in escape time is found to dominate its mean as a non-trivial function of the drift-to-noise strength and the initial spatial bias. The observed asymmetries in escape also shape the speed-accuracy trade-off in stochastic decision-making events.
Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)
10 pages, 8 figures. Presented as a poster at two conferences.. Submitted to The Journal of Chemical Physics
Ordering and Defect Dynamics in Passive and Active Nematopolars
New Submission | Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Fabio Aprile, Massimiliano Semeraro, Giuseppe Gonnella
The coexistence of polar and nematic interactions, observed in a broad range of biological and synthetic active systems, gives rise to a rich phenomenology that continues to challenge our theoretical understanding of non-equilibrium collective behaviour. In this paper, we numerically investigate phase ordering and defect dynamics in a newly introduced minimal single-field model for dry nematopolar systems, where competing polar and nematic contributions enter the free energy, and activity is implemented through a self-advection contribution. At optimal balance between the two alignments, the system develops depolarization strings connecting half-integer defects and separating domains with opposite polarization, together with closed depolarization loops. We first characterize the elementary relaxation mechanisms of defect pairs and loops, showing that the interplay between polar and nematic alignment gives rise to non-monotonic string-mediated interactions, finite equilibrium separations and distinct loop-collapse pathways. Large-scale simulations from disordered states instead show dynamic scaling with a characteristic length growing as $ \sim(t/\ln t)^{1/2}$ , consistent with coarsening in systems with non-conserved order parameters and point-like defects. Upon introducing self-advection, sufficiently strong activity leads to the coexistence of positive integer and negative half-integer defects, which we term motility-induced charge symmetry breaking, and to saturation of the characteristic length scales, ultimately resulting in arrested coarsening. Overall, our results provide a simple unified framework for understanding the ordering and defect dynamics in biological and synthetic nematopolar systems.
Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
17 pages, 6 figures
Wavelength-resolved small-angle neutron spectroscopy of spin waves in MnSi under pressure
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
E. V. Altynbaev, D. O. Skanchenko, Z. Xie, Y. Ke, Y. Bao, A. V. Tsvyashchenko
We report wavelength-resolved spin-wave small-angle neutron scattering (SWSANS) on the time-of-flight SANS instrument BL01 at the China Spallation Neutron Source and extend the method to pressure-cell measurements of MnSi. MnSi is used as a benchmark B20 helimagnet because its helimagnetic order and spin-wave stiffness are well characterized at ambient pressure. In a fixed magnetic field, the time-of-flight measurement provides a spectrum of neutron wavelengths. For each detector branch $ s=\pm1$ , the intensity profile is recentered relative to the wavelength-dependent Bragg angle $ \theta_B (\lambda) = k_s \lambda / 2\pi$ , and the cutoff angle $ \theta_C (\lambda)$ is extracted in the local branch coordinate. The cutoff-derived spin-wave stiffness $ A$ is obtained from a linear fit of $ \theta_C^2$ as a function of $ \lambda^2$ . Ambient-pressure measurements reproduce the known stiffness scale of MnSi. Structural SANS at ambient pressure and at nominal 5 and 11 kbar verifies the magnetic state and provides an internal pressure-state check for the pressure-cell measurements. At nominal 11 kbar, within the present cutoff model, the cutoff-derived stiffness is substantially reduced, whereas the structural field scale $ H_{C2}$ remains high. This contrast shows that $ A$ cannot be inferred from static structural parameters alone under pressure. To our knowledge, these measurements constitute the first SWSANS implementation on a pulsed neutron source and the first SWSANS determination of spin-wave stiffness under pressure. The experiment also shows that reliable high-pressure SWSANS on a pulsed source requires high source brilliance, stable wavelength-dependent normalization, and sufficient statistics in each wavelength window.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
Multistage development of short-range spin correlations and weak magnetic order in the two coupled trillium lattices of K2Fe2(MoO4)(PO4)2
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
J. Khatua, Sritharan Krishnamoorthi, Changhyun Koo, Gyungbin Ban, Taeyun Kim, Yugo Oshima, Marc Uhlarz, John Wilkinson, Peter J. Baker, Kyeong Jun Lee, Mani Shankar, Seo Hyoung Chang, R. Sankar, Kwang-Yong Choi
Trillium lattices, where magnetic ions form a chiral network of corner-sharing triangles, offer a three-dimensional magnetic framework that can host fragile classical spin-liquid states. Herein, we report on the magnetization, specific heat, electron spin resonance (ESR), and muon spin relaxation ($ \mu$ SR) of K$ {2}$ Fe$ {2}$ (MoO$ {4}$ )(PO$ {4}$ )$ {2}$ single crystals. Magnetization measurements reveal strong antiferromagnetic interactions coexisting with weak magnetic order at $ T{\rm N} = 5.2$ ~K, as evidenced by a $ \lambda$ -like anomaly observed in the magnetic susceptibility, a critical enhancement of the muon spin relaxation rate and the wipeout of the ESR signal as the temperature approaches $ T{\rm N}$ . Above $ T{\rm N}$ , two distinct developments of short-range spin correlations are identified at $ T{\rm H} = 34$ ~K and $ T{\rm L} = 10$ ~K, supported by magnetic specific heat anomalies and the temperature dependence of the ESR linewidth and $ g$ -factor. Upon cooling below $ T_{\rm N}$ , an anomaly appears at $ T^{\ast} = 3.2$ ~K in thermodynamic observables and the muon spin relaxation rate, indicative of spin reorientation driven by residual interactions. Despite the presence of magnetic order, $ \mu$ SR experiments reveal dynamically fluctuating spins persisting even in the ordered state. Moreover, the suppression of $ T_{\rm N}$ under applied magnetic fields ($ \mu_{0}H \geq 2$ ~T) suggests that K$ _{2}$ Fe$ _{2}$ (MoO$ _{4}$ )(PO$ _{4}$ )$ _{2}$ constitutes a promising candidate for exploring field-induced spin-liquid behavior in three-dimensionally coupled trillium lattices.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
Phys. Rev. B 114, 034410(2026)
Decoding magnetic texture
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Michael P. Path, Jeffrey McCord, Michael Vogel
In magnetically ordered materials, magnetic field and temperature variations modify the magnetic texture through their coupling to the local energy landscape, imprinting distinct fingerprints in the resulting magnetic domain patterns. Retrieving these conditions from the pattern remains challenging, as stochastic nucleation and hysteresis produce a nonlinear, multivariate, and ambiguous relationship between magnetic domain morphology and external stimuli. To decode these fingerprints, we designed a controlled magneto-optical inference experiment that reconstructs magnetic field, temperature, and magnetic history from a single fine-scale, high-contrast, pixel-resolved optical polarization map of feature-rich magnetic domain textures in a bismuth-substituted yttrium iron garnet film. Deep convolutional neural networks are complemented by feature-based neural-network inference using hand-crafted, physically interpretable descriptors of measured magneto-optical image data, linking the decoded information to material-dependent features and exploring their contributions. Together, these results establish magnetic texture as a high-fidelity record of external conditions enabling accurate single image multiparametric sensing and paving the way for data-driven explorations of complex magnetic states. Uncovering the physically interpretable features that encode this record sheds new light on the physics of magnetic domain formation.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Non-Hermitian Edge State Endocytosis
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-07-09 20:00 EDT
Si-Yu Yuan, Wen-Tan Xue, Ching Hua Lee
An isolated edge state observed in a finite open chain is usually expected to survive the thermodynamic limit (TDL), with a localization mechanism distinct from non-Hermitian skin accumulation, which localizes the \emph{entire} bulk continuum. We show that scale-sensitive non-Hermitian systems can generically admit a different fate: as we scale up the system size, a detached edge-localized eigenstate can remain sharply visible over a broad window until a critical scale is reached, where it forms an ephemeral bound state in the continuum (BIC) of the open-boundary bulk before being absorbed (entocytosed) at even larger system sizes. We call this phenomenon edge state endocytosis. Its mechanism is fundamentally traced to the Widom expansion of the open-chain characteristic determinant (energy dispersion equation) into contributions corresponding to admissible non-Bloch mode subsets. Each subset contribution factorizes into a boundary-projected Green’s function (proj-GF) determinant, which encodes lattice truncation, and a subset-resolved bulk propagation factor, which encodes the system size dependence. We uncover the fundamental distinction: TDL edge states are zeros of the leading-subset proj-GF determinant, whereas endocytosed states are a hitherto-ignored class of hidden proj-GF zeros from subleading subsets that control the spectrum at finite sizes. Due to its fundamental mathematical origin, the endocytosis mechanism is completely platform-independent, occurring generically without fine-tuning when isolated edge states, topological or otherwise, are subject to non-Hermitian couplings that generate the requisite non-locality. Our new framework quantitatively predicts the endocytosis scale and sheds light on how its intricate competitive mechanism can be revealed through experimentally relevant Green’s functions.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)