CMP Journal 2026-09-17
Statistics
Nature Reviews Materials: 1
Science: 16
arXiv: 74
Research Square: 2
Nature Reviews Materials
Materials design and integration strategies for next-generation smart batteries
Review Paper | Batteries | 2026-09-16 20:00 EDT
Hailong Wang
(王海龙), Qianjin Xiong
(熊前进), Nuo Sun
(孙诺), Qinlang Rong
(荣秦朗), Zhenguo Wu
(吴振国), Stefano Passerini, Xin He
(何欣)
Next-generation energy storage systems for electric vehicles, aviation and grid-scale applications require batteries with higher safety, longer lifetime and greater adaptability than conventional lithium-ion cells. This demand is driving a transition from passive energy-storage devices towards smart battery systems that can regulate local degradation, perceive hidden internal states and support decision-oriented management. From a materials perspective, this transition relies on two coupled capabilities. The first is autonomous regulation by responsive materials, including self-maintaining electrodes and interfaces, self-adaptive electrolytes and interlayers and self-defensive separators or current collectors that respond to cell-relevant mechanical, thermal, electrochemical or chemical perturbations. The second is battery-integrated perception, in which sensing and transduction materials convert local temperature, strain, pressure, gas, potential, optical or acoustic signatures into readable signals for diagnosis and safety warning. Data-driven and artificial intelligence-assisted methods further enable materials discovery, multimodal-signal interpretation and future battery-management decisions. Ultimately, realizing smart battery systems requires architectures that balance cell compatibility, manufacturability, parasitic mass and volume, sensor integration, lifecycle sustainability and closed-loop operation.
Batteries, Electrochemistry, Sensors and biosensors
Science
Ancient DNA unveils distinctive ancestries in the Bronze and Iron Ages of East Tianshan
Research Article | ancient dna | 2026-09-17 03:00 EDT
Chao Ning, Ke Wang, Tianyi Wang, Jian Ma, Xue Zhao, Tongyuan Xi, Yongqiang Wang, Peng Cao, Shizhu Gao, Xiaotian Feng, Wanglin Hu, Xiaolin Wang, Fan Zhang, Meng Ren, Xiyan Wu, Feng Liu, Xue Zhang, Jiangsong Zhu, Chunxiang Li, Qingyan Dai, Zhihao Dang, Ruowei Yang, Yunpeng Tang, Wanjing Ping, Vikas Kumar, Wenying Li, Bo Wang, Jianxin Wang, Dong Wei, Zhongzhi Nie, E. Andrew Bennett, Yinqiu Cui, Qiaomei Fu
The East Tianshan Mountains occupy a key corridor between Central and East Asia, but their population history remains poorly understood. Here we report genome-wide data from 135 ancient individuals from 11 archaeological sites. We identify a previously unrecognized Bronze Age admixture between populations related to Yellow River millet farmers and steppe pastoralists associated with the Chemurchek culture. In contrast, we find little genetic contribution from contemporaneous middle-to-late Bronze Age steppe pastoralists, despite their eastward expansion across the Eurasian Steppe. By the Iron Age, regional populations had become more heterogeneous, incorporating additional eastern and steppe-related sources while retaining variable contributions from Early Bronze Age groups. These results reveal sustained demographic interactions in eastern Central Asia nearly 1800 years preceding the establishment of the historic Silk Road.
Nuclear tests at Mt. Mantap have reactivated intraplate faults
Research Article | Seismology | 2026-09-17 03:00 EDT
Xingli Fan, Kwang-Hee Kim, Su Young Kang, Lanbo Liu, Jie Song, Yujin Sohn, Hyeong-Tae Jou, Qi-Fu Chen, Le Li, Lian-Feng Zhao, Yuan Wang, Tianyao Hao
Underground nuclear explosions typically produce short-lived seismic sequences that decay rapidly after testing ceases. By contrast, seismicity near the Punggye-ri nuclear test site at Mt. Mantap in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has persisted and intensified for years after the final large-yield explosion in 2017, evolving from diffuse activity to spatially organized distribution along fault-controlled structures. Analysis of 17 years of continuous waveform data reveals a progressive increase in seismicity and delayed reactivation of shallow faults. Earthquakes cluster beneath asymmetric topography, indicating progressive stress redistribution within a critically stressed crustal volume. These observations challenge conventional expectations, showing that under specific geological conditions, underground nuclear testing can drive multiyear fault reactivation and extend posttest seismicity well beyond the immediate aftermath of an explosion.
Protecting tropical forests is more cost-effective for biodiversity and climate than restoration
Research Article | Conservation | 2026-09-17 03:00 EDT
Leonardo S. Miranda, James R. Thomson, Joice Ferreira, Toby A. Gardner, Erika Berenguer, Alexander C. Lees, Ralph Mac Nally, Luiz E. O. C. Aragão, Pedro H. S. Brancalion, Silvio F. B. Ferraz, Rachael D. Garrett, Paulo G. Molin, Nárgila G. Moura, Sâmia S. Nunes, Luke Parry, Juliana M. Silveira, Ima C. G. Vieira, Cecilia Viana, Jos Barlow
Halting deforestation and promoting restoration are at the core of strategies to confront the biodiversity and climate crises in tropical forests. Avoiding forest disturbances is also critically important but has received far less attention, and there is a lack of clarity about the relative cost-effectiveness of these three interventions. We compare the biodiversity and carbon benefits and costs associated with each intervention, comparing observed and counterfactual outcomes based on in-depth field assessments and high-resolution remote sensing in the Brazilian Amazon deforestation frontier. Avoidance interventions delivered the greatest benefits and were more cost-effective than restoration, with results being robust to a range of benefit and cost assumptions. However, combined interventions delivered the greatest gains and were essential to reverse biodiversity and carbon losses.
Multi-organelle signatures map cell-state diversity and metabolic adaptation in tissues
Research Article | Cell biology | 2026-09-17 03:00 EDT
Raghabendra Adhikari, Alexander Hillsley, Alana Dowdell Johnson, Shihong Max Gao, Isabel Espinosa-Medina, Jan Funke, Daniel Feliciano
Cell-state diversity drives tissue adaptability, repair, and disease resilience, but capturing this complexity is a challenge. Current approaches rely on transcriptional profiling and overlook organelle structure, a key indicator of metabolism and stress. We developed spatial Organellomics (sOrganellomics), an imaging workflow that integrates automated segmentation with machine learning to classify and spatially map cell states from multi-organelle signatures. In liver and pancreas, these signatures distinguished broad cellular classes. In liver, sOrganellomics revealed that zonal position did not fully explain organelle-defined hepatocyte categories. Instead, hepatocytes formed intermixed communities within canonical zones, supporting a refined subzonal diversity model. Nutritional stress reshaped this organization. Intravital imaging linked fasting-induced organelle remodeling with altered mitochondrial membrane potential in vivo, supporting multi-organelle architecture as a structural readout of tissue adaptation.
Extreme loss suppression in an ultracold molecular gas with widely tunable dipolar interactions
Research Article | Quantum gases | 2026-09-17 03:00 EDT
Weijun Yuan, Siwei Zhang, Niccolò Bigagli, Haneul Kwak, Claire Warner, Tijs Karman, Ian Stevenson, Sebastian Will
Ultracold dipolar molecules hold great promise for the creation of exotic quantum states of matter, but the realization of long-lived molecular bulk samples with strong dipole-dipole interactions has remained challenging. In this work, we realized a collisionally stable gas of ultracold ground state molecules with a lifetime of several seconds. Utilizing double-microwave dressing, we achieved an extreme suppression of inelastic two- and three-body losses by factors of more than 10,000 and 1000, respectively. We found that losses remained suppressed across a wide range of dipole-dipole interactions, allowing the continuous tuning of the dipolar length from -21,000 to 12,000 a0, where a0 is the Bohr radius. Combined with the recent realization of Bose-Einstein condensation of dipolar molecules, our findings open the door to the exploration of strongly dipolar quantum liquids.
Transcriptome-based classification in mice with ASD-risk mutations
Research Article | Transcriptomics | 2026-09-17 03:00 EDT
Junyeop Daniel Roh, Yukyung Jun, Heesu Jeon, Junyoung Kim, Yunho Yi, Minji Kim, Heejin Cho, Yusang Oh, Heera Moon, Jinkyeong Kim, Seongbin Kim, Jeseung Ryu, Muwon Kang, Jisoo Kim, Yeonghyeon Kim, Yewon Jung, Taesun Yoo, Hyoseon Oh, Hyosang Kim, Chunmei Jin, Yeji Yang, Gahyeon Choi, Sunjoo Ahn, Jin Young Kim, Hyojin Kang, Mihyun Bae, Eunjoon Kim
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental condition with a strong genetic component. Large-scale human genetic studies have identified >1200 ASD-risk genes. We report a sex-balanced atlas of 1008 prefrontal RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) profiles from 17 mouse lines carrying ASD-risk mutations. Our analysis identified two opposing transcriptomic states. The two groups differed in sex bias, regional specificity, developmental stability, cell type remodeling, and responses to fluoxetine and lithium. Single-nucleus RNA-seq revealed broader cell type remodeling in group 1 than in group 2, and cell type-specific modules showed reciprocal associations that mirrored bulk transcriptomic signatures. The framework classifies independent mouse lines and identifies subgroups with conserved synaptic directionality, supporting molecular stratification.
Fast, continuous, and coherent atom reloading in a neutral-atom qubit array
Research Article | Quantum computing | 2026-09-17 03:00 EDT
Yiyi Li, Yicheng Bao, Michael Peper, Chenyuan Li, Jeff D. Thompson
Neutral-atom quantum processors are a promising platform for scalable quantum computing. An obstacle to implementing deep quantum circuits is managing atom loss. Current approaches require at least an order of magnitude longer time than gate and measurement operations to replace lost atoms. In this work, we demonstrate fast, continuous atom reloading that leverages the metastable 171Yb qubit. A continuously loaded reservoir near the computation zone enables on-demand atom extraction with tweezers up to 500 times per second. New, stochastically filled qubit arrays can be initialized 30 times per second when including single-atom preparation, nondestructive imaging, and initialization. Existing qubits in the metastable state are undisturbed by the reloading process. This work establishes a complete foundation for the implementation of fast, fully fault-tolerant quantum circuits with unlimited depth.
Germline EGFR T790M mutation and lung cancer risk
Research Article | Cancer | 2026-09-17 03:00 EDT
Jaclyn LoPiccolo, Steven Micheletti, Jing Shi, Wei Wang, Shubham Saini, Keng-Han Lin, Wanwan Xu, Pierre Fontanillas, 23andMe Research Team3‡, Diane R. Koeller, Helen Yatzus, Victoria G. Williamson, Jose A. Avila, Raphael B. Liautaud, Noah D. Fields, Allison Harper, Virginia Kotait, Ericka Izzo, Andrew Ciupek, Courtney A. Granville, Ryan L. Collins, Judy E. Garber, David C. Christiani, Stella Aslibekyan, Julie M. Granka, Alexander Gusev, Pasi A. Jänne
Most lung cancers are tobacco related, with genetic factors influencing smoking behavior identified through genome-wide association studies. However, inherited risk in familial and non-smoking-related lung cancers, including risk in carriers of EGFR T790M, remains poorly understood. Here, in more than 3.3 million individuals, the EGFR T790M germline variant is significantly associated with lung cancer risk, with no increased risk for 17 other cancers and no interaction with polygenic risk. This risk exceeds that conferred by smoking and is several-fold higher in never-smokers. Global geographic and ancestry analyses show higher T790M prevalence in the US than in British- and Irish-descendant populations, reflecting a Southern Appalachian founder event about 200 to 225 years ago, increasing regional prevalence and affecting those of British, Irish, and African descent. Recognition of high-risk carriers may inform targeted genetic testing and screening strategies.
Atmospheric methane lifetime during the Last Glacial Maximum was reduced owing to dust-mediated chlorine chemistry
Research Article | Atmospheric chemistry | 2026-09-17 03:00 EDT
Daphne Meidan, Carlos A. Cuevas, Julián Villamayor, Rafael P. Fernandez, Nicolás J. Cosentino, Samuel Albani, Natalie M. Mahowald, Andrea Spolaor, Juan Pablo Corella, Michaela Mühl, Jennifer Campos Ayala, Markus Grimmer, Jochen Schmitt, Hubertus Fischer, Alfonso Saiz-Lopez
Atmospheric methane (CH4) plays a central role in Earth’s climate, yet the drivers of its decline during the high-dust conditions of glacial periods, such as the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), remain uncertain. Previous explanations imply source-driven changes, assuming an atmospheric lifetime comparable to that of present day. Recent work shows that interactions between mineral dust and sea salt aerosols produce CH4-removing chlorine radicals. In this work, we show that during the LGM, CH4 lifetime shortened to 7.8 years, 20% lower than that of present day. Chlorine contributed ~15% of global CH4 loss, fourfold that of present day. Our results reproduce ice core CH4 isotopic evidence, demonstrating that stronger-than-assumed atmospheric sinks can explain CH4 variability without invoking substantial source changes, highlighting the overlooked role of chlorine chemistry in the glacial CH4 budget.
An expert-level generalist AI for abdominal CT diagnosis
Research Article | Imaging | 2026-09-17 03:00 EDT
Qi Zhang, Jianpeng Zhang, Weiwei Cao, Zilin Lu, Wanxing Chang, Haonan Ding, Cao Chen, Zhi Li, Xing Xue, Sinuo Wang, Shaoteng Zhang, Yutong Xie, Yong Xia, Qi Wu, Zhongyi Shui, Xi Li, Zhilin Zheng, Yanjie Zhou, Tony C.W. Mok, Yingda Xia, Hongkan Wang, Xianghua Ye, Tao Ma, Jie Peng, Xiaoguang Wang, Jian Ding, Yuming Gao, Huazhen Ye, Yiping Liu, Dongjie Chen, Zhaomin Ni, Jianwen Ning, Wei Zhang, Jian Liu, Chaohui Yu, Shenghong Ju, Jianfeng Zhang, Wenbo Xiao, Ling Zhang, Tingbo Liang
Artificial intelligence (AI) in radiology aspires to deliver expert-level diagnosis across diverse clinical tasks, yet existing supervised strategies remain limited in scope. We developed RADAR, a generalist vision-language model trained on more than 400,000 contrast-enhanced abdominal computed tomography (CT) examinations and 15 million anatomy-wise image-text pairs, learning directly from clinical reports without manual annotation. Throughout internal and external evaluations across multiple centers and varied clinical scenarios, RADAR achieved high diagnostic performance and robust generalization for 18 anatomical structures and 146 imaging findings. In a reader study, RADAR assistance increased the diagnostic sensitivity of 26 radiologists by ~10%. RADAR offers a scalable, versatile, and interpretable solution for abdominal CT, demonstrating that generalist AI can match human experts in general and complicated radiology tasks.
Splenic regulation of systemic platelet activation state
Research Article | Platelets | 2026-09-17 03:00 EDT
Lisa Laun, Alexander Leunig, Felix Zhang, Sezer Akgöl, Dario Rossaro, Matthias P. Fabritius, Afra Anjum, Lennart Kreutz, Nathalie Mackert, Gabriel H.M. Araujo, Shaan Mahameed, Craig Balmforth, Marie-Louise Hoffknecht, Magdalena Mader, Konstantin Hoffmann, Justus Reittinger, Johanna Knechtel, Nellie M. Kwabla, Maité Mulkers, Michael Schmid, Jean Solarz, Hannah Niederdorfer, Raphael Escaig, Robin Dewender, Heiko Schulz, Frederick Klauschen, Konstantin Stark, Florian Gaertner, David E. Newby, Bernhard Nieswandt, Filip K. Swirski, Zoltan Nagy, Alexandra Mazharian, Rainer Kaiser, Yotis A. Senis, Steffen Massberg, Leo Nicolai
Platelets are essential to prevent blood loss and to orchestrate inflammation. Thrombotic complications of vascular disease and hyperresponsive platelets are associated with adverse outcomes, yet physiological mechanisms counteracting systemic platelet activation are poorly defined. In mice, we found that the spleen filters activated platelets in thrombotic and inflammatory conditions, limiting pathology by maintaining platelet quiescence. Glycoprotein VI-dependent activation of platelets initiated by extracellular matrix components in the splenic red pulp was counterbalanced by G6b-B-immunoreceptor tyrosine-based inhibitory motif signaling triggered by perlecan in quiescent platelets, allowing them to recirculate. By contrast, threshold activation signals in preactivated platelets could override inhibition, leading to splenic capture through inside-out signaling and β1-integrin engagement. Thus, the spleen acts as a modulator of platelet responsiveness and thrombo-inflammatory risk.
Disorder-promoted stability
Research Article | Network science | 2026-09-17 03:00 EDT
Arthur N. Montanari, Pietro Zanin, Adilson E. Motter
Previous studies of network dynamics have suggested that heterogeneity among nodes inhibits stability, which is at odds with the ubiquity of inherently heterogeneous natural and engineered systems. Here, we show that this conclusion arises from model reductions introduced for mathematical tractability and breaks down when nodal dynamics are higher-dimensional, yielding non-Hermitian Jacobians. In such systems, including neural, power-grid, and material networks, nodal heterogeneity can instead enhance stability, even when parameters are randomly disordered. Non-Hermiticity also underlies the stabilizing effects of network heterogeneity, which can arise even in one-dimensional nodal dynamics through nonreciprocal interactions, as shown for ecological networks. Our framework reveals disorder not as a liability but as a general resource for stabilizing complex systems.
The Virtual Biotech: A multi-agent AI framework for therapeutic discovery and development
Research Article | 2026-09-17 03:00 EDT
Harrison G. Zhang, Peter Eckmann, Jiacheng Miao, Andrew B. Mahon, James Zou
Drug development requires evidence integration across biological scales and modalities, but relevant tools are fragmented. We introduce the Virtual Biotech, an organization of artificial intelligence (AI) agents modeled on a drug-development company, with agentic divisions spanning target discovery, safety assessment, modality selection, and clinical development. We demonstrate its utility at three drug-development decision points. First, over 37,000 agents annotated outcomes from 55,984 trials and found that drugs targeting cell-type-specific genes were 48% more likely to reach market with 32% fewer adverse events. Second, it integrated multimodal evidence to propose a therapeutic strategy in lung cancer. Third, it analyzed a terminated ulcerative colitis trial and inferred potential mechanisms of failure. These results demonstrate that human-guided multi-agent systems can conduct transparent, multiscale analyses to inform therapeutic-development decisions.
Quantum jumps of sound
Research Article | Quantum systems | 2026-09-17 03:00 EDT
Takuma Makihara, Erik Szakiel, Matthew P. Maksymowych, Oliver A. Hitchcock, Kaveh Pezeshki, Rachel G. Gruenke-Freudenstein, Mihir Pendharkar, Shannon P. Harvey, David I. Schuster, Amir H. Safavi-Naeini
Quantum mechanics predicts that a vibrating object’s energy comes in discrete packets, yet no measurement of its position reveals this discreteness. Resolving individual energy levels requires a qualitatively different measurement, one coupling to the resonator’s energy rather than its displacement. We use a superconducting qubit dispersively coupled to a nanomechanical resonator to perform repeated quantum nondemolition measurements of the phonon number. An aligned transfer-print technique integrating the qubit and resonator yields a mechanical lifetime of
A noncontiguous code for RNA-guided DNA recognition at the origin of CRISPR-Cas
Research Article | Microbiology | 2026-09-17 03:00 EDT
Peter H. Yoon, Kenneth J. Loi, Zeyuan Terry Zhang, Trevor A. Docter, Santiago C. Lopez, Conner J. Langeberg, Muhammad Moez Ur-Rehman, Kamakshi Vohra, Zehan Zhou, Isabel Esain-Garcia, Marena I. Trinidad, Honglue Shi, Ron Boger, Peter Y. Wang, Benjamin A. Adler, Stephen G. Brohawn, Jennifer A. Doudna
CRISPR-Cas provides RNA-mediated adaptive immunity, but how its first RNA-guided effector arose is unclear. In this study, we report the discovery of Viral Interference Programmable Repeat (VIPR) systems consisting of a Vipr protein ancestral to the earliest CRISPR-Cas effectors and VIPR RNAs (vrRNAs) comprising alternating GGY/NN motifs. Unlike canonical guide RNAs that pair with target nucleic acids through contiguous complementarity, vrRNAs recognize double-stranded DNA through a noncontiguous code in which the variable NN dinucleotides collectively specify a gapped target sequence. Natural vrRNA targets suggest that VIPR systems act against competing phages, and we demonstrate programmable phage defense by redirecting the complex for transcriptional repression. These results suggest that adaptive immunity originated from ancient warfare between viruses, revealing a previously unidentified logic for encoding information in sequence.
VIPR RNA-guided DNA recognition by noncontiguous geometric triplex formation
Research Article | Microbiology | 2026-09-17 03:00 EDT
Peter H. Yoon, Trevor A. Docter, Zeyuan Terry Zhang, Kenneth Loi, Santiago C. Lopez, Luis E. Valentin-Alvarado, Owen T. Tuck, Stephen G. Brohawn, Jennifer A. Doudna
Viral interference programmable repeat (VIPR) systems use a noncontiguous code for RNA-guided transcriptional silencing. How the Vipr protein and a VIPR RNA (vrRNA) comprising alternating GGY and NN segments achieve precise DNA targeting is unknown. Here, we present 21 cryo-electron microscopy structures that help explain the mechanism of target engagement. Vipr protomers oligomerize along the vrRNA to form a right-handed helical filament, sequestering each GGY motif and positioning the adjacent NN bases for target base pairing. DNA binding, in which every third nucleotide is skipped, results in a gapped vrRNA-DNA hybrid helix that encircles the nontarget DNA strand to form a geometric triplex. These findings suggest that triplex-mediated target-strand handoff could enable noncontiguous and programmable RNA-guided DNA recognition in VIPR systems.
arXiv
Robust and Efficient AI Frameworks for Scalable Material Design and Property Prediction
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
This thesis develops robust and efficient AI frameworks for accelerating crystalline materials discovery by addressing both major stages of the materials-design pipeline: crystal property prediction and crystal structure generation. Motivated by the high computational cost of Density Functional Theory (DFT) and the limited availability of labeled materials data, the thesis explores graph representation learning, pretraining, multimodal learning, and generative modeling for scalable materials design.
For property prediction, the thesis first introduces CrysXPP, which learns transferable crystal representations through unsupervised graph autoencoding, reducing dependence on large property-labeled datasets. It then proposes CrysGNN, a large-scale self-supervised graph pretraining framework that captures atomic connectivity, chemical attributes, and global structural information and transfers this knowledge to downstream property predictors through knowledge distillation. CrysMMNet further enriches crystal representations by jointly modeling graph structure and textual descriptions, thereby incorporating both local chemical and global structural knowledge.
For crystal generation, the thesis introduces TGDMat, a text-guided joint diffusion framework that jointly models lattice parameters, atomic types, and atomic coordinates while incorporating textual structural knowledge during denoising. This enables the generation of more valid and stable periodic materials while also supporting conditional generation from natural-language descriptions.
Overall, the thesis establishes a unified AI-based framework for data-efficient property prediction and controllable crystal generation, demonstrating how graph learning, multimodal representations, and generative models can reduce computational cost and improve the scalability of materials
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Machine Learning (cs.LG)
Structure of Measurement-Induced Entanglement in Infinite-Randomness Critical States
New Submission | Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
The impact of projective measurements on a many-body quantum state is tightly linked to its underlying entanglement structure. Critical states are particularly sensitive, as long-range entanglement allows local measurements to have global consequences. This has been extensively studied in the context of critical states described by a conformal field theory (CFT), where measurements can alter critical properties in post-measurement quantities (‘measurement-altered criticality’) and induce long-range entanglement with universal features (‘measurement-induced entanglement’). By contrast, little is known about the role of measurements on critical states with quenched disorder, which admit no CFT description. Here, we develop a theory of measurements on one-dimensional critical states governed by infinite-randomness fixed points (IRFPs), focusing on two closely related examples: the random XXZ chain and the random transverse-field Ising model. We show that the measurement-induced entanglement decays as a power-law with universal exponent $ (3-\sqrt{5})/2$ in both models, and that the minimum number of measurements required to establish this entanglement obeys a universal scaling form. When only a finite density of measurements is made, we show that the critical properties of the state are remarkably robust: `measurement-altered criticality’ is absent, with measurements either preserving the critical exponents, or destroying the criticality entirely. These results establish IRFPs as an analytically tractable arena for measurements on critical states, complementary to the CFT case. The outcome randomness that necessitates replica methods in clean systems becomes trivial at infinite randomness, with the universal response governed by the statistics induced by the quenched disorder.
Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech), Disordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn), Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
11+4 pages, 7+0 figures
Hydrodynamic memory in overdamped colloidal dynamics
New Submission | Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Benjamin Sorkin, Günther Turk, Howard A. Stone
Micron-sized colloid particles diffusing through a fluid experience hydrodynamic inertial and memory effects, the latter causing velocity autocorrelation to decay as a power law. At the same time, many theoretical descriptions treat colloidal diffusion in a fluid using overdamped Langevin dynamics for its convenience, eliminating velocity, omitting inertia, but also ignoring the power-law memory. In this Letter, we show that hydrodynamic memory survives in the overdamped (colloid-inertialess) limit. By identifying the dimensionless parameter controlling the crossover between early- and late-time dynamics, we derive in closed form the overdamped Langevin equation in the presence of hydrodynamic memory. This provides a theoretical framework for realistically describing colloidal dynamics in a fluid, and establishes a rigorous basis for the positional memory observed in high-resolution experiments. Our theory predicts that hydrodynamic memory becomes increasingly pronounced for smaller particles and under stronger external forcing, and offers experimental probes for the crossover from conventional exponential relaxation to memory-dominated power-law dynamics.
Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech), Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft), Chemical Physics (physics.chem-ph), Fluid Dynamics (physics.flu-dyn)
7 pages, 2 figures
Brownian motion with geometry-dependent hydrodynamic memory
New Submission | Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Benjamin Sorkin, Günther Turk, Howard A. Stone
Micron-sized particles moving through a fluid are subject to viscous resistance and thermal fluctuations. Beyond steady Stokes friction, colloids also exhibit hydrodynamic memory effects arising from conservation laws of the surrounding fluid. Although fluid-flow problems in complex geometries and confinements are often highly involved, numerical or approximate solutions can be obtained; translating these solutions into closed-form equations of motion for individual colloids, however, is rarely possible. Here, we develop a theoretical framework that provides both underdamped and overdamped colloidal dynamics from the solution of an arbitrary flow problem: (i) Using the Lorentz reciprocal theorem, we express the colloidal equation of motion in terms of the geometry’s Green’s function and the fluid-flow profile. This formulation yields both the corresponding Stokes drag as well as a Basset-like hydrodynamic memory contribution. (ii) As colloid inertia is often negligible, we furthermore derive the corresponding overdamped (colloid-inertia-less) limit, which inherits the Stokes and Basset-like resistances and additionally gives rise to a spurious drift. We propose applications of this framework to passive and active particles subject to involved confinements and problem geometries.
Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech), Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft), Chemical Physics (physics.chem-ph), Fluid Dynamics (physics.flu-dyn)
17 pages, 2 figures
Conditions for the Emergence of Spontaneous Phonon Frequency Combs from Anharmonic Potentials
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Jayakrishnan SS, Mayanak K Gupta, Dipanshu Bansal
Phononic frequency combs have been demonstrated experimentally and theoretically in the kHz-MHz regime under nonlinear driving; however, their spontaneous formation in the GHz-THz regime remains rare. We investigate the spontaneous formation of frequency combs in van der Waals solid CrGeTe$ 3$ , where combs of spacing $ \sim$ 2 cm$ ^{-1}$ were experimentally proposed to occur in a flat phonon mode but are now reported to originate from isotopic distribution. Our spectral energy density calculations using machine-learning-augmented molecular dynamics simulations show comb-like features with reduced spacings of $ \sim$ 0.1 and 0.6 cm$ ^{-1}$ in the same mode at 50 and 200 K. However, the spacings of the comb-like features are comparable to the phonon linewidth, making precise identification of the frequency comb challenging. From a comprehensive analysis of different modes of CrGeTe$ 3$ , we identified two conditions to distinctively observe the combs beyond the experimental resolution: (i) an intramolecular or isolated mode with reasonably large third- or higher-order anharmonicity from phonon self-interaction and (ii) limited phonon scattering channels. Our analysis of other van der Waals solids highlighted that these conditions are met for the nearly flat intramolecular $ E{2g}$ and $ A{2u}$ phonon modes of WSe$ 2$ . The detailed calculations showed the formation of a spontaneous frequency comb with spacings of 1.7 and 0.67 cm$ ^{-1}$ from coherent superposition of four and five-phonon eigenstates in the $ E{2g}$ and $ A_{2u}$ phonon modes, respectively. Available Raman scattering data of the $ E_{2g}$ mode in the literature provide preliminary, if not conclusive, evidence of comb formation. Our findings offer a deeper understanding and open avenues for engineering long-lived phononic frequency combs for various practical applications.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Other Condensed Matter (cond-mat.other)
47 pages, 23 figures
Activity-induced emergent flatness, instabilities and pattern formation in fluid membranes
New Submission | Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Debayan Jana, Astik Haldar, Abhik Basu
We show that microscopically inversion-asymmetric, permeable active fluid membranes are statistically flat and effectively inversion-symmetric at large scales. Their fluctuations are governed by an asymptotically exact linear hydrodynamic equation giving orientational long-range order and positional quasi-long-range order. At intermediate scales, their dynamics is described by a Kardar-Parisi-Zhang equation with spatially long-range noise, producing rough membranes with short-range translational and long-range orientational order described by exactly known scaling exponents. Active stresses can destabilize the membrane at long wavelengths, while sufficiently strong active permeation flow can drive finite-wavevector instabilities and pattern formation. These results reveal a novel activity-driven route to the destruction of flat fluid membranes.
Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)
Preliminary version
A Multipolar Approach to Sliding Ferroelectricity
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Traditional theoretical treatments of ferroelectricity do not straightforwardly extend to sliding ferroelectrics, which are increasingly-studied layered materials where a switchable electrical polarization is controlled by two-dimensional relative motion of the stacked layers. Therefore, in-depth analyses of the underlying processes which dictate their polarization behavior remain challenging. In this paper, we present a comprehensive approach for identifying the symmetry-adapted microscopic parameters which are responsible for driving the emergence of this polarization. First, we outline our approach, which appeals to group theory arguments and the distortion of Wannier orbital densities to connect macroscopic symmetries to the microscopic electronic distortions which dictate the appearance of ferroelectricity. Then, we illustrate this process by using density functional theory to apply our strategy to honeycomb bilayer systems, including hexagonal boron nitride. In this way, we find that combinations of dipole-like and quadrupole-like distortions of lone pair electron orbitals control electronic reorganization, and by extension, ferroelectricity in such systems.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Applied Physics (physics.app-ph), Computational Physics (physics.comp-ph)
Electric field effects on electrolytes near rough dielectric surfaces by GPU-accelerated code
New Submission | Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Isaac Smith, Nicholas Pogharian, Francisco J. Solis, Trung Dac Nguyen, Monica Olvera de la Cruz
Dielectric interfaces are ubiquitous in manufactured and natural systems, such as iontronic devices, supercapacitors, and living cells. These, often rough, dielectric surfaces host ionic charge distributions that depend on the surface geometry and the electric fields present. In this work, we study the effect of electric fields on such ionic charge distributions. We demonstrate, by molecular dynamics (MD) and perturbative analytic calculations, that the pattern of alternating regions of ionic charge density created by a sinusoidal interface can be modified and reversed by applying an electric field. We determine the strength of the critical electric field required to cancel the effect of dielectric interface-driven modulation in ion density and develop an analytic expression for that field for small amplitude sinusoidal variations in surface height. We show that ion concentrations near a surface with height given by a sum of Fourier modes can be found by adding the contributions from the concentration modulation due to each mode, allowing the possibility to predict ion distributions near rough surfaces. We updated and validated a LAMMPS package for MD simulation of polarizable surfaces, the DIELECTRIC package, by implementing a new version that achieves a 2.4-24 times speed increase by GPU parallelization on our test system and adds the capability to simulate an applied electric field on simple and complex electrolytes near dielectric interfaces with arbitrary roughness.
Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
What does “instant thermalization” in large-$q$ SYK models mean?
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Alexander Osterkorn, Jan C. Louw
Motivated by the Planckian thermalization rate $ \Gamma \sim T$ observed in the two-body interacting SYK model, we study thermalization in the $ q/2$ -body case. Previous studies of such systems have established the notion of instantaneous thermalization to leading order in $ 1/q$ . It was conjectured that the thermalization may still be Planckian but with a divergent rate $ \Gamma \sim T q$ , explaining the ``instantaneous’’ part. For an analytically and numerically tractable system, we calculate the effective temperatures after a quench at time $ t = 0$ and indeed find a Planckian rate, albeit with the unexpected decaying behavior $ \Gamma \sim T q^{-1} $ . This is contrasted with the behavior of the causal Green’s function $ \mathcal{G}(t_1, t_2)$ , which instantly acquires a thermal form in the two-time plane block $ t_1, t_2 > 0$ .
The resulting picture is that instant thermalization is a meaningful concept only for this block, while the off-diagonal blocks $ t_1 \cdot t_2 < 0$ are inherently non-thermal at any $ q$ . Since the effective temperature is obtained from correlations spanning all blocks, it inherits a finite rate set by the off-diagonal. We illustrate this directly by studying the non-thermal correlations’ time dependence.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el), High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th), Computational Physics (physics.comp-ph), Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
Entropy spectroscopy of a tunable two-site Hubbard molecule
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Uhjin Kim, Seokyeong Lee, Gibum Yun, Dongsung T. Park, Soobeom Choi, Sangwoo Jeong, Donghoon Kim, V. Umansky, Yunchul Chung, Hyoungsoon Choi, H.-S. Sim, Hyung Kook Choi
Determining which microscopic states remain thermally active when tunneling and interactions compete is a central question in Hubbard physics. Here we develop an entropy measurement protocol for a double quantum dot, extending the charge-based approach established for a single dot, and measure the total entropy of a tunable two-site Hubbard molecule realized in a GaAs double dot. By shifting both dot levels together at fixed detuning, the entropy is correctly probed with only a single charge sensor. As interdot tunneling increases, the system evolves from two atomic-like dots through hybridized molecular states to a merged single dot. Across this evolution, the entropy decreases as tunnel-induced energy splitting exceeds the thermal energy and suppresses the occupation of higher-energy states. The measurements resolve the diminishing contribution of antibonding states and the changing thermal contributions of hybridized singlet and triplet states, in quantitative agreement with a two-site Hubbard model. By distinguishing states with the same charge configuration but different orbital and spin content, entropy reveals how tunneling and interactions determine the thermally active states of the minimal Hubbard system.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall), Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)
21 pages, 5 figures, Supplementary Materials 16 pages, 7 figures
Assessing the Reliability of Anomalous Hall Conductivity Extraction in GdAlSi
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Anil Kumar, Debapratim Pal, Sudhan Koirala, Muhammad Adnan, Youngsang (Eric)Ji, Prakash Regmi, Bailey S. Bouley, Ludi Miao, Yun Suk Eo
We examine the different methods of extracting the anomalous Hall conductivity using SrRuO$ _3$ and GdAlSi. For SrRuO$ _3$ , where the ordinary Hall background is well defined and the magnetoconductance is small, subtracting the ordinary Hall contribution either before or after conversion from resistivity to conductivity yields nearly identical anomalous Hall conductivities. In GdAlSi, in contrast, the transverse response does not exhibit clear saturation, and both low- and high-field regions can appear approximately linear. We show that different interpretations of these linear regions as the ordinary Hall background, together with the treatment of the measured longitudinal resistance in the resistivity-to-conductivity conversion, can produce completely different estimates of the anomalous Hall conductivity. We also examine whether the nonlinear Hall response can instead be described within an ordinary Hall framework without invoking an anomalous contribution. Our analysis provides practical cautions for extracting excess Hall contributions in quantum materials.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
Surface chemistry investigation of an additively manufactured Al-Mg-Si-Zr alloy: Studies from experiments and first-principles simulation
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Zhengqing Wei, Philip Grimm, Inna Plyushchay, Volker Hoffmann, Nebahat Bulut, Lutfi Caglar Ege, Julia Kristin Hufenbach, Sibylle Gemming
The surface chemistry of additively manufactured aluminum alloys plays a critical role in corrosion resistance and joining with external materials. In this work, the near-surface elemental composition of a laser powder bed fusion (PBF-LB/M) processed Al-Mg-Si-Zr alloy was characterized by glow discharge optical emission spectroscopy GDOES depth profiling. The measurements reveal pronounced Mg enrichment within the near-surface region extending to approximately 10 {\mu}m, consistent with the characteristic scale of surface roughness, together with an increase in oxygen concentration, whereas Al, Si, and Zr approach stable bulk-like levels at greater depths. To understand this observation on the atomic scale, first-principles calculations based on density functional theory (DFT) were performed on low-index Al surfaces. The calculated results show a strong thermodynamic driving force for Mg surface segregation, with diffusion energy differences ranging from approximately -0.30 eV to -0.41 eV, while Zr exhibits a pronounced preference for remaining in the bulk matrix. Vacancy migration calculations further demonstrate that full structural relaxation substantially reduces the migration barrier for Mg to below that of Si, which makes Mg diffusion kinetically highly favorable. Moreover, the presence of adsorbed surface oxygen dramatically promotes the tendency of Mg to diffuse toward the surface, which lowers the diffusion energy difference of Mg to as much as -3.0 eV. This promotes the formation of a locally reconstructed Mg-O-Al coordinated precursor structure accompanied by localized electron transfer shown by an electron localization function analysis.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
14 pages, 6 figures
A semiconductor photon-pair source based on a polariton cascade
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
We present a theoretical study of a semiconductor photon-pair source based on a radiative cascade enabled by a permanent exciton dipole. The source consists of a GaAs quantum dot placed between a metal nanoparticle and a mirror. The dot exciton and the localized electromagnetic mode mix to form upper and lower polaritons. Without a permanent dipole, a symmetry separating states with even and odd excitation numbers forbids photon emission between the polaritons. Separation of the mean electron and hole positions gives the exciton a permanent dipole and breaks this symmetry. The upper polariton can then emit an idler photon as it decays to the lower polariton. The lower polariton can emit a signal photon as the system returns to its ground state. Using an effective model, we calculate the probability that a prepared upper polariton emits both photons through the metal antenna. We also analyse fluctuations in the emitted photon counts and correlations between the two emission channels. The calculation establishes an operating principle for assumed emitter properties and optical loss rates. Whether the device can be built and its photon correlations measured remains open.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall), Optics (physics.optics), Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
Posture selection in active elastic filaments
New Submission | Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Adam Pearl, Ludwig A. Hoffmann, L. Mahadevan
Posture control in slender bodies such as snakes and eels arises from the interplay between passive deformation, active internal actuation, and task-level constraints. We formulate a general framework for the selection of stable postures in active elastic filaments subject to distributed forcing from gravity and fluid drag, by combining the constraints of mechanical equilibrium with optimal control theory. Our theory leads to a minimal description in terms of parameters governing the competition between hydrodynamic and gravitational loading, elasticity, and activity. We show that posture selection reflects a trade-off between control cost, function and dynamical stability, leading to the coexistence of distinct solution branches and abrupt transitions between them. Applying the theory to sessile eels in flow, we recover the experimentally observed transition from upright to reclining postures and predict scaling laws for body shape and exposed length. More generally, our results provide a unified perspective on how active filaments can regulate geometry to maintain function in external fields, with implications for biological and artificial systems.
Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft), Biological Physics (physics.bio-ph)
7 pages, 4 figures. 10 pages, 8 figures Supplementary Materials
Magnetically coupled charge-transport crossover and giant negative magnetoresistance in iodine-incorporated Cr$_2$Se$_3$
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Bikash Das, Shibnath Mandal, Kapildeb Dolui, Oleksi Laguta, Sambit Choudhury, Suvadip Masanta, Tanima Kundu, Jorge Andres Navarro Giraldo, Alexey Barinov, Shibabrata Nandi, Kai Rossnagel, Sanjoy Kr Mahatha, Rajib Mondal, Petr Neugebauer, Subhadeep Datta
We report the synthesis and comprehensive investigation of iodine-incorporated $ Cr_2Se_3$ , a non-van der Waals quasi-two-dimensional magnetic material, using structural, magnetic, transport, spectroscopic, and first-principles methods. Magnetization and electron spin resonance measurements reveal an antiferromagnetically ordered state below $ T_N \approx 52$ K. At higher temperatures, a second, broader anomaly emerges near $ T^\ast \approx 150$ K, coinciding with a shallow minimum in the temperature-dependent resistivity that resembles a metal-to-insulator-like crossover. Hall measurements indicate predominantly hole-like conduction at high temperatures ($ \geq$ 150 K), while the nonlinear Hall response below T\ast, together with an anomaly in the third-harmonic electrical signal, suggests the emergence of mobility-dependent multichannel and spatially inhomogeneous transport. A large, non-saturating negative magnetoresistance reaching approximately -78% at 25 K and 12 T further demonstrates strong coupling between charge transport and the magnetic state. Temperature-dependent Raman spectroscopy reveals no symmetry-changing structural transition near T\ast, whereas angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) measurements show no major reconstruction of the electronic structure occupied across the crossover. Taken together, these results identify the high-temperature anomaly as a broad magnetically coupled transport crossover arising from the interplay of short-range magnetic correlations, chemical disorder, and redistribution among competing conduction channels. These findings demonstrate that anion incorporation provides an effective route to tuning the coupled electronic and magnetic properties of non-layered Cr$ _2$ Se$ _3$ , establishing this system as a promising platform for investigating correlated transport and emergent spintronic functionalities in transition-metal chalcogenides.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
Prediction of the maximum penetration of a circular intruder in a two-dimensional granular bed from its early trajectory using Machine Learning
New Submission | Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
We test whether the maximum penetration depth of a circular intruder into a two-dimensional granular bed can be predicted from its early trajectory using machine learning, without giving the intruder density. From 100 DEM simulations with varying density, we extract kinematic features from the first 50 ms. Ridge and Random Forest predict the maximum penetration. A single feature (the intruder height at 50 ms) concentrates almost all predictive power, showing that density information is already encoded in the early impact response.
Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
6 pages, 7 figures, 2 tables. DEM simulations (LAMMPS) of intruder penetration into a quasi-2D granular bed; machine learning (Ridge and Random Forest) prediction of maximum penetration from early kinematics
Macroscopic Response Diagnoses the Noise Sensitivity of Terminal Outcomes
New Submission | Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Can the terminal macroscopic outcome of a many-body system be inferred from its microscopic initial data without simulating the full trajectory? Rather than construct such a shortcut, we address a more fundamental question for Gaussian microscopic inputs: can any fixed Wiener-Hermite degree retain a nonvanishing fraction of the variance of the terminal outcome as the system grows? We consider homogeneous systems with independent Gaussian disorder in which all microscopic coordinates are symmetry-equivalent, the terminal event is monotone in each disorder variable, and a uniform disorder shift is exactly equivalent to a control-field shift with a size-independent conversion factor. Using forward and inverse Gaussian influence bounds together with a Gaussian Russo formula, we derive a directly measurable criterion that is both necessary and sufficient for noise sensitivity. Specifically, the correlation between the original and coordinate-perturbed terminal outcomes vanishes asymptotically for every fixed nonzero level of coordinatewise noise if and only if the slope of the outcome probability with respect to the control field at the balanced threshold grows more slowly than the square root of the system volume. Event-driven simulations of the three-dimensional driven random-field Ising model up to linear size 192 find that both the normalized response and the correlations between perturbed samples decrease overall, consistent with the noise-sensitive regime at finite size. For spatial Stag-Hunt dynamics with prescribed seeds, the criterion generalizes through an effective number of influential coordinates. Separately, simulations of a path-dependent best-response game show, over the sizes studied, that the terminal equilibrium can depend on the update schedule while still carrying substantial finite-order predictive information.
Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech), Disordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn), Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph)
19 pages, 6 figures
The quantum Mpemba effect in symmetric random Clifford circuits
New Submission | Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Shion Yamashika, Filiberto Ares, Pasquale Calabrese
The quantum Mpemba effect is the counterintuitive phenomenon whereby a quantum state initially farther from equilibrium relaxes faster than one initially closer to it. We demonstrate this effect in random Clifford circuits with a conserved $ \mathrm{U}(1)$ charge, using the entanglement asymmetry to characterize relaxation through dynamical symmetry restoration. Exact numerical simulations show that an initially more asymmetric state can become locally more symmetric than an initially less asymmetric one. We explain this behavior by mapping the dynamics onto a charge-conserving quantum automaton, in which the decay of the entanglement asymmetry is controlled by the statistics of encounters between two particle species evolving according to a symmetric simple exclusion process. This mapping yields an analytic expression for the entanglement asymmetry and provides a simple microscopic mechanism for the quantum Mpemba effect: stronger initial symmetry breaking corresponds to a denser particle configuration, which enhances the frequency of particle encounters and thereby accelerates symmetry restoration.
Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech), Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
8+10 pages, 3+1 figures
Experimental assessment of the Wiedemann-Franz law in thin metal films using thermoreflectance and electrical measurements
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Zhiwei Deng, Jinlong Ma, Puqing Jiang
Accurate thermal properties of metal thin films are essential for microelectronic thermal modeling and for interpreting thermoreflectance measurements when signals are sensitive to film thermal transport. In practice, film thermal conductivity is commonly inferred from electrical resistivity via the Wiedemann-Franz (WF) law with the Sommerfeld-Lorenz number L_0, neglecting phonon contributions and microstructure-dependent scattering. Here, we combine square-pulsed source (SPS) thermoreflectance with van der Pauw measurements to characterize thermal and electrical transport in Al, Ti, and Ta thin films prepared by thermal evaporation, e-beam evaporation, and magnetron sputtering. SPS measurements from 80 to 300 K yield the film thermal conductivity k_m and volumetric heat capacity C_m, with C_m agreeing with bulk values within +/-8%. Compared with WF-based estimates using L_0 and a modeled resistivity, \r{ho}_model (T)=\r{ho}_bulk (T)+\r{ho}_0, k_m deviates by 5-20% for Al and Ti and up to 40% for sputtered Ta at 300 K. While the smaller deviations are comparable to experimental uncertainty, the large mismatch for Ta demonstrates the limitation of applying the bulk L_0 to highly resistive metal films. Apparent Lorenz numbers L_app=k_m \r{ho}_meas/T from 150 to 300 K further reveal that deposition-induced disorder, grain-boundary scattering, and possible phase-related effects can modify the correlation between heat and charge transport in thin metal films. These results clarify the applicability of the WF law to deposited metal thin films and offer practical guidance for thermal modeling and thermoreflectance analysis.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)
24 pages, 6 figures
J. Appl. Phys. 140, 115101 (2026)
High-performance orbital-torque magnetic memory on the 300-mm platform
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Dinggui Zeng, Yang Gao, Jinyu Duan, Lei Zhao, Yuhao An, Xing He, Jintao Ke, Yonglong Ga, Shasha Wang, Zhenghui Ji, Muyuan Chen, Hengan Zhou, Xuejie Xie, Enlong Liu, Junlu Gong, Qijun Guo, Yihui Sun, Zejie Zheng, Weiming He, Xiaolei Yang, Fantao Meng, Yaohua Wang, Hongxin Yang, Delin Zhang, Yong Jiang, Wanjun Jiang, Shikun He
Contemporary memory technologies are increasingly constrained by the fundamental trilemma of storage capacity, access latency, and power consumption. Among the emerging technologies, spin-orbit torque magnetic random-access memory (SOT-MRAM) shows promise to circumvent these challenges, owing to its fast switching dynamics and high endurance. However, the application of SOT-MRAM is hindered by the relatively low write and read efficiencies, resulting in a large bitcell area and an insufficient sensing margin. Meanwhile, the involvement of an ultrathin spin-source channel, typically within a few nanometers, imposes technological challenges for mass production. Here, we resolve these issues on a 300-mm wafer platform by exploiting the emerging orbital degree of freedom and the resultant orbital torque (OT) from the relatively thick Ti/W bilayer. In particular, OT memory nanodevices exhibit a giant tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR) of 182%, nanosecond-scale response, 1012 endurance, together with an enhanced switching efficiency (E_b/I_c), which consequently enables an ultra-low write energy of less than 0.1 pJ/bit. Our findings demonstrate that orbital angular momentum can be implemented for building energy-efficient MRAM devices, offering a practical pathway towards low-latency memory that is demanded for high-performance computing and AI applications.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall), Applied Physics (physics.app-ph)
4 figures
Unconventional linear transverse exciton transport in valley-layer coupling two-dimensional materials
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Valley-layer coupling (VLC) two-dimensional (2D) materials define a distinct class of quantum systems in which valleys are related by crystal, rather than time-reversal ($ \mathcal{T}$ ) symmetry, enabling gate-controlled valley-contrasted layer polarization. Here we extend this concept to excitons. Using TiSiCo as a prototype VLC material, we show that a perpendicular electric field $ E_{\perp}$ controls exciton- dispersion anisotropy and thereby generates unconventional linear transverse exciton transport in both monolayer and twisted bilayer structures. In the monolayer, this response is characterized by anisotropy-induced transverse conductivities, arising from the antisymmetric combination of diagonal elements in the conductivity tensor and strongly tunable by $ E_{\perp}$ . In the twisted bilayer, symmetry additionally permits transverse responses from the symmetric part of the conductivity tensor. Since intralayer excitons in different layers are connected by the Förster coupling, these symmetric and antisymmetric responses coexist and compete with the recently proposed $ \mathcal{T}$ -even layer Hall and Nernst exciton counterflow. This interplay is highly tunable by twisted angle, temperature, and the direction of the in-plane driving force, providing a route to disentangle distinct transverse exciton transport signals experimentally. Our results establish $ E_{\perp}$ as a powerful knob for controlling exciton transport via VLC and identify VLC 2D materials as a promising platform for engineered excitonic phenomena.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall), Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
8 paages, 6 figures
Disentangling Strain and Ti3+ Contributions to the Anomalous Hall Effect in Epitaxial RuO2 Films
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
S. G. Jeong, A. Santhosh, S. Lee, S. Sheikh, U. M. Jayathilake, T. -L. Lee, T. Low, A. X. Gray, S. A. Chambers, B. Jalan
The anomalous Hall effect (AHE) reported in epitaxial RuO2/TiO2 has been attributed to a strain-stabilized magnetic state, but strain can be entangled with Ru-Ti intermixing and interfacial charge redistribution, which can produce Ti3+ and potentially localized moments. Here, we disentangle these contributions using Ti-alloyed RuO2 heterostructures in which abundant Ti3+ states are retained while epitaxial strain is independently changed. The strained and relaxed films have nearly identical Ti/Ru compositions and comparable Ti3+ fractions, yet a pronounced nonlinear AHE appears only in the coherently strained film, while the relaxed heterostructure exhibits an almost linear Hall response. Spectroscopic ellipsometry further shows that the AHE-active strained state is accompanied by a reconstruction of the itinerant electronic response, including enhanced metallicity and longer carrier relaxation times. These results show that Ti3+ formation alone is insufficient to generate the anomalous Hall state and identify epitaxial strain, through its modification of the itinerant RuO2 electronic structure, as the dominant control parameter.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
15 pages, 4 figures
Microscopic theory of spin-torque ferromagnetic resonance in nonmagnetic-metal/ferromagnetic-metal heterostructures
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
We develop a microscopic theory of spin-torque ferromagnetic resonance (ST-FMR) in nonmagnetic-metal/ferromagnetic-metal heterostructures. Tracing out the conduction-electron degrees of freedom in the FM, we derive an effective interfacial exchange coupling between the localized spins and the conduction electron spins in the adjacent electron system. Based on this interaction, we calculate the current-induced driving torque, resonance-frequency shift, damping modulation, and resulting dc voltage. As a concrete example, we apply the formulation to a disordered Rashba two-dimensional electron gas and demonstrate that the ST-FMR spectrum reflects the dynamical spin responses of the adjacent electron system. Our formulation applies to a broad class of heterostructures and establishes a unified microscopic framework connecting ST-FMR spectra directly to the electronic spin responses of adjacent systems.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)
18 pages, 12 figures
Entropy Estimates from Stochastic Interpolants
New Submission | Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
We present a general method for estimating entropy differences between arbitrary probability distributions using stochastic interpolants. The marginal distributions which bridge the base and target obey a continuity equation, which allows a straightforward calculation of the entropy difference in terms of an inner product of the probability flow velocity and score fields. This formulation has several advantages: (i) no computationally expensive divergence calculations of either field are required, (ii) the score field need not even be learned directly if model transferability is not required, and (iii) on-the-fly estimates are produced nearly for free during training. When tractable base distributions are chosen (e.g. Gaussian chain, ideal gas, etc.), statistical thermodynamic entropies are then immediately recovered. Notably, the analysis relies only on the definition of the Gibbs-Shannon entropy, rather than any particular statistical mechanical ensemble, so that generalized non-equilibrium entropies may be computed. The method is demonstrated on several systems of increasing complexity: (i) a 40-dimensional Gaussian mixture model, (ii) the classical XY model of N spins arranged in one dimension, (iii) the 13-atom Lennard-Jones cluster, and (iv) an active Brownian polymer.
Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech), Chemical Physics (physics.chem-ph)
Nitrogen based electride superconductor Nb5Ir3N under pressure: multifunctional physical properties from DFT based first-principles investigation
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
M. Abdul Hadi Shah, J.H. Abir, S.H. Naqib
Discovery and study of superconducting electrides have opened new avenues in condensed matter physics, driven by their intriguing multifunctional features spanning ambient and high-pressure regimes. This work investigates the ternary nitride superconductor Nb5Ir3N under pressure ranging from 0 to 20 GPa via density functional theory based simulations. Estimated structural parameters agree well with the available data, confirming their reliability and supporting the validity of this analysis. Negative formation enthalpy, together with evaluated elastic constants and phonon spectra, confirm the structural, thermodynamic, mechanical, and dynamical stability of Nb5Ir3N over the entire pressure range. Pressure dependent elastic constants and polycrystalline elastic moduli are investigated. The compound is categorized as ductile in light of estimated mechanical indices. Elastic anisotropy factors indicate that Nb5Ir3N remains anisotropic, with the degree of anisotropy gradually decreasing as pressure increases. Electronic band structure and density of states are calculated with and without spin orbit coupling to investigate its influence on the electronic structure. Calculated optical response reveals substantial intraband contributions in the low energy region, intense ultraviolet absorption, and strong reflectivity. The spectra exhibit optical anisotropy and a broadening at higher pressures. Pressure induced superconducting features are also discussed qualitatively.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con)
Landscape geometry of Majorana zero modes in inhomogeneous superconductors
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Guo-Jian Qiao, Zhi-Lei Zhang, Kang Xu, C. P. Sun
Spatial inhomogeneity breaks translational symmetry and prevents conventional Bloch-band topological invariants from directly answering a practical question: do Majorana zero modes survive in a given inhomogeneous superconducting device? In this Letter, we develop a real-space landscape approach to address this question. Rather than solving the zero-energy equation as a boundary-value problem, we treat the spatial coordinate as an evolution parameter and recast the equation as a first-order dynamical system. A Majorana zero mode is then identified with a stable trajectory that satisfies the physical boundary condition and approaches the origin at large distance. We show that the landscape geometry fixes the dimensions of the stable and unstable subspaces, while the intersection of the stable subspace with the physical boundary subspace determines the number of Majorana zero modes. In the homogeneous limit, the topological phase transition is manifested as a geometric transition of the landscape. Applied to one-dimensional spinless $ p$ -wave superconductors and nanowire–superconductor systems, the approach yields sufficient bounds on both the amplitude and spatial gradient of the inhomogeneity, providing quantitative criteria for the design of Majorana devices.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)
Chern Insulators on a Twisted Klein Bottle
New Submission | Other Condensed Matter (cond-mat.other) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Recently, momentum-space nonsymmorphic symmetries have attracted considerable attention. However, their realizations typically rely on fine-tuning hopping phases to satisfy the required projective symmetry algebras. Here, we show that such symmetry algebras arise naturally on bipartite lattices through the interplay of crystalline and sublattice symmetries. Unlike previously studied cases, these symmetry operators can anticommute with the Hamiltonian and are therefore referred to as momentum-space nonsymmorphic chiral symmetries. Although the free actions of these symmetries reduce the Brillouin torus to more elementary manifolds, the resulting manifolds are twisted in the Atiyah–Segal formalism. In particular, chiral glide reflection (screw rotation) gives rise to a twisted Klein bottle (dicosm) in two (three) dimensions, and this twisting dramatically alters the topological classification. Unlike the untwisted Klein bottle, whose nonorientability forces the Chern number to vanish, the twisted Klein bottle can host nonzero Chern numbers, corresponding to even Chern numbers on the torus. At open boundaries, the corresponding topological invariant manifests itself through chiral edge states exhibiting a glide-reflection structure in energy–momentum space. Our results establish momentum-space nonsymmorphic chiral symmetry as a new organizing principle for discovering and engineering topological phases beyond conventional crystalline classifications.
Other Condensed Matter (cond-mat.other)
6 pages for the main text, 2 figures, 2 pages for the supplementary information
Logarithmic singularity in a dynamical quantum phase transition for free fermions
New Submission | Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Yasser Bezzaz, Dimitri M. Gangardt, Pavel L. Krapivsky, Jean-Marc Luck, Kirone Mallick, Sylvain Prolhac
We study the Loschmidt echo in a system of N non-interacting spinless lattice fermions released from a double-domain-wall initial state. In the large-N limit, the return probability is characterized by a large-deviation rate function known as the dynamical free energy. The Loschmidt echo is dominated by a complex instanton configuration, and the dynamical free energy develops a logarithmic singularity at the dynamical quantum phase transition. We obtain analytical results in the short-time and long-time regimes and support them with numerical computations. We show that the transition can be understood as a topological change of the dominant instanton configuration, analogous to the emergence of a cut in random matrix theory. We further show that post-selection can drive the system through two successive DQPTs, associated with successive topological changes of the dominant instanton configuration in complex time.
Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)
35 pages, 11 figures
Quantum electrodynamics of equilibrium systems: A rigorous Maxwell-regularized functional-theoretic formulation
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Markus Penz, Christian Jöns, Michael Ruggenthaler, Angel Rubio
A framework for quantum electrodynamics of equilibrium systems is proposed that takes the Maxwell equations as foundational and links them to the structure of density-functional theory for the quantum system. By switching from purely internal observables like the one-particle density to combined internal and external quantities, the external sources and their energy are taken into account. A fully regularized functional theory emerges that avoids the usual representability problems. With the Kohn-Sham construction that links to an auxiliary uncoupled system, the ultra-violet cutoff can be removed and one arrives at a fully renormalized and non-perturbative light-matter description. Regularized forms of density-functional theory with and without magnetic fields appear as boundary cases, while the emergent physical picture reproduces the macroscopic Maxwell equations.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Chemical Physics (physics.chem-ph), Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
Direct observation of phonon mode with an antisymmetric Raman tensor
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Shangfei Wu, Shang Ren, Kai Du, Xianghan Xu, Sang-Wook Cheong, David Vanderbilt, Girsh Blumberg
Phonon angular momentum, characterized by circular or elliptical motion of atoms, plays a decisive role in diverse phenomena, ranging from the phonon Hall effect, phonon magnetic moment, Einstein-de Haas effect, Weyl phonons, and driven chiral phonons. The phonon modes with an antisymmetric Raman tensor, which carry an intrinsic phonon angular momentum in a pseudovector symmetry channel, have been overlooked in the past in the chiral phonon community. Here, we report the detection of this type of phonon mode using polarization-resolved Raman spectroscopy. We observe a phonon at 266cm$ ^{-1}$ in the antiferromagnetic chiral phase of Cr$ _2$ O$ _3$ in the $ A_2$ -pseudovector symmetry channel. This $ A_2$ mode’s frequency and the elliptical motion are captured by first-principles phonon calculations, which treat both lattice and spins on an equal footing as ‘slow’ degrees of freedom. This mode gets Raman activity due to the presence of Cr vacancies in Cr$ _2$ O$ _3$ that locally break the twofold rotational symmetry perpendicular to the threefold axis. Our results provide a new way to detect the novel symmetry-forbidden $ A_2$ phonon modes with an antisymmetric Raman tensor in a pseudovector symmetry channel.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
25 pages, 4 figures
Tuneable terahertz transitions in zigzag graphene nanoribbons
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
We show that a transverse electric field applied to a zigzag graphene nanoribbon opens a band gap whose energy can be tuned through the terahertz (THz) range. The field breaks the reflection symmetry of the ribbon, allowing optical transitions that are forbidden in its absence. The relative strengths of transitions polarized parallel and transverse to the ribbon depend strongly on excitation frequency and become equal at a particular frequency. At this frequency, each helicity selectively excites carriers in only one of the two field-induced edge-state valleys, with the selected valley reversed for the opposite helicity. Since this excitation occurs away from the valley minima, the photoexcited carriers have finite group velocity, giving rise to a circular photogalvanic response. Van Hove singularities enhance radiative recombination at the band edge, providing a route towards compact, tunable THz emitters.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)
10 pages, 9 figures
Complex magnetic properties of EuAgAs single crystals
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Karolina Kowalczyk, Kamila Komędera, Janusz Przewoźnik, Łukasz Gondek, Czesław Kapusta, Wojciech Tabiś, Michał Babij, Lan Maria Tran, Damian Rybicki
EuAgAs is an antiferromagnetic topological material exhibiting intriguing magnetic behavior. We investigate its structural, magnetic, and local electronic properties using X ray diffraction, Mössbauer spectroscopy, dc magnetization, ac susceptibility, and heat capacity measurements. The results confirm antiferromagnetic ordering below $ T_\text{N}$ and reveal pronounced magnetic anisotropy and several field induced metamagnetic transitions. We construct the magnetic phase diagram of EuAgAs, identifying several distinct magnetic regions. The field and temperature dependent behavior observed suggests a noncollinear magnetic structure in the low field regime. The sequence of field induced transitions resembles that observed in centrosymmetric rare earth compounds hosting skyrmion phases, suggesting that competing magnetic interactions may play an important role in stabilizing the observed magnetic states.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Other Condensed Matter (cond-mat.other), Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
15 pages, 14 figures, submitted to PRB
Electronic Origins of Elastic Behavior in Rocksalt, Zinc-Blende and Wurtzite 3d Transition-Metal Nitrides
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
We present a comprehensive ab-initio study of the elastic properties of the IV-period transition metal nitrides, highlighting the correlation between their mechanical behavior and electronic structure. By analyzing the electronic density of states, we reveal how the occupation of bonding or antibonding orbitals determines the evolution of elastic properties along the period. Furthermore, we examine trends across different crystal structures, specifically comparing rocksalt, zincblende and wurtzite phases, to uncover how variations in crystal symmetry and atomic coordination influence their elastic properties.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Geometry-Driven Suppression of Fermionic Pairing on a Spherical Surface
New Submission | Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Lorenzo Frigato, Andrea Tononi, Luca Salasnich
We investigate the ground-state properties of a two-component attractive Fermi gas confined to a spherical surface, demonstrating how curvature and finite-size effects lead to qualitatively different behavior compared to the planar limit. In the strongly attractive regime, the system forms a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of tightly bound dimers, yielding a gap and chemical potential that approach flat-space results with leading-order geometric corrections. However, as the attraction decreases, the system crosses over into a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) regime where the Cooper pair size becomes constrained by the sphere radius, producing pronounced deviations from flat-space behavior. We identify strong shell effects at magic particle numbers set by the single-particle spectrum, revealing the geometry-driven suppression of fermionic pairing at weak interactions. Our results highlight a fundamental interplay among geometry, quantum statistics, and interactions, motivating future experiments with shell-trapped ultracold fermions and inspiring geometry-controlled condensed matter devices.
Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas)
7 pages, 2 figures
Altermagnetic Magnons in Dipolar Nanomagnet Arrays
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Rhea Hoyer, Ephraim Spindler, Lukas Körber, Tobias Wagner, Mathias Weiler, Alexander Mook
Altermagnetism is conventionally understood in a spin-conserving framework, where symmetry-enforced momentum-dependent spin splitting emerges in collinear magnets with vanishing net magnetization. Here, we show that its defining signatures persist in nanomagnet arrays coupled exclusively by dipolar interactions, despite the intrinsic breaking of spin conservation. Using a macrospin theory of dipolar-coupled ferromagnetic nanoislands, corroborated by micromagnetic simulations, we demonstrate that arrays engineered with altermagnetic symmetries exhibit spin-split magnon bands whose eigenstates can partially remain strongly spin polarized. The resulting spin expectation value displays the characteristic $ d$ -wave pattern throughout the Brillouin zone, establishing a mesoscopic realization of altermagnetic magnons beyond the conventional spin-conserving paradigm. As a consequence, spin-wave propagation becomes strongly direction dependent, providing a highly tunable platform for anisotropic magnon transport and synthetic altermagnetic functionality.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)
main: 9 pages, 4 figures; supplement: 7 pages, 2 figures
Fröhlich Bipolarons in Two-Dimensional Materials
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
A. Kudlis, V. Shahnazaryan, I. Iorsh, I. A. Shelykh, I. V. Tokatly
Motivated by the progress in the physics of two-dimensional materials and the recent two-dimensional generalization of the Fröhlich model, we study the formation of bipolarons in polar monolayers. Because of very special nonlocal dielectric screening in two dimensions, this setting differs qualitatively from the conventional Fröhlich model. In monolayers, (i) long wavelength LO phonons acquire a nontrivial dispersion; (ii) the Fröhlich electron-phonon vertex becomes momentum-dependent and regular at small momenta; and (iii) direct repulsion between charge carriers takes the Keldysh-Rytova form. Using the Feynman path-integral variational approach, we show that the region in the parameter space where stable bipolarons exist is strongly modified compared to the usual quasi-two-dimensional model with dispersionless phonons. Specifically, in the most favorable limit, when the ratio $ \sigma_0$ of the static polarizability to the high-frequency polarizability tends to infinity, the lower critical coupling, sufficient for the formation of bipolarons, can be made arbitrarily small. More surprisingly, we demonstrate that no stable bipolarons can exist in the strong coupling limit: in the isolated monolayer the stability region is always confined to a finite range of coupling constants. In general, the stability region is strongly shifted toward large values of the polarizability ratio $ \sigma_0$ , well beyond the parameter regimes in representative crystals, which indicates that polar monolayers do not favor bipolarons.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)
Rapid Parameter Estimation from Photoluminescence Decays of Halide Perovskite Thin Films
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Robin Heumann, Toby Rudolph, Gaosheng Huang, Thomas Kirchartz, Chris Dreessen
Extracting material parameters from experimental data is often challenging if no invertible analytical equation can be used to link the data with the quantities of interest. If the link between experiment and material parameters is given mathematically by a set of non-linear differential equations, these must be solved repeatedly during the traditional fitting procedure, resulting in long optimization times and limited insight into parameter uncertainty. Here, we present a parameter estimation workflow specifically aimed at transient photoluminescence measurements performed on lead-halide perovskite films. This workflow is accelerated using artificial neural networks for rapid comparison between experiment and simulation. An advantage of the method is the ability to rapidly scan multidimensional material parameter spaces and identify correlations between parameters that provide insights into the physics of non-radiative recombination in halide perovskites. Finally, we compare steady-state and transient photoluminescence and show how uncertainty in parameters such as the defect density can be reduced by including steady-state data in the parameter estimation workflow.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Main: 49 pages, 10 figures SI: 20 pages, 16 figures
The role of disconnections in redox-induced phase transformation of metal oxides
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Martina Ruffino, Baptiste Bienvenu, Xuyang Zhou, Dierk Raabe, Yan Ma
Detailed atomic-level understanding of the phase transformation between magnetite ($ {\rm Fe_3 O_4}$ ) and haematite ($ {\rm Fe_2 O_3}$ ) is lacking, despite widespread interest in redox reactions of metal oxide systems. While the magnetite-to-haematite transformation entails the addition of oxygen to the system and thus a net diffusive flux, haematite formations have been reported to grow along well-defined habits on the close-packed $ {0001}{\rm Fe_2 O_3}//{111}{\rm Fe_3 O_4}$ planes. The propagation of the phase interface in the bulk is thus thought to maintain the oxygen sublattice fixed up to a shear, and to require long-range diffusion of iron ions. In this letter we propose interfacial steps with dislocation character, i.e. disconnections, as the elementary defects propagating the transformation. We use the topological model of interfacial defects to predict three disconnection modes for the system, and we employ scanning transmission electron microscopy to ascertain their presence in a haematite/magnetite interface of a partially oxidised magnetite powder. Using atomistic simulations, we determine the equilibrium structures of the disconnections, and study their motion and how they accomplish the transformation, obtaining excellent agreement with atomic-resolution experimental observations.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
7 pages and 4 figures in the main text; 10 pages and 6 figures in supporting information
A Pseudoscalar Representation Mapping from Parent-Group Vibrational Normal Modes to Symmetry-Adapted Magnetic Structures
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Yachao Liu, Haibo Niu, Vei Wang
Conventional approaches classify symmetry-allowed magnetic configurations but do not by themselves establish a direct, mode-resolved correspondence with parent-lattice vibrations. Here, we formulate a universal determinant-induced pseudoscalar twist for all 32 crystallographic point groups, establishing an exact representation-to-geometry correspondence between parent vibrations and magnetic order. Within the paramagnetic gray group $ G\times\Theta_{\mathcal{T}}$ , the spatial twist determines symmetry-defined magnetic geometry, while time-reversal parity independently specifies magnetic character. Each parent phonon irrep $ \Gamma$ maps to $ \Gamma_{\mathrm{mag}}=\Gamma\otimes\Gamma_{\mathrm{ps}}$ , preserving multiplicities and yielding the projection identity $ P_{\mathrm{mag},mn}^{(\Gamma\otimes\Gamma_{\mathrm{ps}})}=P_{\mathrm{ph},mn}^{(\Gamma)}$ under the common Cartesian realization. This establishes the \textit{Template Principle}: parent vibrational modes furnish real-space templates whose symmetry-enforced nodal manifolds are inherited exactly. Applied to monolayer $ \mathrm{Cd}_2\mathrm{N}3$ , the framework identifies the ferrimagnetic ground state from the parent $ A{2u}$ sector, confirmed by first-principles calculations, alongside cluster magnetic octupoles and antiferromagnetic manifolds. It further provides an \textit{a priori} parent-group criterion for screening symmetry-allowed linear magnetic responses.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Chiral classical and quantum acoustics with hole-spin qubits
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Zhanning Wang, Yongtao Li, Nelson E. Rivas, Gonzalo García, Irene Castro, Rubén Seoane Souto, Daniel Ramos, José C. Abadillo-Uriel
Gate-defined hole spins combine strong spin-orbit coupling with exceptional strain sensitivity, making surface acoustic waves a natural route to remote, phase-coherent control. We show that counterpropagating surface acoustic waves can differ in coupling strength and in whether they predominantly drive spin rotations or modulate the qubit frequency. We call the transverse transition-strength imbalance spin-acoustic chirality and show that it is tunable through gate-controlled reshaping of the dot confinement. Combining a multiband Luttinger-Kohn Hamiltonian with the Bir-Pikus description of strain and 3D piezoelectric finite-element simulations, we obtain the acoustic g-matrix modulation governing coherent SAW driving. Quantizing the same strain-mediated interaction yields the corresponding single-phonon coupling, and a generalized anisotropic Rabi interaction with co-rotating, counter-rotating, and longitudinal components, linking classical chirality to quantum anisotropy and directional one-phonon emission. Magnetic field orientation and dot shape tune the acoustic chirality and operator selectivity. We illustrate this framework through bichromatic coherence protection and phonon-mediated heralded Bell-state initialization.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)
24 pages, 6 figures, 2 supporting figures
Conformational landscape of a macrocycle from REST enhanced sampling
New Submission | Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Valentin Kasper, Nicole Holzmann, Sanjoy Ray, Matthias Kaiser, Alons Lends
We use replica-exchange molecular dynamics (REMD) to map the conformational free-energy landscape of the macrocyclic drug lorlatinib in explicit water and chloroform. In water a single dominant basin is recovered; in chloroform two conformational states are resolved. We use these conformers as the starting point to calculate proton chemical shifts from first principles and a continuum solvent model. The resulting population-weighted spectrum is compared directly to the experimental CDCl$ _3$ spectrum, benchmarking the computational approach against measured NMR data.
Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
Layer-Dependent Vibrational and Optical Properties of $\mathrm{Mo}{0.58}\mathrm{W}{0.42}\mathrm{Se}_2$ Alloy
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Szymon Socha, Tomasz Wozniak, Elena Blundo, Malgorzata Brzoska, Grzegorz Krasucki, Piotr Wrobel, Antonio Polimeni, Adam Babinski, Maciej R. Molas, Katarzyna Olkowska-Pucko
Semiconducting Mo$ _x$ W$ _{1-x}$ Se$ _2$ alloys provide a versatile platform for tailoring the optical properties of two-dimensional materials through both composition and layer thickness. Here, we systematically investigate mechanically exfoliated Mo$ _{0.58}$ W$ _{0.42}$ Se$ 2$ flakes ranging from monolayer (1L) to nine layers by combining Raman scattering (RS), photoluminescence (PL), reflectance contrast (RC) spectroscopy, and first-principles phonon calculations. Thirteen RS peaks are identified, including the low-frequency interlayer shear mode, whose thickness dependence is well described by a linear-chain model, yielding an interlayer force constant of $ K_s=(2.996\pm0.015)\times10^{19}$ N m$ ^{-3}$ . PL measurements reveal a crossover from the direct-bandgap 1L to indirect-bandgap multilayers. The thickness evolution of the indirect optical transition is quantitatively reproduced using a quantum-confinement model, yielding an out-of-plane reduced effective mass of $ \mu\perp=0.75 m_0$ . RC spectroscopy reveals four excitonic resonances. While the A and B excitons associated with the $ K^\pm$ valleys remain nearly independent of layer thickness, the higher-energy C and D resonances originating from the band-nesting regions exhibit pronounced redshifts, reflecting substantial thickness-induced modifications of the electronic band structure. These results establish comprehensive spectroscopic fingerprints of flake thickness, interlayer coupling, and electronic structure in Mo$ _x$ W$ _{1-x}$ Se$ _2$ alloys and provide a reliable, non-destructive framework for their optical characterization.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall), Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
13 pages, 7 figures
Thermally Desorbable InN Capping Layers for Nitride Surface Science
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Mellie Lemon, Amitayush Thakur, Anthony Rice, Glenn Teeter, Michelle Smeaton, Renae Gannon, Jessica L. McChesney, M. Brooks Tellekamp
Group III-nitride thin films are essential for optoelectronic and power devices, where surface and interface quality critically influence performance. It is often necessary to transfer these films through atmosphere for processing or characterization steps, which can introduce significant surface contamination. Here we demonstrate a technique to protect the surface of III-N films during atmospheric exposure by capping with sacrificial InN layers. Using molecular beam epitaxy grown AlGaN films as our representative protected material, we take advantage of the lower decomposition and desorption temperatures of InN and metallic In to remove the protective cap layer in situ via thermal desorption without damaging the AlGaN film beneath. Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) measurements of the valence band dispersion in Al0.4Ga0.6N demonstrate that the film surface is recovered after InN decapping, highlighting the versatility of this process in allowing further surface-sensitive characterization of films that had been exposed to air.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
ERAF4XRD: A multimodal agentic framework for constructing validated experimental X-ray diffraction databases from scientific literature
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Afnan Mostafa, William Ratcliff, Simon J. L. Billinge, Niaz Abdolrahim
The scientific literature contains decades of experimental measurements that remain difficult to access as structured data for modern AI and data-driven research. Much of this information is distributed across figures, captions, text, and tables, requiring experimental data and their context to be identified, connected, and verified before they can be reused. Here we introduce ERAF4XRD (Experiment Reader Agentic Framework for X-Ray Diffraction), a fully automated multimodal (i.e., image and text), multi-agent framework that reconstructs validated X-ray diffraction (XRD) records from scientific publications. ERAF4XRD downloads and screens documents, identifies XRD figures, extracts and links metadata to the corresponding experimental data, and validates outputs against source evidence using an independent validation agent. On a manually curated benchmark of 273 scientific publications containing 3,150 candidate figures, ERAF4XRD achieved up to 98.7% accuracy for XRD figure identification and generated 1,400 metadata values across 22 fields. Independent manual assessment of the final validated records yielded 98.5% precision and 90.7% recall, with no unsupported metadata observed among 443 evaluated fields. By moving beyond information extraction to the reconstruction and validation of linked experimental records, ERAF4XRD establishes an automated approach for transforming published scientific information into machine-readable experimental datasets for AI and data-driven science.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Nonempirical Time-Dependent Density Functional Theory Framework for Nonlocal Exchange–Correlation Potentials
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Zhandos A. Moldabekov, Michele Pavanello, Thomas D. Gawne, Jan Vorberger, Tobias Dornheim
Advanced, orbital-dependent exchange–correlation (XC) functionals can significantly improve the description of electronic structural properties, but they substantially worsen spectral properties that are computed within standard linear-response time-dependent density functional theory frameworks. This is not a failure of the underlying Kohn-Sham states, but due to a formal inconsistency in the treatment of the dynamic density response when the non-locality of the XC potential is not taken into account consistently on the level of the full off-diagonal density matrix. To avoid these complexities, we present a non-empirical additive correction $ \Delta f_\textnormal{xc}(\mathbf{q},\omega)$ to the dynamic XC kernel that re-enforces the exact f-sum rule of the non-local KS Hamiltonian within TDDFT. Comparing our new results against a representative set of accurate experimental measurements (ambient aluminum, silicon and carbon, as well as heated and compressed aluminum) reveals a dramatic improvement in all cases without any additional computational cost. The corresponding extension to the open-source GPAW code is made freely available online. We further investigate the implications of non-local pseudopotentials and show that the non-locality has an important, physically motivated effect that is indispensable to capture the correct plasmon dispersion in lieu of full all-electron simulations. In addition to being important for the estimation of a plethora of dynamic and spectral properties, our work constitutes an important step towards a universal XC functional that can be used to estimate all kinds of observables with high accuracy. Finally, we outline the potential utility of our framework for the development of advanced non-local XC functionals, and suggest a new way to rigorously verify non-local pseudopotentials against experimental measurements of collective excitations.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Chemical Physics (physics.chem-ph)
Optical investigation of the electronic structure of a ferromagnetic Weyl semimetal CeAlSi
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Shin-ichi Kimura, Yue Pan, Hiroshi Watanabe, Akimitsu Kirikoshi, Junya Otsuki, Hiroshi Tanida
To investigate electronic states during the ferromagnetic transition in a magnetic Weyl semimetal CeAlSi, we measured temperature-dependent optical conductivity [$ \sigma_1(\omega)$ ] spectra and compared them with DFT+DMFT band calculations. The $ \sigma_1(\omega)$ spectrum did not change significantly across the ferromagnetic ordering temperature ($ T_C$ ), suggesting that the Ce 4f states are almost localized. DFT+DMFT calculations with almost localized Ce 4f states successfully reproduced the spectral shape and the unchanged $ \sigma_1(\omega)$ spectra across $ T_C$ . The dynamic effective mass evaluated from the extended Drude model is very small, which DFT+DMFT calculations also reproduce, but the scattering probability at even lower temperatures suggests ferromagnetic fluctuations. These results suggest that the interaction intensity between the Weyl fermions and Ce 4f states is very weak, as reproduced by DFT+DMFT calculations.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
6 pages, 4 figures, SM: 5 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables
Hypothesis-Driven Autonomous Materials Synthesis with Multimodal LLM Agents
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Izumi Takahara, Kazunori Nishio, Akira Aiba, Shigeru Kobayashi, Takao Nakajima, Taro Hitosugi, Teruyasu Mizoguchi
Self-driving laboratories can explore synthesis conditions autonomously, but their decision-making layer is typically a black-box optimizer, and the output is a set of optimized samples, with the measurements reduced to predefined scalar objectives and the reasons behind success left unarticulated. Here we present SynAgent, a framework in which large language model agents operate an automated experimental system and maintain an explicit, revisable understanding of the synthesis process as the campaign’s primary output. Starting with no predefined analysis pipeline, SynAgent adaptively generates analysis skills for newly acquired data and evolves this understanding through multimodal reasoning over experimental data such as X-ray diffraction patterns and electron micrographs. The evolution is guided by a verify-falsify scheme, in which the agent deliberately challenges its own hypotheses by testing conditions predicted to fail as well as those predicted to succeed. In a single campaign of 18 autonomous experiments using LiCoO2 (001) thin-film deposition as a testbed, SynAgent synthesized highly crystalline films and evolved an understanding of how the substrate temperature governs crystallization, discovering an abrupt threshold and a narrow optimal growth window at 650-690 °C. These results extend autonomous experimentation beyond optimized samples to testable, human-readable understanding.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)
Orbital-Induced Peierls Transitions: How Orbitals Orchestrate Lattice Instability
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
The Peierls transition is typically regarded as a phenomenon inherent to one-dimensional (1D) materials. However, orbital degrees of freedom can induce this instability even in higher dimensions. Two mechanisms are primarily responsible. First, the anisotropic shape of $ p$ and $ d$ orbitals can lead to effective “1D-zation” of the electronic spectrum. Second, orbital degrees of freedom can lift band degeneracy by shifting bands relative to each other via the local or band Jahn-Teller effect, thereby affecting the nesting of the Fermi surface. The orbital-induced Peierls effect is most commonly observed when ligand octahedra surrounding transition metals share edges, and less frequently in face-sharing geometries. In this review, we discuss the underlying physical mechanisms, the materials in which this phenomenon occurs, the characteristics of the high-temperature undistorted phase, and the role of local effects such as the formation of molecular orbitals.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el), Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Low Temperature Halide Assisted HVPE Growth of Single Crystal AlN Films
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
K. Udwary, M. Smeaton, J.S. Mangum, R. Gannon, G. Dodson, B. Tellekamp, K.L. Schulte, J.H. Leach, J. Simon
Low defect, single polarity aluminum nitride layers grown by halide vapor phase epitaxy (HVPE) methods have classically needed growth temperatures well exceeding 1100°C with many of the best results being grown in the range of 1400°C. These high temperatures have typically been required to obtain Al-polar AlN films with smooth morphologies and high crystalline quality. However, these elevated temperatures make the use of quartz reactor chambers difficult, as quartz begins to soften at 1200°C, and requires specially designed reactors. This study examines the use of anhydrous hydrogen chloride (HCl) gas, injected directly to the growth surface, to suppress inverted polarity grains that form at low growth temperatures. This method allows for high quality, single crystal AlN layers with a growth temperature of just 1000°C in a quartz reactor chamber. With this method, AlN layers of 5 um thickness were grown on c-plane (0 0 0 1) sapphire, with a growth rate of 20 um/hour, and a resulting full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) of symmetric (0 0 0 2) rocking curve reflection under 400 arcsec and asymmetric (1 0 -1 2) reflection under 1000 arcsec. Electron backscatter diffraction measurements showed the suppression of inversion domains with increasing free HCl, resulting in smoother and higher quality films.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
7 pages, 6 figures, to be submitted to Journal of Crystal Growth
Adaptive Substrate Support Based on Thin-Film Piezoelectric Actuators
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Ertuğ Şimşek, Bas Jansen, Marcelo Ackermann, Muharrem Bayraktar
Advanced lithography scanners require extreme substrate flatness in the range of nanometers to prevent focus errors. Such a flatness is challenging to reach and maintain using static substrate supports. Active correction concepts using bulk piezoelectric or linear actuators become prohibitive due to wiring and volume limitations, considering the thousands of pillars required. In this work, we present to our knowledge the first ever demonstration of an active substrate support concept based on thin-film piezoelectric actuators. The working principle, fabrication steps, and characterization of a proof-of-principle device, supported by finite element modeling (FEM), are presented in detail. The fabricated device shows a displacement above 9 nm, which is sufficient to correct some of the focus errors in lithography systems. We foresee that this new concept may open the way towards smaller chip dimensions and improved yield.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Applied Physics (physics.app-ph)
3 pages, 3 figures, 9 references, letter
Exact Nonlinear Active Microrheology in Diffusive Single-File Systems
New Submission | Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Aurélien Grabsch, Olivier Bénichou
Active microrheology probes a crowded medium by forcing a tracer and measuring its response. In single-file transport, where particles cannot overtake, a constant force $ F$ produces a subballistic displacement $ \langle X_t\rangle\simeq \sqrt{t},\xi(F)$ together with a persistent bath deformation. Despite decades of work, the exact nonlinear response at arbitrary force has remained confined to a few special solvable models. Here we remove this restriction by combining recent advances in hydrodynamic transport coefficients, a pressure-balance formulation of the local drive, and single-file duality, which eliminates the resulting moving boundary. This yields a closed exact boundary-value problem for general diffusive single files, determining both $ \xi(F)$ and the full density profile. For overdamped Brownian particles with general interactions, all microscopic interaction details enter only through the equilibrium equation of state, bringing realistic interacting systems, including finite-width quasi-one-dimensional channels, within exact reach. The solution also reveals universal global laws; in particular, the bath-density dipole is fixed by the applied force independently of the interaction potential.
Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech), Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
6 pages + 10 pages of supplemental material
Transport of Deformable Vesicles Driven by Chiral Active Brownian Particles
New Submission | Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Dipak Patra, Anil Kumar Dasanna
Active matter systems can generate mechanical stresses that deform their surroundings, providing a route to transport and shape dynamics far from equilibrium. Deformable vesicles containing active particles offer a minimal setting in which such active stresses are directly coupled to boundary mechanics. Here, we use numerical simulations to investigate a two-dimensional, fixed-area vesicle filled with chiral active particles interacting through excluded volume and polar alignment. We find that the coupling between particle chirality and vesicle deformation produces distinct modes of collective motion, including run-and-tumble-like migration, rotor-like dynamics, and persistent spinning. Most notably, we show that vesicle rotation is non-monotonic in chirality: at fixed activity, an optimal chirality maximizes the rotational velocity. We develop an analytical theory that relates the vesicle rotation to the effective torque generated by the chiral active particles. The theory identifies the competition underlying the optimal chirality and predicts a scale-invariant dependence of the rotational velocity on activity and chirality. This scaling collapses simulation results obtained over different activity strengths onto a universal curve. Our results establish a general mechanism by which chirality and collective alignment regulate the transmission of active stresses to deformable boundaries, providing a framework for understanding transport and rotational dynamics in confined active systems.
Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft), Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech), Biological Physics (physics.bio-ph), Chemical Physics (physics.chem-ph)
Electronic correlations shape the low-energy optical response of the kagome antiferromagnets Mn$_3$Sn and Mn$_3$Ge
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
R. Mathew Roy, Bo Tai, Maxim Wenzel, Achyut Tiwari, Mykhaylo Ozerov, Chandra Shekhar, Claudia Felser, Artem V. Pronin, Xiaolong Feng, Martin Dressel
Using optical spectroscopy and density functional theory, we provide evidence that electron-electron interactions strongly affect the properties of the kagome antiferromagnet Mn$ _3$ Sn, since its low-energy optical interband transitions arise exclusively from the correlation-modified electronic band structure. Mn$ _3$ Sn possesses an optical effective mass about three times larger than that of its isostructural analog Mn$ _3$ Ge. The DFT+$ U$ treatment in the Lichtenstein formulation, with an on-site Coulomb repulsion $ U = 4$ ~eV and Hund’s coupling $ J = 0.25$ ~eV, accounts for the optical transitions in Mn$ _3$ Sn, whereas those in Mn$ _3$ Ge are already reproduced without Hubbard corrections ($ U, J = 0$ ). The near-isotropic electronic structure of Mn$ _3$ Sn reveals a three-dimensional metal whose electronic response is shaped prominently by the Mn $ d$ -states. The apparent linear regime in $ \sigma_1(\omega)$ observed in Mn$ _3$ Sn and Mn$ _3$ Ge arises from several overlapping interband transitions and therefore should not be interpreted as the optical signature of the Weyl cones. The optical response does not alter with magnetic field up to 17 T, consistent with strong free-carrier screening. Our findings establish a comprehensive-correlated picture of Mn$ _3$ Sn and Mn$ _3$ Ge that offers a template for other correlated topological metals.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
Exact and fast series expansions for quantum models with long-range interactions
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Antonia Duft, Patrick Adelhardt, Jan Alexander Koziol, Andreas A. Buchheit, Kai Phillip Schmidt
Over the past decade, high-order series expansions based on linked-cluster methods have become an important tool for studying low-energy properties of gapped quantum systems with long-range interactions. We introduce a deterministic framework that removes a central computational bottleneck of this method. Our graph zeta method replaces the costly and statistically noisy Monte Carlo (MC) evaluation of high-dimensional lattice sums by a systematic, high-precision computation that delivers series coefficients within minutes on standard desktop hardware. The full momentum-dependent series is obtained in a single calculation, enabling high-resolution excitation spectra throughout the Brillouin zone. Building on the companion paper [1], the method reformulates graph-embedding sums as graph zeta functions and decomposes them into blocks classified by their treewidth tw. Low-treewidth blocks (tw$ \leq2$ ) admit closed expressions based on Epstein zeta functions, while higher-treewidth blocks (tw$ >2$ ) are evaluated using tensor-network bucket elimination. We benchmark the approach for transverse-field Ising models with power-law interactions in 1d, 2d, and 3d, reproducing previous MC results at a fraction of the computational cost while enabling substantially denser parameter sampling. An open-source implementation makes the method directly applicable to general interactions and large parameter scans. As an application, we compare microscopic interaction models for the stacked quasi-2d transverse-field Ising triangular-lattice antiferromagnet KTmSe$ _2$ and find that a model including dipolar interactions best describes existing experimental data. The graph zeta method thus turns high-order linked-cluster expansions into a practical and deterministic tool for fast quantitative momentum-resolved modeling of short- and long-range quantum matter.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el), Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech), Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
32 pages, 17 figures
Recent progress on thermal transport in one-dimensional long-range interacting Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou lattice systems
New Submission | Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Daxing Xiong, Nianbei Li, Jie Chen
Long-range (LR) interactions are no longer just a theoretical idea: they can be engineered in several low-dimensional platforms and offer a new way to control heat transport. At the same time, they push beyond the standard picture developed mainly for short-range, momentum-conserving lattices. In this review, we consider one-dimensional Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou (FPUT)-type lattices where LR effects enter mainly through a quartic anharmonic coupling that decays as a power law, characterized by an exponent {\sigma}. Our goal is to explain, in a unified way, how LR anharmonicity changes microscopic energy exchange, collective dynamics, and the macroscopic scaling laws of heat conduction-while also clarifying what is well established and what is still debated (For more details of the abstract, please see the main text and paper).
Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)
28 pages
Acta Phys. Sin., 2026, 75(7): 070002
Dense HeLa cell monolayers remain liquid-like despite strong crowding
New Submission | Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Suravi Pal, Nen Saito, Takeshi Kawasaki, Hiroyuki Ebata
Collective dynamics in dense cell monolayers are governed by the interplay between crowding and cellular motility. Although increasing density can slow cellular motion and promote glass-like behaviour, the dynamical state of dense HeLa monolayers remains unclear. Here, we combine in vitro time-lapse imaging of HeLa cell monolayers with simulations of a deformable active-cell model to examine how cell density and motility regulate collective relaxation. Within the experimentally accessible density and time ranges, untreated HeLa monolayers remain liquid-like: structural relaxation progressively slows down with increasing density but remains observable throughout the investigated range. Under low-nutrient conditions, cell motility is strongly reduced, and structural relaxation becomes substantially slower. To elucidate the mechanisms underlying these experimental observations, we further performed simulations using a deformable-cell model. The model qualitatively reproduces the density-dependent increase in structural relaxation time and further shows that reducing self-propulsion promotes long-lived caging dynamics at high packing fractions. These results show that dense HeLa monolayers can sustain slow, heterogeneous, yet relaxing collective dynamics under untreated conditions, and indicate that persistent cellular motility is an important factor in maintaining structural relaxation at high density, which may provide insight into the metastatic potential of cancer cells.
Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
15 pages, 4 main figures, 1 supplementary figure
Photoresponse properties of single-crystalline thick film based on high-entropy topological insulator (Bi3/4Sb1/4)2(Te2/5Se2/5S1/5)3
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Alexei Vasilev, Marina Zhezhu, Oleg Ivanov
High-entropy topological insulator (Bi3/4Sb1/4)2(Te2/5Se2/5S1/5)3 has been for the first time prepared by self-propagating high-temperature synthesis and melting methods. Single-crystalline thick-filmed sample with thickness of ~0.1 mm was applied to examine the photoresponse properties by using room-temperature chopped-light technique. Photodetector based on (Bi3/4Sb1/4)2(Te2/5Se2/5S1/5)3 demonstrated strong photovoltaic response under irradiation of a white LED light, covering 420-730 nm range. The photocurrent increases from ~20 to ~55 mkA with the increase in intensity from 100 to 600 W/m2 that is originated from the increase in the number of non-equilibrium carriers generated by light. Room-temperature responsivity and detectivity of the photodetector are ~8.7 mA/W and ~109 Jones, respectively.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Cavity-induced intertwining of density and pairing order in a degenerate Fermi gas
New Submission | Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Sankalp Sharma, Farokh Mivehvar, Helmut Ritsch, Tomasz Wasak
Recent quantum gas cavity-QED experiments demonstrated simultaneous coupling of photons to single atom transitions as well as correlated pairs of ultracold fermions trapped inside optical cavities. This enables simultaneous control over density ordering and pairing. Using extensive numerical simulations, we show that in a transversely driven, two-component degenerate Fermi gas, the interplay of cavity-induced and bare atom–atom interactions controls not only the power threshold for self-organization, but also the type of spatial ordering in the $ \mathbb Z_2$ -symmetry-broken superradiant state. In the repulsive interaction regime, unpaired or weakly paired fermions first self-organize through a charge-density-wave instability, and finite-momentum pairing only occurs at much stronger pump strengths. In contrast, an attractive superfluid undergoes a joint density–pairing instability, directly entering into intertwined phase with charge-density-wave and pair-density-wave orders. At strong pumping the photon-enhanced pair interaction generates localized density and pairing order even when the bare contact interaction is repulsive. In this cavity-dominated regime strong spatial localization suppresses the long range superfluid coherence. Our results identify the role of cavity-induced atomic interactions in supporting intertwined fermionic orders and pave the way for exploring exotic states with multiple orders in highly controlled hybrid light-matter systems.
Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas), Atomic Physics (physics.atom-ph), Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
34 pages, 14 figures (3 in the main text, 11 in the Supplemental Material)
Gauge-including neural-network quantum Monte Carlo for molecules in magnetic fields
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Chengye Lü, Weizhong Fu, Xin-gao Gong, Hongjun Xiang
External magnetic fields, through their coupling to orbital and spin motion, complicate the correlated electronic states and impose coordinate-dependent phases on the wavefunction, thereby making accurate electronic structure calculations substantially more demanding. Recently, neural network-based quantum Monte Carlo (NNQMC) has emerged as a highly accurate approach to study nucleus-free systems in magnetic fields. For molecular systems, however, things get more complicated as the magnetic field would introduce a rapidly varying phase in the region far from the gauge origin. Here we introduce a gauge-including phase factor that acts directly on the full many-electron wavefunction and accounts for the prescribed magnetic phase, leaving a smoother correlated residual for the network to learn. This factor greatly improves molecular translation consistency and size consistency, providing a route for studying systems in magnetic fields with NNQMC. Upon this approach, we reproduce weak-field magnetizabilities and strong-field bond contraction in \ce{H2}. We further apply the method to selected transitions in the \ce{CN} red and \ce{C2} Swan systems at magnetic fields relevant to white dwarfs. The \ce{CN} transition exhibits a much larger field-induced shift than its \ce{C2} counterpart, suggesting its potential as a probe of white-dwarf magnetic fields.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
A first introduction to Matrix Product State algorithms for the integration of Lindblad equation
New Submission | Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Christophe Chatelain (LPCT)
In this introductory review, we present and compare four algorithms for the numerical integration of the Lindblad equation for one-dimensional quantum lattice systems. All four methods are based on Matrix Product State representations and can be viewed as extensions of the Time-Evolving Block Decimation (TEBD) algorithm to open quantum systems. Two approaches directly integrate the vectorized Lindblad equation, one of them explicitly enforcing the positivity of the density matrix. The other two rely on stochastic unravelings of the Lindblad equation, namely the quantum trajectory and quantum state diffusion approaches. We discuss the principles, numerical implementation, accuracy, and computational efficiency of the different methods, and benchmark them against an exactly solvable free fermion model.
Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech), Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
Epitaxial inversion of spontaneous polarization in ε-Ga2O3
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Yan Wang, Zhigao Xie, Weihua Tang, Chee Keong Tan
Polar wide bandgap semiconductors offer the unique capability to manipulate internal electric fields and induce two-dimensional electron gases (2DEG). The emerging orthorhombic {\epsilon}-Ga2O3 is a promising candidate owing to its large spontaneous polarization (Psp). However, exploiting this material is hindered by fundamental ambiguities surrounding its absolute Psp vectors and the inability to govern its epitaxial direction. Here we show the resolution of the absolute Psp vectors in {\epsilon}-Ga2O3 and control of its macroscopic polarity via substrate engineering. By correlating interferometric piezoresponse with atomic configurations, we establish an identification criterion where opposing polarities are assigned through the geometric elevation within an asymmetric four-atom sequence. Guided by this signature, we demonstrate that epitaxy on Al-polar AlN and sapphire yields uniformly Ga-polar (upward Psp) and O-polar (downward Psp) architectures, respectively, whereas deteriorated crystallinity disrupts this registry and triggers mixed-polarity. This atomic-to-macroscopic correlation eliminates long-standing ambiguities regarding absolute polar orientations in non-centrosymmetric oxides. Analogous to mature III-Nitride architectures, this blueprint provides the foundational platform for designing macroscopic polarization discontinuities at heterointerfaces, unlocking {\epsilon}-Ga2O3 for advanced polarization electronics.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Applied Physics (physics.app-ph)
20 pages, 6 figures in manuscript, 3 figures in SI
Current fluctuations of diffusive systems with a battery
New Submission | Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Thibaut Jonckheere, Bernard Derrida
For a diffusive system on a ring, with a battery at the origin, we use the macroscopic fluctuation theory (MFT) to obtain the large deviation function of the current. In the case of non-interacting particles, the predictions of the MFT agree with the result of a direct exact microscopic calculation. To our surprise, the large deviation function of non-interacting particles with a battery has the same form as for the Symmetric Simple Exclusion Process (SSEP) with open boundary conditions. For the SSEP on a ring with a battery, the predictions of the MFT seem to agree with the results of long Monte Carlo simulations, although much longer simulations would be needed to better test the validity of these predictions.
Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)
Hierarchy of time scales in kinetically constrained models via stochastic-generator expansion
New Submission | Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Vanja Marić, Juan P. Garrahan, Lenart Zadnik
We revisit the hierarchy of relaxation time scales in stochastic kinetically constrained models (KCMs) obeying detailed balance, using an expansion method developed recently for their quantum counterparts. In the classical setting, we expand the stochastic generator in the low-temperature equilibrium concentration of excitations. As in quantum KCMs, successive truncations of the expansion reveal a nested hierarchy of metastable configurations that remain frozen on progressively longer time scales. Applying the method to the high-to-low temperature quench in the classical one-dimensional East and Fredrickson-Andersen models, we recover the known hierarchy of metastable plateaus and the associated perturbative time scales. We find that the hierarchical time scales are related to the smallest domain lengths. Our results show that the method developed for quantum kinetically constrained models can be used to provide a systematic description of slow relaxation in their classical counterparts as well.
Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)
Geometry-Controlled Relaxation Spectra in Viscoelastic Fluids
New Submission | Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Niloyendu Roy, Rupayan Saha, Debankur Das, Matthias Krüger, Clemens Bechinger
Soft materials store, dissipate and release mechanical stresses through relaxation processes that often span many orders of magnitude in time. Such relaxation spectra are widely used to infer internal material dynamics and are usually regarded as fingerprints of microscopic complexity, disorder, or heterogeneity. Here we show that a broad relaxation spectrum can instead be generated by the geometry of mechanical excitation itself. Using rotationally driven colloidal dimers in a wormlike micellar fluid with a dominant bulk relaxation time of order one second, we demonstrate that torsional driving converts distance from the driven object into relaxation time. This produces a geometry-controlled hierarchy of relaxation modes: orientational recoils persist for hundreds of seconds and encode past torque protocols over comparably long times. Particle velocimetry reveals rapid angular-momentum transport away from the probe, in contrast to the slow relaxation of stored torsional stress. A continuum shell model captures the observed recoil dynamics and the selective suppression of long-lived contributions under spatial confinement. Our results show that geometry can transform a material with simple intrinsic relaxation into a system with long-lived, space-dependent memory, suggesting a route to tune material dynamics through mechanical excitation rather than composition, with potential implications for microscopic mechanical memory elements.
Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
Synthetic twist geometry in mesoscopic quantum circuits: geometric capacitance and chiral mode splitting
New Submission | Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
We propose a route for encoding a helicoidally twisted synthetic geometry in mesoscopic quantum circuits. A torsionless spatial metric with twist parameter $ \Om$ defines an electrostatic capacitance kernel whose angular–axial sector contains the chiral coupling $ -2\Om mk$ . We show that this kernel can be implemented by a finite, quantizable circuit graph built only from positive two-node capacitors: diagonal bridges generate the cross term, and the dimensionless twist is the ratio of diagonal to total angular capacitance. The resulting capacitance matrix enters the Hamiltonian through $ C^{-1}(\etaT)$ and splits counter-rotating synthetic modes. Exact finite-graph diagonalization confirms the analytic spectrum and shows that closed longitudinal circulation is required; with open boundaries the bridge phase is gauge removable and the doublets remain degenerate. Simulated spectroscopy resolves the chiral fan, while disorder simulations indicate that calibrated percent-level reactive disorder does not obscure the deterministic splitting in the parameter range considered. Twist textures produce interface modes, Josephson nonlinearities make the Kerr sector chirality dependent, and the same doublet provides a detuning knob for non-Hermitian exceptional-point control. For representative circuit-QED parameters the splitting is in the tens-of-MHz range, well above typical resonator linewidths.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall), Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
11 figures, 1 table
A microscopic heat engine with many hidden variables
New Submission | Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Microscopic motors are commonly monitored through a single mechanical coordinate, whereas the chemical, conformational, or rotational cycles that sustain their motion remain unresolved. Mechanical stall is defined by the vanishing of the mean observed velocity; this scalar condition, however, does not generally imply thermodynamic reversibility. We analyze an overdamped Brownian motor in which one observed coordinate is coupled to several internal phases through a single shared interaction potential. Because the transmitted force and the reaction torques derive from the same energy, the resulting rank-one reciprocal structure yields an exact pointwise identity between the observed and hidden probability currents. This identity provides an exact expression for the entropy production at stall for an arbitrary periodic interaction. In particular, a positive current-square dissipation in the mechanical channel, defined from the full stationary state through the coupling-coordinate-resolved local velocity, determines together with the stall load the collective hidden current projected onto the coupling direction. The stationary one-coordinate marginal current nevertheless vanishes identically at stall; consequently, the stationary marginal density and mean displacement current do not determine this dissipation. Hidden currents orthogonal to the coupling direction dissipate without affecting the observed motion and generate an irreducible contribution that cannot be inferred from the rank-one mechanical channel.
Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)
Parity anomaly governs the thermal Hall response of chiral superconductivity in rhombohedral graphene above and below $T_c$
New Submission | Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Chiral superconductivity has recently been confirmed in rhombohedral tetra- and pentalayer graphene near the BCS–BEC crossover, but no theory tells the experimentalist what thermal Hall response to expect, or why any signal should persist above the phase-coherence temperature $ T_c$ . We show that the parity anomaly of $ (2{+}1)$ -dimensional field theory fixes the answer exactly, at all temperatures, with no free parameters: $ \kappa_{xy}/T = (\pi^2 k_B^2/6h),C_{\rm BdG},\tanh[\Delta(T)/(2k_BT)]$ , where $ C_{\rm BdG}$ is the BdG Chern number and $ \Delta(T)$ is the fermionic excitation gap. The BCS–BEC two-gap relation $ \Delta^2 = \Delta_{\rm sc}^2 + \Delta_{\rm pg}^2$ makes the same formula govern both the condensate and pseudogap regimes, so the signal onsets at the pair-formation temperature $ T^{\ast}$ rather than at $ T_c$ . Coleman–Hill non-renormalization and the $ c_1 = 0$ theorem protect this result against interactions and finite-size artefacts. Three independent numerical validations confirm the topological input at machine precision (FHS Chern numbers, Wilson-loop $ c_1 = 0$ test) and at the many-body level (DMRG on 28 converged ground states, including the real-space $ p+ip$ signature $ \arg\mathcal{A}y - \arg\mathcal{A}x = -\pi/2$ recovered to $ 10^{-14}$ ). The theory delivers an immediate falsifiable test that requires no new experimental apparatus: the sign of $ \kappa{xy}/T$ below $ T_c$ must equal the sign of the anomalous Hall resistance $ R{xy}$ already measured above $ T_c$ , and four further predictions accessible by dilution-refrigerator nano-calorimetry on existing devices.
Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con), Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall), Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci), Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el), High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th)
15 pages 7 figures
Traveling Waves as Renormalization-Group Fixed Points without Universality Classes
New Submission | Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Traveling waves are fundamental asymptotic structures in nonlinear physical systems. While their connection to self-similarity is recognized, their renormalization-group (RG) status remains elusive. We extend a recently developed unified RG framework for nonlinear PDEs to traveling-wave solutions, using Burgers’ and KdV equations as paradigmatic examples. By employing a logarithmic transformation, we map traveling waves onto asymptotically self-similar solutions, allowing for a systematic RG treatment. Our analysis reveals a striking departure from the standard RG paradigm: for traveling waves, scale invariance uniquely forces the field’s scaling dimension to vanish (A=0). This vanishing dimension implies that the RG transformation rescales space and time while leaving the field magnitude unchanged. Consequently, all analytic perturbations become scale-invariant, eliminating the conventional classification into relevant and irrelevant structures. While classical shock-wave and soliton solutions emerge as stationary RG fixed points, the mechanism for universality class formation - the progressive elimination of irrelevant structures - is fundamentally absent. Traveling waves thus represent a unique class of RG fixed points without universality classes. This finding establishes a crucial distinction between these two concepts and provides a rigorous theoretical basis for why traveling waves exhibit strong memory of initial conditions and system parameters.
Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)
6 pages, no figures
Effect of independent parameters on nanoparticle sizes in magnetron-sputtering inert-gas condensation
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Yizhou Wang, Evropi Toulkeridouc, Abisegapriyan K.S, Yair Ein-Eli, Panagiotis Grammatikopoulos
Magnetron-sputtering inert-gas condensation (MS-IGC) provides a scalable, environmentally friendly vapour-phase synthesis approach for preparing customised nanoparticles (NPs) with bespoke properties via fine-tuning several deposition parameters. However, this high-level control comes with a caveat: the synthesis mechanisms are affected by deposition parameters in complicated ways, often yielding unpredictable outputs. This report details the working mechanism of a typical MS-IGC system, achieving in situ synthesis, size screening, and directional deposition of nanoclusters through the synergistic operation of the three vacuum chambers (condensation, screening, and deposition). The study systematically explores the regulation laws of multiple key process parameters (e.g., inert-gas flows, aggregation length, etc.) on the formation, size distribution, and deposition behaviour of nanoclusters, to rationalise their chosen values toward optimised output. To this end, multiple linear regression analysis was performed to isolate the effect of each deposition parameter and thus quantify its effect on the NP size and size distribution. Our results indicate that parameters that may prolong the nascent NPs’ residence inside the condensation chamber (most prominently, the exit nozzle diameter) can positively affect the final NP size. This study expands the understanding of NP formation, enabling improved experimental control and process optimisation.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Main manuscript: 21 pages, 5 figures, 1 table. Supplementary Information: 14 pages, 3 figures, 1 table
Spinon-Induced Phonon Dynamics in Chiral and $π$-Flux Quantum Spin Liquids
New Submission | Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Zachary Hizon, Kristian Hauser Villegas
Quantum spin liquids (QSLs) are magnetic phases that evade long-range order down to the lowest temperatures due to strong quantum fluctuations. Their lack of conventional order parameters, however, makes experimental identification challenging. In this work, we investigate how distinct QSL phases affect phonon dynamics through spinon-phonon coupling. By computing the phonon self-energy, we show that the phonon spectrum remains unrenormalized by spinon interactions, while sound attenuation and phonon thermal conductivity exhibit distinct signatures of the underlying QSL phase. These response functions therefore provide experimentally accessible fingerprints for distinguishing different QSL backgrounds. Remarkably, we find that a chiral QSL coupled to phonons does not generate a phonon thermal Hall effect despite explicitly breaking time-reversal symmetry. Our results establish phonon transport as a potential probe for identifying and characterizing quantum spin liquids.
Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
4 figures
Field-driven quantum phase transitions in a spin-1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnet on an extended Lieb lattice
New Submission | Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
The magnetic behavior of the spin-1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnet on the extended Lieb lattice is examined in the presence of an external magnetic field. Using density matrix renormalization group calculations, we determine the zero-temperature magnetization curves and construct the ground-state phase diagram in the magnetic field vs. the interaction ratio plane. Depending on the interaction ratio, the zero-temperature magnetization curves exhibit field-driven quantum phase transitions between the gapped phases manifested as the intermediate plateaus at $ 1/5$ and $ 3/5$ of the saturation magnetization and a gapless spin-canted phase, in which the magnetization varies continuously with the applied magnetic field. Quantum Monte Carlo simulations reveal clear finite-temperatures signatures of the field-induced quantum phase transitions and the intermediate magnetization plateaus, while they provide no evidence for either continuous or discontinuous thermal phase transitions.
Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)
5 pages, 5 figures, presented at Physics of Magnetism conference
Robust Topology and Tunable Geometry in Generalized BHZ Model with Fractional Dispersion
New Submission | Other Condensed Matter (cond-mat.other) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Coleen Adrianne Panganiban, Kristian Hauser Villegas
With recent developments in fractional quantum mechanics, we introduce a fractional generalization of the Bernevig-Hughes-Zhang (BHZ) model to investigate the effects of fractional dispersion on band topology and quantum geometry. In the low-energy limit, the model reduces to a fractional Dirac Hamiltonian while preserving momentum-space periodicity, thereby ensuring a compact Brillouin zone and a well-defined topological invariant. We further show that the corresponding real-space tight-binding model can be constructed directly through a Fourier-series transformation, providing a simpler and more general alternative to the methods typically employed for fractional lattice systems. This approach readily extends beyond the generalized BHZ model considered here. Using the Bloch eigenstates, we compute the quantum geometric tensor and analyze its components, namely the Berry curvature and quantum metric. We find that fractional tuning redistributes these quantities throughout the Brillouin zone as the dispersion exponent becomes fractional, leading to pronounced modifications of the local band geometry. In contrast, the Chern number remains invariant, demonstrating the robustness of the global topological phase against fractional deformation. We further argue that this invariance persists for a broad class of fractional models.
Other Condensed Matter (cond-mat.other), Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
9 pages, 3 figures
An Atlas and Design Rules for Single- and Dual-Atom Alloys
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Fabian Berger, Yicheng Wang, E. Charles H. Sykes, Angelos Michaelides
A long-standing goal across heterogeneous catalysis, materials science, and condensed matter physics is to design alloys with prescribed local atomic arrangements. Recent experiments show that dilute trimetallic alloys unlock chemistries inaccessible to bimetallics, but realizing this potential requires knowing which dopant structures form across an enormous compositional space. Using density functional theory screening, we construct an atlas spanning transition metal single- and dual-atom alloys in Cu and Ag surfaces, which we validate by scanning tunneling microscopy. The stability follows an electron count: dopants pair most strongly when their combined d-electron count approaches ten. Host metal and surface facet can be used to tune the resulting active site motifs, while size mismatch and spin explain variations around this trend. We further introduce a reactor-anchor concept, in which one dopant anchors a second, otherwise bulk-segregating dopant at the surface. Together, these results establish design principles for engineering alloys with targeted active site structures.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Divergence between long- and short-wavelength magnon damping in spinel ferrites
New Submission | Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) | 2026-09-17 20:00 EDT
Christopher T. Parzyck, Octave Duros, Hari Paudyal, Noah M. Edmiston, Katya Mikhailova, Lerato Takana, Daisy O’Mahoney, Sauviz P. Alaei, Daniel J. Foster, Hiroki Suga, Naoya Kurahashi, Jun Miyawaki, Michael E. Flatte, Georgi Dakovski, Yuri Suzuki, Durga Paudyal, Wei-Sheng Lee
The realization of practical, high-speed magnonic devices requires engineering magnetic materials with low dissipation over wide frequency ranges. While optical and microwave probes are used to infer the damping of low energy/long wavelength modes, the degree to which these $ q\sim0$ properties translate into higher-energy, finite-momentum modes remains an important open question. Here, we utilize a combination of ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) and resonant inelastic x-ray scattering on spinel ferrites Li$ _{0.5}$ Al$ _x$ Fe$ _{2.5-x}$ O$ _4$ to probe magnons in both the short- and long-wavelength limits. We observe that aluminum substitution both markedly reduces the magnon bandwidth and drastically shortens the high-$ q$ magnon lifetimes, in sharp contrast to the ultralow magnon damping inferred from FMR. These findings demonstrate a disparity between how non-magnetic substituents impact magnon damping in the long- and short-wavelength limits, providing a new perspective for assessing candidate materials for magnonic devices.
Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
9 pages, 4 figures
Research Square
Collective spin reorientation-triggered large hysteresis-free magnetostriction with high strain sensitivity in TbMn6Sn6
Article | Magnetic properties and materials | 2026-09-16 20:00 EDT
Xiaodong Zhou, Jie Du, Liang Yao, Cunlong Dong, Yuming Gai, Hang Li, Yuan Yao, Xuekui Xi, Yong-Chang Lau, Guoqiang Yu, Wenhong Wang
Magnetic phase transitions provide a powerful means of reconstructing magnetic order, yet how such reconstruction can be exploited to generate large and highly responsive lattice deformation remains insufficiently understood. Here, we demonstrate that a field-induced collective spin-reorientation (SR) transition in the kagome ferrimagnet TbMn6Sn6 enables large hysteresis-free magnetostriction with high strain sensitivity. Magneto-optical Kerr microscopy reveals a concomitant reconstruction of stripe domains across the same transition regime, providing real-space evidence for collective magnetic reorganization. Relativistic first-principles calculations capture the orientation-dependent lattice response and further indicate that reorientation of the ferrimagnetic axis selectively modifies the intralayer and interlayer magnetic exchange interactions. Our work establishes field-induced magnetic reconstruction as an effective strategy for achieving large hysteresis-free magnetostriction, providing a framework for designing transition-enabled magnetoelastic functionalities in kagome magnets and correlated magnetic materials.
Research Square:rs-10926472 (2026)
Posted on Research Square and Under Review at Nature Portfolio
Physical sciences/Materials science/Condensed-matter physics/Magnetic properties and materials, Physical sciences/Physics/Condensed-matter physics/Magnetic properties and materials
Universality of the 1/9 Magnetization Plateau and Quantum-Disordered States in the Kagome Family Cs8AB3Ti12F48 (A = Rb, Li; B = K, Na)
Article | Magnetic properties and materials | 2026-09-16 20:00 EDT
Seung-Hun Lee, Prena Chaudhary, Asiri Ashoka Bandara Thennakoon Thennakoon Mudiyanselage, Tommy Park, Hanru Wang, Leshan Zhao, Laurel E. Winter, Neil Harrison, Christina Hoffmann, Junghong He, Harald Jeschke, Hiroyuki Nojiri, Akira Matsuo, Koichi Kindo, Miwako Takahashi, Yukio Noda, Taku Sato, Shiyan Li, Hiroaki Ueda, Gia-Wei Chern
The microscopic origin of the low-field 1/9 magnetization plateau in spin-1/2 kagome antiferromagnets remains unresolved. Here we show that chemical pressure reshapes the hierarchy of fractional plateaus in the titanium-based kagome family Cs8AB3Ti12F48 (A = Rb, Li; B = K, Na). High-field measurements up to 60 T reveal a robust 1/9 plateau-like phase in the expanded Cs8RbK3Ti12F48 and Cs8LiK3Ti12F48 compounds, despite the absence of the conventionally more robust 1/3 plateau. In contrast, compressed Cs8LiNa3Ti12F48 exhibits neither the 1/9 plateau-like phase nor a quantum-disordered ground state. Specific heat measurements and first-principles calculations show that lattice expansion preserves a frustrated, fully connected kagome exchange network and gapless quantum-disordered ground states, whereas compression reorganizes the network into weakly coupled quasi-one-dimensional subsystems and induces successive magnetic transitions. These results demonstrate that the 1/9 and 1/3 plateaus need not share a common microscopic origin and suggest that the 1/9 plateau may be a more universal feature of frustrated spin-1/2 kagome magnetism.
Research Square:rs-10909041 (2026)
Posted on Research Square and Under Review at Nature Portfolio
Physical sciences/Physics/Condensed-matter physics/Magnetic properties and materials, Physical sciences/Physics/Condensed-matter physics