Quantum condensed states in solids often reveal their fundamental nature via interactions with impurities, as epitomized by Yu-Shiba-Rusinov (YSR) bound states at magnetic impurities in superconductors. Although analogous YSR bound states were predicted within quantum condensates of excitons several decades ago, their existence has been elusive. Here, we directly visualize in-gap electronic states bound to impurities inside an exciton condensate phase of a van der Waals crystal Ta2Pd3Te5, utilizing scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy. We find that the energies of in-gap states are strongly correlated with the excitonic band gap, which is systematically tuned by local strain and carrier injection. Our theoretical analyses reveal that these in-gap states are induced by charge dipoles associated with Ta vacancies through a charge-exciton version of the YSR mechanism. Our findings establish both the YSR physics in exciton condensates and a novel microscopic tool to probe and control quantum properties in exciton condensates persisting up to room temperature.

We demonstrate the spontaneous formation of acoustic black holes in exciton-polariton condensates triggered by discontinuous Riemann-type initial conditions. Starting from a quasi-conservative Gross-Pitaevskii model, we show that nonlinear dispersive shock waves naturally generate spatial regions where the local flow velocity exceeds the speed of sound, creating a self-induced transonic interface that functions as an acoustic horizon. Unlike previous schemes relying on externally engineered potentials or pump-loss landscapes, our approach reveals that the intrinsic nonlinear hydrodynamics of polariton fluids alone can lead to horizon formation. Using Whitham modulation theory and numerical simulations, we characterize the transition between subsonic and supersonic regimes and estimate the corresponding surface gravity and Hawking temperature. This mechanism opens a new route toward realizing polariton black holes and studying analogue gravitational effects, including Hawking-like emission, in Bose-Einstein quantum liquids.

We study phonon-mediated pairings in a single-flavor metal with a tunable Berry curvature. In the absence of Berry curvature, we discover an unexpected possibility: $p$-wave superconductivity emerging purely from the retardation effect, while the static BCS approximation fails to predict its existence. The gap function exhibits sign-change behavior in frequency (owing to the dynamical structure of the phonon-mediated interaction in the $p$-wave channel), and $T_c$ obeys a BCS-like scaling. We further show that the Berry curvature stabilizes the chiral $p$-wave superconductivity and can induce transitions to higher-angular-momentum pairings. Our results establish that the phonon-mediated mechanism is a viable pairing candidate in single-flavor systems, such as the quarter-metal superconductivity observed in rhombohedral graphene multilayers.

Recent advances in quantum simulations have opened access to the real-time dynamics of lattice gauge theories, providing a new setting to explore how quantum criticality influences thermalization and ergodicity far from equilibrium. Using QuEra's programmable Rydberg atom array, we map out the dynamical phase diagram of the spin-1/2 U(1) quantum link model in one spatial dimension by quenching the fermion mass. We reveal a tunable regime of ergodicity breaking due to quantum many-body scars, manifested as long-lived coherent oscillations that persist across a much broader range of parameters than previously observed, including at the equilibrium phase transition point. We further analyze the electron-positron pairs generated during state preparation via the Kibble-Zurek mechanism, which strongly affect the post-quench dynamics. Our results provide new insights into nonthermal dynamics in lattice gauge theories and establish Rydberg atom arrays as a powerful platform for probing the interplay between ergodicity breaking and quantum criticality.

We analyze a classical Heisenberg spin model on the simple cubic lattice which is invariant under time reversal and contains multiple chiral spin interactions. The modelled dynamics is appropriate either for local moments coupled to itinerant Weyl electrons, or localized electrons with a strong spin-orbit coupling that would produce a Weyl spectrum away from half filling. Using a Monte Carlo method, we find a robust $4Q$ bipartite lattice of hedgehogs and antihedgehogs which melts through a first order phase transition at a critical temperature in certain segments of the phase diagram. The density of hedgehogs is a non-linear function of the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction, and a linear function of the multiple-spin chiral interaction which plays the fundamental role of a ``magnetic flux'' or a hedgehog chemical potential. These findings are related to the observations of hedgehog lattices in MnGe, MnSi$_{1-x}$Ge$_x$ and SrFeO$_3$, and indirectly support the possible existence of incompressible quantum-disordered hedgehog liquids.

The theoretical understanding of conventional superconductivity as the phonon-assisted formation and condensation of two-electron Cooper pairs is a significant triumph in condensed matter physics. Here, we propose many-electron characterizations of higher-charge superconductivity with Cooper pairs consisting of more than two electrons, by implementing translation symmetrization on parent pair-density-wave-ordered states. In particular, we demonstrate many-electron constructions with vanishing charge-2e sectors, but with sharp signatures in charge-4e or charge-6e expectation values instead. Such characterizations are consistent with previous phenomenology of vestigial order and Ginzburg-Landau theory, yet, instead of point-group-symmetry presumptions, we show that momentum conservation is both vital and sufficient. Our study thus offers a novel, general, and microscopic route to understand and characterize higher-charge superconductivity, including nontrivial experimental signatures such as fractional magnetic flux and period in interferometry, as well as localized Cooper pairs at lattice topological defects.

We combine for the first time the properties of ordered mesoporous thin films and complex oxide nanoparticles in the design of new heterostructures, taking advantage of the accessible tridimensional pores network. In this work, we demonstrate the feasibility of synthesizing La0.88Sr0.12MnO3 inside the pores of a mesoporous SiO2 thin film, using pulsed laser deposition. In order to understand the filling process, a set of samples were deposited for three different deposition times, on mesoporous and non-mesoporous SiO2 substrates. Their structural, magnetic, magnetocaloric and electrical transport properties were studied. All the results evidence the presence of the manganite compound inside the pores, which was confirmed by cross-section elemental mapping. X-ray reflectometry shows that it is possible to control the filling of the pores, keeping some accessible porosity. The magnetic behavior suggests the presence of weakly interacting ferromagnetic nanoparticles inside the pores. We provide here a successful strategy for the fabrication of complex oxide nanoparticles arrays with highly controlled size and ordering. Their easy incorporation into micro and nanofabrication procedures unveils direct implications in the field of interfaces and nanoparticle devices as diverse as energy conversion systems, solid oxide fuel cells, spintronics and neuromorphic memristor networks.

We investigate resonant acoustic phonon scattering in the magneto-resistivity of an ultra-high mobility two-dimensional electron gas system subject to DC current in the temperature range 10 mK to 3.9 K. For a DC current density of $\sim$1.1 A/m, the induced carrier drift velocity $v_{drift}$ becomes equal to the speed of sound $s \sim$ 3 km/s. When $v_{drift} \gtrsim s$ very strong resonant features with only weak temperature dependence are observed and identified as phonon-induced resistance oscillations at and above the "sound barrier". Their behavior contrasts with that in the subsonic regime ($v_{drift} < s$) where resonant acoustic phonon scattering is strongly suppressed when the temperature is reduced unless amplified with quasi-elastic inter-Landau-level scattering. Our observations are compared to recent theoretical predictions from which we can extract a dimensionless electron-phonon coupling constant of $g^{2}$=0.0016 for the strong non-linear transport regime. We find evidence for a predicted oscillation phase change ' effect on traversing the "sound barrier". Crossing the "sound barrier" fundamentally alters the resulting phonon emission processes, and the applied magnetic field results in pronounced and sharp resonant phonon emission due to Landau level quantization.

The first-order irreversible phase transition (FOIPT) of the ZGB model [Ziff, Gulari, Barshad, Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{56} (1986) 2553] for the catalytic oxidation of carbon monoxide is studied numerically in the presence of a slowly time-dependent, spatially uniform carbon monoxide pressure, with standard constant pressure simulations. This method allows us to observe finite-time effects close to the FOIPT, as well as evidence that a dynamic phase transition occurs. The location of this transition is measured very precisely and compared with previous results in the literature.

Monophasic MgFe$_2$O$_4$ nanoparticles synthesized by a simple autocombustion method were assessed as magnetically recoverable catalysts for the degradation of methylene blue (MB) in water. The NPs exhibit a crystallite size of $\sim$ 9 nm, a band gap of $\sim$ 2.11 eV, and soft ferrimagnetic behavior, enabling efficient photocatalytic and Fenton-like activity. The effects of irradiation, H$_2$O$_2$ concentration, agitation mode, catalyst loading, and exposure time were systematically evaluated. Rapid and complete MB discoloration was achieved within minutes in the presence of H$_2$O$_2$, even without illumination, indicating that the process is dominated by a surface-mediated heterogeneous Fenton-like mechanism rather than photocatalysis. Kinetic analysis reveals pseudo-first-order behavior, with rate constants governed by the combined effects of catalyst concentration, oxidant dosage, and dye concentration. Structural stability and excellent recyclability confirm the robustness of the catalyst. These findings position MgFe$_2$O$_4$ nanoparticles as a low-cost, efficient, and reusable material for sustainable wastewater under operationally simple conditions.

Migration of hydrogen and hydride formation under thermal gradient leads to hydrogen redistribution in certain metals. These metals include zirconium, titanium, hafnium and their alloys with tendency to form hydrides. A computational method for hydrogen localization in such metals is presented. The method utilizes the heat flux in a steady state to compute temperature distribution (as input), and hydrogen mass flux under temperature gradient to determine hydrogen distribution both in solid solution and in the hydride phase in a two-dimensional setting. Hydrogen precipitation to hydride is determined by a solid solubility relation with an exponential function of the enthalpy of mixing per a van 't Hoff relation. The enthalpy of mixing is treated here as a stochastic variable subject to thermodynamic fluctuations. Henceforth, the Einstein-Boltzmann fluctuation theory is adapted to calculate the spatial distribution of hydrogen in solid solution and in the hydride phase. Hydrogen concentration gets localized in the colder region of the body (Soret effect). We apply the model to the case of a zirconium alloy, Zircaloy-4, which is a material for fuel cladding utilized in pressurized water reactors. Cladding continuously picks up hydrogen due to Zr oxidation during reactor service, which we take into account. Our calculated results, hydrogen concentration profiles are comparable to experimental observations reported in the literature.

The commensurate charge-density-wave phase in the protoypical transition metal dichalcogenide $1T$-TaS$_2$ is investigated by temperature and polarization-dependent infrared spectroscopy revealing the fundamentally different charge dynamics parallel and perpendicular to the layers. Supported by density-functional-theory calculations, we demonstrate that the out-of-plane response is governed by a quasi-one-dimensional, Peierls-like dimerization of the two-dimensional star-of-David layers. In particular, our results identifies this dimerization as the primary driving mechanism of the metal-to-insulator transition, ruling out a significant role of electronic correlations.

Antiferromagnetic (AFM) spintronics offers a pathway toward electrically controllable spin-based devices beyond ferromagnets. Here, we identify wurtzite MnX (X = S, Se, Te) as a family of multiferroic materials hosting competing AFM phases, including altermagnetic, where nonrelativistic spin splitting can be controlled by ferroelectric polarization. Using density-functional theory and atomistic spin-model calculations, we show that all pristine MnX compounds stabilize a stripe type collinear AFM ground state, contrary to earlier predictions of an altermagnetic ground state, with the magnetic order governed by frustrated Heisenberg and biquadratic exchange interactions. We further demonstrate that Cr doping drives a transition to an A-type AFM phase that breaks Kramers spin degeneracy and realizes a g-wave altermagnetic state with large nonrelativistic spin splitting near the Fermi level. Importantly, this spin splitting can be deterministically reversed by polarization switching, enabling electric-field control of altermagnetic electronic structure without reorienting the Neel vector or relying on spin-orbit coupling. The close energetic proximity of the stripe AFM to a noncollinear all-in-all-out configuration indicates that wurtzite MnX lies near a topological magnetic phase with finite scalar spin chirality, which may be stabilized by modest perturbations such as temperature, strain or chemical tuning. The distinct magnetic phases exhibit symmetry selective linear and non-linear Hall responses, providing direct transport signatures of altermagnetism and polarization control. Together, these results establish doped wurtzite MnX as a promising platform for altermagnet-ferroelectric multiferroics and electrically AFM spintronics.

We propose to measure the dispersions of Fermi polaron and molecule by engineering spin-orbit coupling (SOC) on the impurity, which induces spin flip with finite momentum transfer. The polaron dispersion can be probed at small SOC momentum from the linear response of impurity spin. For molecule, we show that it can be prepared through an adiabatic steady-state evolution when setting SOC momentum as the Fermi momentum of majority bath. By gradually reducing SOC strength to zero, the steady state smoothly evolves to a molecular state with directional symmetry breaking. The corresponding dispersion can then be probed experimentally through the center-of-mass momentum distribution of molecules at finite density. Our scheme reveals a fundamental momentum difference between Fermi polaron and molecule, thereby offering a clear physical picture for their first-order transition in single-impurity system.

We study the joint dynamics of membrane potential and time since the last spike in a population of integrate-and-fire neurons using a population density framework. This leads to a two-dimensional Fokker-Planck equation that captures the evolution of the full neuronal state, along with a one-dimensional hierarchy of equations for the moments of the inter-spike interval (ISI). The formalism allows us to characterize the time-dependent ISI distribution, even when the population is far from stationarity, such as under time-varying external input or during network oscillations. By performing a perturbative expansion around the stationary state, we also derive an analytic expression for the linear response of the ISI distribution to weak input modulations.

The accurate estimation of free energy differences between two states is a long-standing challenge in molecular simulations. Traditional approaches generally rely on sampling multiple intermediate states to ensure sufficient overlap in phase space and are, consequently, computationally expensive. Several generative-model-based methods have recently addressed this challenge by learning a direct bridge between distributions, bypassing the need for intermediate states. However, it remains unclear which approaches provide the best trade-off between efficiency, accuracy, and scalability. In this work, we systematically review these methods and benchmark selected approaches with a focus on condensed-matter systems. In particular, we investigate the performance of discrete and continuous normalizing flows in the context of targeted free energy perturbation as well as FEAT (Free energy Estimators with Adaptive Transport) together with the escorted Jarzynski equality, using coarse-grained monatomic ice and Lennard-Jones solids as benchmark systems. We evaluate accuracy, data efficiency, computational cost, and scalability with system size. Our results provide a quantitative framework for selecting effective free energy estimation strategies in condensed-phase systems.

We investigate the topological properties of modified Dirac Hamiltonians with an altermagnetic mass term and reveal a novel mechanism for realizing altermagnetic Weyl semimetals. Unlike the conventional Wilson mass, the altermagnetic mass drives direct transitions between nontrivial Chern phases of opposite sign and fundamentally reshapes the band inversion surface. By extending this framework to three dimensions, we construct a minimal lattice model that hosts pairs of Weyl nodes as well as coexisting helical Fermi arcs with opposite chirality on the same surface, which is a phenomenon not found in conventional magnetic Weyl semimetals. We further propose a practical scheme to realize these phases in multilayer structures of 2-dimensional Rashba metal with engineered $d$-wave altermagnetic order. Our results deepen the theoretical understanding of mass terms in Dirac systems and provide concrete guidelines for the experimental detection and realization of altermagnetic Weyl semimetals.

We show that proximitizing an altermagnet to a non-Hermitian topological insulator provides a powerful mechanism for engineering non-Hermitian higher-order topological phases. The altermagnetic order opens a gap at the topological edge states and drives a topological phase transition from a first-order to a second-order topological phase. When combined with nonreciprocal hopping, the system exhibits both the non-Hermitian skin effect and a hybrid skin-topological effect, whereby first-order edge states and second-order corner states accumulate at selected corners of the lattice. We demonstrate that the spectral winding number of the edge states under cylindrical geometry dictates this corner localization and can be reversed by tuning the altermagnetic order. Consequently, both edge and corner modes become directionally controllable. Our results establish altermagnets as a versatile platform for realizing and tuning skin-topological phenomena in non-Hermitian higher-order topological systems.

Reentrant superconductivity in strong magnetic fields challenges the conventional expectation that magnetic fields necessarily suppress superconductivity. We show that reentrant superconductivity arises generically from the competition between spinful and spin-polarized superconducting instabilities. Using a minimal Ginzburg-Landau theory with two coupled spin-triplet order parameters, we demonstrate that a magnetic field can reorganize the hierarchy of superconducting instabilities, yielding a characteristic reentrant instability curve independent of microscopic details.

Halide perovskites offer a great platform for room-temperature exciton-polaritons (EPs) due to their strong oscillator strength and large exciton binding energy, promising applications in next-generation photonic and polaritonic devices. Efficient manipulation of EP transport and relaxation is critical for device performance, yet their spatiotemporal dynamics across different in-plane momenta (k//) remain poorly understood due to limitations in experimental access. In this work, we employ energy-resolved transient reflectance microscopy (TRM) combined with the dispersion relation of EPs to achieve high-resolution imaging of EP transport at specific k//. This approach directly reveals the quasi-ballistic transport and ultrafast relaxation of EPs in different k// regions, showcasing diffusion as fast as ~490 cm2/s and a relaxation time of ~95.1 fs. Furthermore, by tuning the detuning parameter, we manipulate the ballistic transport group velocity and relaxation time of EPs across varying k//. Our results reveal key insights into the dynamics of EP transport and relaxation, providing valuable guidance for the design and optimization of polaritonic devices.

Two of the iconic phases of the hole-doped cuprate materials are the intermediate temperature pseudogap metal and the lower temperature $d$-wave superconductor. Following the prescient suggestion of P.W. Anderson, there were numerous early theories of these phases as doped quantum spin liquids. However, these theories have had difficulties with two prominent observations: (i) angle-dependent magnetoresistance measurements (ADMR), including observation of the Yamaji effect, present convincing evidence of small hole pockets which can tunnel coherently between square lattice layers, and (ii) the velocities of the nodal Bogoliubov quasiparticles in the $d$-wave superconductor are highly anisotropic, with $v_F \gg v_\Delta$. These lecture notes review how the fractionalized Fermi Liquid (FL*) state, which dopes quantum spin liquids with gauge-neutral electron-like quasiparticles, resolves both difficulties. Theories of insulating quantum spin liquids employing fractionalization of the electron spin into bosonic or fermionic partons are discussed. Doping the bosonic parton theory leads to a holon metal theory: while not appropriate for the cuprate pseudogap, this theory is argued to apply to the Lieb lattice. Doping the fermionic parton theory leads to a $d$-wave superconductor with nearly isotropic quasiparticle velocities. The construction of the FL* state is described using a quantum dimer model, followed by a more realistic description using the Ancilla Layer Model (ALM), which is then used to obtain the theory of the pseudogap and the $d$-wave superconductor.

We investigate the electronic structure of americium (Am) across its four experimentally confirmed high-pressure phases Am-I (P63/mmc), Am-II (Fm-3m), Am-III (Fddd), and Am-IV (Pnma) up to 100 GPa, using density functional theory combined with embedded dynamical mean-field theory. Our results successfully reproduce the prominent localized 5f peak observed in ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy around -2.8 eV below the Fermi level in the Am-I phase. While 5f electrons in Am-I and Am-II remain strongly localized, those in Am-III and Am-IV manifest discernible signatures of increased hybridization: a noticeable shift of spectral weight toward the Fermi level, enhanced hybridization strength, and the emergence of distinct multi-peak structures. These changes indicate that 5f electrons begin to participate in bonding and undergo partial delocalization under pressure. Nevertheless, the spectral weight of 5f electrons near the Fermi level in Am-IV remains relatively low, indicating that, compared to U and Pu, Am retains stronger localized 5f electrons even under high pressure. Analysis of the electronic configurations reveals pressure-enhanced valence state fluctuation, characterized by the mixing of 5f5, 5f6, and 5f7 electronic configurations. The X-ray absorption branching ratio further shows that the angular-momentum coupling scheme approaches the jj limit. Additionally, we demonstrate that the stability of the low-symmetry high-pressure phases (Am-III and Am-IV) is governed by a Peierls-like distortion mechanism, which reduces the total energy through symmetry-lowering lattice distortions accompanied by electronic reconstruction. This study offers a new microscopic perspective on high-pressure phase transitions and emergent quantum phenomena in actinide materials.

Entangled knots form spontaneously in flexible filaments, yet the influence of the surrounding environment on this process is poorly understood. Here we demonstrate that free-moving particles act as kinetic catalysts for spontaneous knotting. Through controlled agitation experiments, we find that a small number of inert beads substantially enhance the probability and accelerate the rate of knot formation. This catalytic effect is non-monotonic: an optimal particle size and concentration that maximizes entanglement, while an excess of particles suppresses knotting by impeding the filament's dynamics. We develop a stochastic model that quantitatively reproduces this behavior, attributing it to a competition between entanglement-promoting collisions and motion-suppressing drag. Our findings reveal a mechanism for tuning topological complexity, whereby adjusting these environmental agitators can either promote rapid self-assembly or inhibit unwanted entanglement. This work suggests new strategies for controlling filament topology in settings ranging from crowded biological environments to advanced materials processing.

Uncertainties in the high-dimensional space of material parameters pose challenges for the predictive modeling of bcc single crystals, especially under extreme loading conditions. In this work, we identify the key physical assumptions and associated uncertainties in constitutive models that describe the deformation behavior of bcc single crystal molybdenum subjected to quasi-static to shock loading conditions. We employ two representative physics-based bcc single crystal plasticity models taken from our previous work (Nguyen et al. 2021a; Lee et al. 2023b), each prioritizing different key deformation mechanisms. The Bayesian model calibration (BMC) is used for probabilistic estimates of material parameters in both bcc crystal plasticity models. In conjunction with the BMC procedure, the global sensitivity analysis is conducted to quantify the impact of uncertainties in the material parameters on the key simulation results of quasi-static to shock responses. The sensitivity indices at various loading conditions clearly illustrate the physical basis underlying the predictive capabilities of the two distinct bcc crystal plasticity models at low to high strain rates. Both of the calibrated bcc models are then further validated beyond the calibration regime, by which we further identify critical physical mechanisms that govern the transient elastic-plastic responses of single crystal molybdenum under shock loading. The statistical inference framework demonstrated here facilitates the further development of continuum crystal plasticity models that account for a broad range of deformation mechanisms.

Layered magnetic transition-metal chalcogenides (TMCs) are a focal point of research, revealing a variety of intriguing magnetic and topological ground states. Within this family of TMCs, chromium telluride has garnered significant attention because of its excellent tunability in magnetic response, owing to the presence of competing magnetic exchange interactions. We here demonstrate the manipulation of magnetic anisotropy in ultra-thin Cr$_2$Te$_3$ films through growth engineering leading to a controlled transition from in-plane to out-of-plane orientation with an intermediate non-coplanar magnetic ground phase characterized by a topological Hall effect. Moreover, interfacing these films with Vanadyl phthalocyanine (VOPc) molecules prominently enhances the non-coplanar magnetic phase, attributing its presence to the competing interfacial magnetic exchange interactions over the spin-orbit-driven interfacial effects. These findings pave the way for the realization of novel topological spintronic devices through interface-modulated exchange coupling.

We study the full distribution of the zero-temperature Hall conductivity in a lattice model of the IQHE using the Kubo formula across disorder realizations. Near the localization-delocalization transition, the conductivity exhibits heavy-tailed fluctuations characterized by a power-law decay with exponent $\alpha \approx 2.3$--$2.5$, indicating a finite mean but a divergent variance. The heavy tail persists across a range of system sizes, correlation lengths of the disorder potential and fillings. Our results demonstrate a breakdown of self-averaging in transport in small, coherent samples near criticality, in agreement with findings in random matrix models of topological indices.

Two-dimensional non-interacting fermions without any anti-unitary symmetries generically get Anderson localized in the presence of disorder. In contrast, topological superconductors with their inherent particle-hole symmetry can host a thermal metallic phase, which is non-universal and depends on the nature of microscopic disorder. In this work, we demonstrate that in the presence of geometric disorders, such as random bond dilution, a robust metal can emerge in a Chern insulator with particle-hole symmetry. The metallic phase is realized when the broken links are weakly stitched via concomitant insertion of $\pi$ fluxes in the plaquettes. These nucleate low-energy manifolds, which can provide percolating conduction pathways for fermions to elude localization. This diffusive metal, unlike those in superconductors, can carry charge current and even anomalous Hall current. We investigate the transport properties and show that while the topological insulator to Anderson insulator transition exhibits the expected Dirac universality, the metal insulator transition displays a different critical exponent $\nu \approx 2$ compared to a disordered topological superconductor, where $\nu \approx 1.4$. Our work emphasizes the unique role of geometric disorder in engineering novel phases and their transitions in topological quantum matter.

Topological spin textures in frustrated intermetallics hold great promise for spintronics applications. However, understanding their origin and properties remains a significant challenge due to competing and often long-range interactions mediated by conduction electrons. Here, by combining neutron scattering experiments with theoretical modeling via unprecedented multi-target fits that further incorporate the ferromagnentic resonance data and magnetization curve, we construct a realistic microscopic model for the prototypical intermetallic skyrmion host \text{Gd}$_3$\text{Ru}$_4$\text{Al}$_{12}$. Beyond magnetic frustration, we identify the competition between dipolar interactions and easy-plane single-ion anisotropy as a key ingredient for stabilizing the rich chiral magnetic phases observed in this compound -- including a hexagonal skyrmion crystal and two distinct meron crystals. Remarkably, the meron crystal in lower field is revealed to be commensurate with the underlying lattice, and its unique three-meron-one-antimeron spin texture is verified by the polarized x-ray diffraction data. At elevated temperatures, the short-range spin correlations in \text{Gd}$_3$\text{Ru}$_4$\text{Al}$_{12}$ are well described by a codimension-two spiral spin-liquid. Perturbations from staggered Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions give rise to chiral fluctuations that account for the temperature and field dependence of the anomalous Hall response. Our results highlight the unique power of neutron scattering, especially when combined with complementary experimental techniques, to unravel complex magnetic phase transitions and provide new insights into the rich variety of topological spin textures in frustrated systems.

We construct spin-$3/2$ and spin-$7/2$ models on the square-octagon and checkerboard lattices that are exactly solvable with Majorana representations. They give rise to spin-liquid phases with full spin-rotation and lattice-translational symmetries but broken time-reversal symmetry. Although non-zero on elementary plaquettes, the net orbital magnetic moment is guaranteed to vanish as a result of point symmetries; due to the analogy to long-range ordered altermagnets, these types of phases were dubbed altermagnetic spin liquids in [Phys. Rev. Research 7, 023152 (2025)]. For the spin-$3/2$ model, we find that a $g$-wave altermagnetic spin liquid emerges as the unique ground state. In contrast, the spin-7/2 model exhibits a significantly richer phase diagram, involving different types of chiral spin liquids competing with a $d$-wave altermagnetic spin liquid. Finally, we identify and characterize the topological and non-topological excitations, illustrating the rich physics of altermagnetic spin liquids resulting from the interplay of non-trivial topological and symmetry aspects of this novel phase of matter.

Synthetic ferrimagnetic (SFiM) multilayers offer a versatile platform for hosting skyrmions with tunable magnetic properties, combining the advantages of ferromagnets and antiferromagnets. Unlike synthetic antiferromagnets, SFiMs retain a finite magnetization that allows direct observation of magnetic textures while still benefiting from reduced dipolar fields and a suppressed skyrmion Hall effect. However, a systematic investigation of their temperature and field dependent magnetization evolution, including the labyrinthine-to-skyrmion transition in Co/Gd-based SFiMs, remains less explored. Here, we demonstrate the stabilization of 70 nm-radius skyrmions at room temperature and reveal how the Co and Gd sublattices influence the temperature-dependent net magnetization. Further, we develop a microscopic spin model for SFiM incorporating the relevant magnetic interactions, which reproduces the experimental observations and captures the temperature-dependent magnetic phase evolution. This framework highlights the interplay of fundamental interactions controlling skyrmion stability in SFiM and provides a pathway for engineering heterostructures for topological spintronic applications.

Theoretically predicted antiperovskite carbides M$_6$CSe$_4$ (M = Ca, Sr) represent an emerging class of optoelectronic materials with potential relevance for photovoltaic applications. In this work, we present a comprehensive first-principles investigation of their electronic, optical, and excitonic properties, together with non-radiative recombination dynamics. Density functional theory (DFT) and many-body perturbation theory (GW) reveal that both compounds are direct band gap semiconductors with gaps spanning the infrared-visible region. Incorporating electron-hole interactions via the Bethe-Salpeter equation leads to pronounced red-shifts in the first peak of optical spectra, indicative of bound excitons with binding energies of 0.12 eV (Ca$_6$CSe$_4$) and 0.20 eV (Sr$_6$CSe$_4$), extending over nearly three unit cells in all directions. Time-dependent DFT combined with nonadiabatic molecular dynamics simulations at 300 K reveals pronounced lattice fluctuations in Ca$_6$CSe$_4$, resulting in 38% larger band gap variations and 28% faster electronic decoherence. Together with 53% weaker nonadiabatic couplings, these effects yield non-radiative recombination lifetimes approximately eleven times longer than in Sr$_6$CSe$_4$. Overall, our results identify M$_6$CSe$_4$ carbides as promising lead-free photovoltaic materials, with Ca$_6$CSe$_4$ exhibiting superior optoelectronic properties and carrier dynamics that motivate further experimental investigation.

Conventional spintronic mechanisms, such as spin-transfer and spin-orbit torques based on the spin current, rely on breaking time-reversal symmetry to manipulate magnetic moments. In contrast, for spatially separated dual spin currents, the time-reversal-invariant vector chirality emerges as a critical factor governing magnetization dynamics. Here, we investigate field-free perpendicular magnetization switching in an altermagnet RuO2/ferromagnet/heavy metal Pt trilayer, driven by chiral dual spin currents (CDSC). We demonstrate that the chirality of these dual spin currents acts as the deterministic role in breaking out-of-plane symmetry. Leveraging the intrinsic spin-splitting effect of the d-wave altermagnet to generate an x-polarized spin component, the interplay of non-collinear spin currents from two adjacent layers induces a helical magnetic texture within the intermediate layer. The resulting intralayer exchange coupling manifests as an effective in-plane magnetic field, facilitating deterministic switching. This distinct physical picture, validated by switching measurements and micromagnetic simulations, reveals that the switching polarity is dictated by chirality rather than charge current polarity. Characterized by the novel symmetry and low power consumption, CDSC offers a promising paradigm for next-generation high-performance spintronic architectures.

We show that a sudden change in the polarization direction of the magnetic dipole moments of the atoms in a dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) can serve as a useful probe to sense its superfluid and solid-like properties. We find that for small angular deviation of the polarization direction, actuated for instance by modifying an external magnetic field, the superfluid state undergoes an undamped scissors mode oscillation, a characteristic signature of superfluidity. In contrast, both the droplet and supersolid states exhibit a scissors-mode oscillation, which is effectively damped due to multiple closely spaced frequency components. Notably, we find that this damping rate provides a direct quantitative measure for the rigidity of different phases of a dipolar BEC. Furthermore, there exists a maximum angular deviation of the polarization direction, beyond which the droplet and the supersolid states undergo a permanent deformation i.e., we find an analog of the usual elastic to plastic phase transition of solids. We characterize this transition numerically using the fidelity of the condensate wavefunction with the ground state as well as the droplet width and periodicity of the supersolid density of the condensate which are experimentally accessible. Thus, the technique introduced here can be an important experimental benchmark to identify and characterize the superfluid and solid properties of different phases of dipolar BECs.

Altermagnetism is a newly discovered fundamental form of magnetic order, distinct from conventional ferromagnetism and antiferromagnetism. It uniquely exhibits no net magnetization while simultaneously breaking time-reversal symmetry, a combination previously thought to be mutually exclusive. Although its existence and signatures in momentum space have been established, the direct real-space visualization of its defining rotational symmetry breaking has remained a missing cornerstone. Here, using scanning tunnelling microscopy, we present atomic-scale imaging of electronic states in the candidate material CsV2Se2O. We directly visualize the hallmark symmetry breaking in the form of unidirectional electronic patterns tied to magnetic domain walls and spin defects, as well as elliptical charging rings surrounding those defects. These observed electronic states are all linked to the underlying alternating spin texture. Our work provides the foundational real-space evidence for altermagnetism, moving the field from theoretical and momentum-space probes to direct visual confirmation; thereby opening a path to explore how this unconventional magnetic order couples to and controls other quantum electronic states.

This paper focuses on the study of linear exciton Hall and Nernst effects in monolayer two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors, employing the semi-classical transport theory. By deriving the exciton Berry curvature in momentum space for a general inhomogeneous 2D system, we establish its dependence on the Berry curvature and the effective mass of electron and hole. As illustrative examples, the exciton Hall effect in monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) and black phosphorus (BP) are calculated. For these materials, we demonstrate that a linear Hall (Nernst) exciton current with the non-zero Berry curvature is strictly forbidden by the symmetries. This finding aligns with earlier experimental observations on the exciton Hall effect in MoSe$_2$. In contrast, a strong anisotropy in BP leads to a net linear Hall current of excitons, exhibiting a relatively large value and resembling an anomalous Hall effect rather than a valley Hall effect. Our work reveals that the specific symmetry of 2D materials can induce a significant linear exciton Hall (Nernst) effect even without Berry curvature, which is normally forbidden with non-zero Berry curvature in the monolayer 2D material. This observation holds promise for future optoelectronic applications and offers exciting possibilities for experimental exploration.

To examine the process of native corrosion of ultrathin (about 10 nm) copper films deposited on quartz glass substrates $(SiO_2)$ with and without a germanium sublayer, the time dependences of the microwave reflection coefficient $R$ and direct current electrical resistivity $\rho$ of such samples exposed to air at room temperature have been studied. Under these conditions, the thickness of the oxide layer $d$ on $Cu/SiO_2$ films was found to increase over time $t$ according to a parabolic law, which is in contradiction with the predictions of existing theories of copper oxidation. A model is proposed that explains this behavior of $d(t)$ by the diffusion of atomic oxygen along the boundaries of oxide grains towards the copper film with its subsequent oxidation. The $R$ and $\rho$ of $Cu/Ge/SiO_2$ films were found to degrade much more slowly than similar characteristics of $Cu/SiO_2$ films of the same thickness. The high corrosion resistance of $Cu/Ge/SiO_2$ films is explained by the peculiarities of $Ge$ redistribution during the growth of the copper film on a germanium sublayer. The long-term retention by $Cu/Ge/SiO_2$ films of their characteristics allows them to be recommended as a cheap replacement for gold coating in electromagnetic interference protection devices.

Magnons are bosonic quasiparticles in magnetically ordered systems. Bosonic Bott index has been affirmed as a real-space topological invariant for a two-band ferromagnetic model. In this work,we theoretically investigate the topology and transport of magnons in a multi-band bosonic Kagome ferromagnetic model. We demonstrate the validity of the bosonic Bott indices of values larger than 1 in multi-band magnonic systems by showing the agreement with Chern numbers in the clean limit and the bulk-boundary correspondence during the topological phase transition. For the high Bott index phase, the disorder-induced topological phase transition occurs in a multi-step manner. Using a generalized Landauer-Buttiker formalism, we reveal how the magnon transport depends on Gilbert damping and disorder under coherent excitation or temperature difference. The results further justify the bosonic Bott index as a robust real-space topological invariant for multi-band magnonic systems and provide insights into the transport of topological magnons.

Topological spin structures such as magnetic skyrmions are of fundamental interest and promising for various types of applications in spintronics. Skyrmions have been predicted to emerge also in antiferromagnetic materials where they exhibit superior transport properties. They were experimentally revealed in synthetic antiferromagnets, however, still remain elusive in intrinsic antiferromagnets. Here, we demonstrate the stabilization of topological spin structures in an antiferromagnetic monolayer. Using spin-polarized scanning tunneling microscopy, we observe an antiferromagnetic spin spiral in the Mn monolayer and a collinear antiferromagnetic state in the Mn double-layer on Ta(110). Near the boundary to the double-layer half-skyrmions form in the monolayer as revealed in combination with first-principles calculations and micromagnetic simulations. Our work shows how the topological state in antiferromagnetic material systems can be controlled by the configuration within a lateral heterostructure, resulting in trivial non-coplanar states or antiferromagnetic skyrmions.

The paper presents a comprehensive description of a new setup implemented and commissioned at the SEXTANTS beamline of the SOLEIL synchrotron for absorption and scattering experiments with x-ray beams carrying an orbital angular momentum, also known as twisted x-ray beams. Two alternative methods have been implemented, based on the use of either spiral zone plates or fork gratings devices, and we show how they can be used for both defining and assessing the orbital angular momentum of an x-ray beam. We show also how multiple devices can be used in sequence to define an integer arithmetic of the orbital angular momentum of the final x-ray beam. Finally, we report the results of the first resonant scattering pilot experiments in transmission and reflection mode, intended to assess the feasibility of future users measurements. The availability of twisted soft x-rays complements the range of experimental techniques in elastic, resonant and coherent scattering available at the SEXTANTS beamline of the SOLEIL synchrotron.

Fe4N is a well-known anti-perovskite compound exhibiting high magnetization, high chemical stability, low coercivity, high Curie temperature, and high spin-polarization ratio. Therefore, it is a viable candidate for applications in spintronic and magnetic storage devices. However, the Fe4N phase is formed in a narrow substrate temperature (Ts)-N concentration (Nc) regime in the phase diagram of Fe-N. It has been observed that a slight N deficiency will lead to impurity of alpha-Fe, and some N efficiency would result in epsilon-Fe3N phase. Through this work, it has been demonstrated that the doping of Pd can be suitably utilized to extend the Ts-Nc regime for the growth of Fe4N thin films. EXAFS analysis indicate that Pd atoms are substituting corner Fe atoms. Magnetization measurements reveal that the saturation magnetization reduces nominally with Pd doping up to 13 at.%. Therefore, it is foreseen that Pd doping is effective in extending the Fe4N phase formation regime without a significant impact on its structural, electronic, and magnetic properties.

Tuning the valence state and electronic structure of catalytically active sites is crucial for improving Fenton and Fenton-like reactions, which rely on the efficient activation of the H2O2 molecule. Pure TiO2, however, has inadequate activity towards the H2O2 activation and is often constrained by the intrinsic electronic limitations of pristine TiO2. Herein, a rational approach has been demonstrated to improve the Fenton-like catalytic performance of TiO2 through multivalent vanadium (V) doping. A comprehensive characterization using X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy, UV-Vis spectroscopy, X-Ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR), and Density functional theory (DFT) reveals that V incorporation substantially alters the electronic structure of TiO2. The DFT results, supported by experimental data, indicate that V doping enhances Ti-O covalence and introduces mid-gap states, resulting in a reduced band gap and improved charge transfer. XPS confirms the coexistence of multiple oxidation states of V, which serve as active centres for activating H2O2 and generating OH radicals. As a result, V-doped TiO2 exhibits significantly enhanced dark-catalytic activity in degrading the organic dye Rhodamine B (RhB). Overall, this study provides fundamental insights into multivalent-cation-induced valence state and electronic structure modulation in TiO2, offering a promising strategy for designing high-performance catalysts via defect engineering for sustainable environmental remediation.

Interfacial reconstruction between two-dimensional (2D) materials and metal substrates fundamentally governs heterostructure properties, yet conventional flat substrates fail to capture the continuous crystallographic landscape. Here, we overcome this topological limitation using non-Euclidean interfaces-curved 2D graphene-copper surfaces as a model system-to traverse the infinite spectrum of lattice orientations. By integrating multimodal microscopy with a deep-learning-enhanced dimensional upscaling framework, we translate 2D scanning electron microscopy (SEM) contrast into quantitative three-dimensional (3D) morphologies with accurate facet identification. Coupling these observations with machine-learning-assisted density functional theory, we demonstrate that reconstruction is governed by a unified thermodynamic mechanism where high-index facets correspond to specific local minima in the surface energy landscape. This work resolves the long-standing complexity of graphene-copper faceting and establishes non-Euclidean surface topologies as a generalizable paradigm for decoding and controlling interfacial reconstruction in diverse metal-2D material systems.

Kagome metals AV$_3$Sb$_5$ (A = K, Rb, Cs) have recently emerged as a promising platform for exploring correlated and topological quantum states, yet their potential for optoelectronic applications remains largely unexplored. Here, we report high-performance photodetectors based on van der Waals KV$_3$Sb$_5$/WSe$_2$ heterojunctions. A high-quality Schottky interface readily forms between KV$_3$Sb$_5$ and WSe$_2$, enabling efficient separation and transport of photoinduced carriers. Under 520 nm illumination, the device achieves an open-circuit voltage up to 0.6 V, a responsivity of 809 mA/W, and a fast response time of 18.3 us. This work demonstrates the promising optoelectronic applications of Kagome metals and highlights the potential of KV$_3$Sb$_5$-based van der Waals heterostructures for high-performance photodetection.

It is shown that the sound wave in the backreaction affected dynamical spacetime follows the equations for a massive scalar field in a analogue spacetime using number-conserving approach. Even with backreaction, the analogue metric is in the same form to the case without backreaction. The sound velocity, fluid density, and fluid velocity are defined with small correction to include the backreaction effect. Moreover, the modification of classical fluid dynamical equations by the backreaction introduces spacetime dependent mass. For a finite-size homogeneous quasi-one dimensional Bose gas, we find that the backreaction increase the UV divergence of the equal position correlation function. Moreover, in this model, we see that the backreaction increase the correlation in a finite region and decrease the correlation in far region.

We develop a semiclassical theory of superconducting quasiparticles for proximity-induced superconducting systems, where spin-orbit coupling plays a critical role in shaping the quasiparticle dynamics. We reveal the structure of superconducting Berry curvatures in such systems, and derived the superconducting Berry curvature induced thermal Edelstein effect and spin Nernst effect. We calculate these two thermo-spin responses with model systems where Rashba spin-orbit coupling, proximity induced superconductivity, and ferromagnetic order are coexisting.

Tritium adsorption on surfaces creates a variety of issues, ranging from the fields of fusion applications to small and large-scale laboratory experiments using tritium. The extent to which tritium accumulates on surfaces is generally material-dependent and must be determined through experiments. Additionally, this surface contamination necessitates the implementation of appropriate decontamination procedures, preferably in-situ. A suitable method could be exposure to ozone during UV irradiation. However, it is currently not known if both components are necessary for the decontamination. At Tritium Laboratory Karlsruhe, both questions on contamination and decontamination can be addressed using a single experimental setup. With this, it is possible to expose solid samples to gaseous tritium to measure the temporal activity evolution. Furthermore, the system can be filled with dry air, and dry air containing ozone to explore their decontamination effect. Both measurement modes were applied to beryllium and tungsten samples, which were chosen for their relevance in fusion. The beryllium surface was observed to accumulate tritium more than four times faster than tungsten when exposed to gaseous tritium. Concerning the decontamination, without simultaneous UV irradiation, exposure to ozone did not have any distinct effect on the surface activity compared to simply using dry air. This leads to the conclusion that UV illumination of the surfaces is required to achieve a significant decontamination factor.

Magnetic multipole moments beyond dipoles have emerged as key descriptors of unconventional electromagnetic responses in crystalline solids. However, a gauge-invariant bulk expression for orbital magnetic multipole moments has remained elusive, hindering a unified understanding of their physical consequences. Here we formulate a gauge-invariant expression for the orbital magnetic octupole moment in periodic crystals and investigate its behavior in a minimal model of $d$-wave altermagnets. We show that the orbital magnetic octupole is naturally linked to a higher-rank Hall response induced by spatially nonuniform electric fields, leading to a generalized Středa-type relation. Finally, we demonstrate that such a Hall response can arise even when symmetry forbids the conventional anomalous Hall effect against uniform electric fields, thereby providing an illustrative response characteristic to altermagnets.

Altermagnets exhibit spin-split electronic band structures despite having zero net magnetization, making them attractive for field-free spintronic applications. In this work, we show that a finite rectangular altermagnetic sample can acquire a net spin polarization purely due to its geometry. This effect arises from the interplay between the anisotropic, spin-resolved Fermi contours of an altermagnet and the discrete sampling of momentum space imposed by unequal sample dimensions. By explicitly counting occupied states, we demonstrate that rectangular samples with $L_x \neq L_y$ host a finite spin polarization, which vanishes in the symmetric limit $L_x=L_y$ and in the thermodynamic limit. We further show that this geometry-induced spin polarization can be directly probed in transport measurements. In the tunneling regime, the ratio of spin to charge conductance exhibits characteristic square-like patterns as a function of sample dimensions, faithfully reflecting the underlying spin polarization. In addition, transport across ferromagnet--altermagnet--ferromagnet junctions reveals an asymmetric magnetoresistance with respect to reversal of the Zeeman field, providing an independent transport signature of the finite spin polarization. Our results establish geometry as an effective control parameter for spin polarization in altermagnets and suggest a viable route for exploiting finite-size effects in mesoscopic altermagnetic spintronic devices.

A system of two self and mutual interacting ring polymers, close together in space, can display several competing equilibrium phases and phase transitions. Using Monte Carlo simulations and combinatorial arguments on a corresponding lattice model, we determine three equilibrium phases, two in which the rings segregate in space and are either extended (the segregated-expanded phase) or compact (the segregated-collapsed phase). The third is a mixed phase where the rings interpenetrate. The corresponding phase boundaries are located numerically and their critical nature is discussed. Finally, by looking at the topological properties of the three phases, we show that the two rings are likely to be linked in the mixed phase and knotted in the segregated-collapsed phase.

Recent studies of rhombohedral multilayer graphene (RMG) have revealed a variety of superconducting states that can be induced or enhanced by magnetic fields, reinforcing RMG as a powerful platform for investigating novel superconductivity. Here we report an insulator-superconductor transition driven by in-plane magnetic fields B|| in rhombohedral hexalayer graphene. The upper critical in-plane field of 2T violates the Pauli limit, and an analysis based on isospin symmetry breaking supports a spin-polarized superconductor. At in-plane B = 0, such spin-polarized superconductor transitions into an insulator, exhibiting a thermally activated gap of 0.1 meV. In addition, we observe four superconducting states in the hole-doped regime, as well as phases with orbital multiferroicity near charge neutrality point. These findings substantially enrich the phase diagram of rhombohedral graphene and provide new insight into the microscopic mechanisms of superconductivity

Diffusion in a confining potential offers a minimal setting to understand the interplay between random motion and deterministic forces driving a particle towards a focal point or potential minimum. In continuous space and time, two extensively studied examples are Brownian motion in a linear (V-shaped) or a quadratic (U-shaped) potential. The deterministic bias towards the minimum is represented, respectively, by a constant force for the former and by an elastic restoring force that increases proportionally with distance for the latter. Surprisingly, unlike Brownian walks, random walks under focal point potentials in discrete space and time have received little attention. Here, we bridge this gap by analysing the dynamics of lattice random walkers in the presence of a V-shaped potential, both in a finite and an infinite spatial domain, and a finite U-shaped potential. For the V-potential in unbounded space, we find the generating function of the occupation probability and analyse the time dependence of the mean number of distinct sites visited, demonstrating that its long-time growth is logarithmic. We also study the first-passage probability and show that its mean may display a minimum as a function of bias strength, depending on the location of the initial and target sites relative to the focal point. Qualitatively similar dependencies in the first-passage probability and its mean appear for the finite U-potential. As a comparative analysis to the U-potential, we construct the bounded V-potential and superimpose in both cases a resetting process, in which the walker returns at random times to a site distinct from the focal point with some probability. We quantify the different effects of resetting on the steady-state probability and the first-passage dynamics in the two cases, and show a motion-limited regime emerges even for relatively moderate resetting probabilities.

Electrochemical systems are important for a sustainable and defossilized energy system of the future. While accurate and precise, the corresponding electrochemical measurements, in which many reactions may occur simultaneously, often do not contain enough information to understand the underlying mechanism and processes. This information, however, is crucial towards rational materials and devices as well as process development and for inventing new concepts. We introduce explicitly the concept of "X-ray Coulomb Counting" in which X-ray methods are used to quantify on an absolute scale how much charge is transferred into which reactions during the electrochemical measurements. This allows to interpret the electrochemical measurements in detail and obtain the desired phenomenological and mechanistic understanding. We show a few recent examples from the Li-ion battery literature in which the concept of X-ray Coulomb Counting was employed to obtain foundational understanding.

Quantum simulation relies on the preparation and control of low-entropy many-body systems to reveal the behavior of classically intractable models. The development of new approaches for realizing such systems therefore represents a frontier in quantum science. Here we experimentally demonstrate a new protocol for generating ultracold, itinerant many-body states in a tunnel-coupled two-dimensional optical lattice. We do this by adiabatically connecting a near-ground-state-cooled array of up to 50 single strontium-86 atoms with a Bose-Hubbard superfluid. Through comparison with finite-temperature quantum-Monte-Carlo calculations, we estimate that the entropy per particle of the prepared many-body states is approximately $2 k_B$, and that the achieved temperatures are consistent with a significant superfluid fraction. This represents the first time that itinerant many-body systems have been prepared from rearranged atoms, opening the door to bottom-up assembly of a wide range of neutral-atom and molecular systems.

Tensor networks provide a powerful new framework for classifying and simulating correlated and topological phases of quantum matter. Their central premise is that strongly correlated matter can only be understood by studying the underlying entanglement structure and its associated (generalised) symmetries. In essence, tensor networks provide a compressed, holographic description of the complicated vacuum fluctuations in strongly correlated systems, and as such they break down the infamous many-body exponential wall. These lecture notes provide a concise overview of the most important conceptual, computational and mathematical aspects of this theory.

Valleytronics is a rapidly advancing field that explores the use of the valley degree of freedom in electronic systems to encode and process information. It relies on electronic states with spin valley locking, first predicted and observed in monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides such as MoS2. However, very few bulk materials have been reported to host spin valley locked electronic states. In this work, we present experimental evidence for a predicted, unique spin valley locked electronic state generated by Bi zigzag chains in the layered compound BaMnBi2. We observe remarkable quantum transport properties in this material, including a stacked quantum Hall effect (QHE) and a nonlinear Hall effect (NLHE). From the analysis of the QHE, we identify a spin valley degeneracy of four, while the NLHE provides supporting evidence for the anticipated valley contrasted Berry curvature, a typical signature of a spin valley locked state. This spin valley locked state contrasts with that observed in the sister compound BaMnSb2, where the degeneracy is two. This difference arises from significant variations in their orthorhombic crystal structures and spin orbit coupling. These findings establish a new platform for exploring coupled spin valley physics in bulk materials and highlight its potential for valleytronic device applications.

Spherical particles confined to a sphere surface cannot pack densely into a hexagonal lattice without defects. In this study, we use hard particle Monte Carlo simulations to determine the effects of continuously deformable shape anisotropy and underlying crystal lattice preference on inevitable defect structures and their distribution within colloidal assemblies of hard rounded polyhedra confined to a closed sphere surface. We demonstrate that cube particles form a simple square assembly, overcoming lattice/topology incompatibility, and maximize entropy by distributing eight three-fold defects evenly on the sphere. By varying particle shape smoothly from cubes to spheres we reveal how the distribution of defects changes from square antiprismatic to icosahedral symmetry. Congruent studies of rounded tetrahedra reveal additional varieties of characteristic defect patterns within three, four, and six-fold symmetric lattices. This work has promising implications for programmable defect generation to facilitate different vesicle buckling modes using colloidal particle emulsions.

Accurate prediction of radiation damage in YBa$_2$Cu$3$O${7-\delta}$ (YBCO) is essential for assessing the performance of high-temperature superconducting (HTS) tapes in compact fusion reactors. Existing empirical interatomic potentials have been used to model radiation damage in stoichiometric YBCO, but fail to describe oxygen-deficient compositions, which are ubiquitous in industrial Rare-Earth Barium Copper Oxide conductors and strongly influence superconducting properties. In this work, we demonstrate that modern machine-learned interatomic potentials enable predictive modelling of radiation damage in YBCO across a wide range of oxygen stoichiometries, with higher fidelity than previous empirical models. We employ two recently developed approaches: an Atomic Cluster Expansion (ACE) potential and a tabulated Gaussian Approximation Potential (tabGAP). Both models accurately reproduce Density Functional Theory (DFT) energies, forces, and threshold displacement energy distributions, providing a reliable description of atomic-scale collision processes. Molecular dynamics simulations of 5 keV cascades predict enhanced peak defect production and recombination relative to a widely used empirical potential, indicating different cascade evolution. By explicitly varying oxygen deficiency, we show that total defect production depends only weakly on stoichiometry, offering insight into the robustness of radiation damage processes in oxygen-deficient YBCO. Finally, fusion-relevant 300 keV cascade simulations reveal amorphous regions with dimensions comparable to the superconducting coherence length, consistent with electron microscopy observations of neutron-irradiated HTS tapes. These results establish machine-learned interatomic potentials as efficient and predictive tools for investigating radiation damage in YBCO across relevant compositions and irradiation conditions.

Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (STM) enables fabrication of atomically precise structures with unique properties and growing technological potential. However, reproducible manipulation of covalently bonded atoms requires control over the atomic configuration of both sample and probe - a longstanding challenge in STM. Here, we introduce inverted-mode STM, an approach that enables mechanically controlled chemical reactions for atomically precise fabrication. Tailored molecules on a Si(100) surface image the probe apex, and the usual challenge of understanding the probe structure is effectively solved. The molecules can also react with the probe, with the two sides of the tunnel junction acting as reagents positioned with sub-angstrom precision. This allows abstraction or donation of atoms from or to the probe apex. We demonstrate this by using a novel alkynyl-terminated molecule to reproducibly abstract hydrogen atoms from the probe. The approach is expected to extend to other elements and moieties, opening a new avenue for scalable atomically precise fabrication.

Large-area deposition of Aluminium-Scandium-Nitride (Al1-xScxN) thin films with higher Sc content (x) remains challenging due to issues such as abnormal orientation growth, stress control, and the undesired crystal phase. These anomalies across the wafer hinder the development of high scandium-content AlScN films, which are critical for microelectromechanical systems applications. In this study, we report the sputter deposition of Al0.64Sc0.36N thin films from a 300 mm Al0.64Sc0.36 alloy target on 200 mm Si(100) wafers, achieving an exceptionally high deposition rate of 8.7 {\mu}m/h with less than 1% AOGs and controllable stress tuning. Comprehensive microstructural and electrical characterizations confirm the superior growth of high-quality Al0.64Sc0.36N films with exceptional wafer-average piezoelectric coefficients (d33,f =15.62 pm/V and e31,f = -2.9 C/m2) owing to low point defects density and grain mosaicity. This was accomplished through the implementation of an optimized seed layer and a refined electrode integration strategy, along with optimal process conditions. The wafer yield and device failure rates are analysed and correlated with the average stress of the films and their stress profiles along the diameter. The resulting films show excellent uniformity in structural, compositional, and piezoelectric properties across the entire 200 mm wafer, underscoring their strong potential for next-generation MEMS applications.

Strain rate sensitivity is a key feature of material deformation, whose importance is growing both because miniaturized components experience higher effective rates and because small scale simulations increasingly probe such conditions. As a dynamical characteristic, strain rate dependence is shown to be intimately connected to dislocation avalanches, which are a fundamental mechanism of dislocation dynamics. Using carefully designed, state of the art dislocation dynamics simulations in the intermediate range strain rate from 5 to 1000, we show that increasing strain rate promotes the activation of a growing number of stronger sites. The dislocation microstructure progressively rearranges into configurations with shorter segments. Dislocation avalanches become larger through the superposition of simultaneous events and because stronger obstacles are required to arrest them. As a result, the avalanche statistics are strongly affected by strain rate, with a reduced power law regime and an increasing power law exponent. Larger avalanches, in turn, lead to an enhanced dislocation storage rate. Contribution from collinear systems to avalanches and cross slip activity decreases, altering the fraction of screw dislocations and the resulting microstructure. These results provide an original mesoscopic picture of rate sensitivity in this strain rate range and offer a mechanistic interpretation of existing observations and findings from experiments and simulations.

Nanoscale hot spots forming tens of nanometers beneath the gate in advanced FinFET and HEMT devices drive heat transport into a non-Fourier regime, challenging conventional (Fourier-based) finite-element (FEM) analyses and complicating future thermal-aware chip design. Molecular dynamics (MD) naturally captures ballistic transport and phonon nonequilibrium, but has not been applied to hot-spot problems due to computational cost. Here, we perform the first MD simulations of hot-spot heat transfer across ballistic-diffusive regimes and benchmark them against FEM. We find that FEM using bulk thermal conductivity $\kappa_0$ significantly underestimates hot-spot temperature, even when the channel thickness is ~10 times the phonon mean free path, indicating persistent non-Fourier effects. We introduce a size-dependent "best" conductivity, $\kappa_{\mathrm{best}}$, using which FEM can reproduce MD hot-spot temperatures with high fidelity. We further decompose the MD-extracted thermal resistance into: (i) diffusive spreading, (ii) cross-plane ballistic, (iii) heat-carrier selective heating, and (iv) residual 3D ballistic-spreading resistances, and quantify each contribution. The resulting framework offers a practical route to embed non-Fourier physics into FEM for hot-spot prediction, reliability assessment, and thermally aware design of next-generation transistors.

A model of microscopic interaction between a superconductor and a one-dimensional topological insulator, an SSH chain, is considered. Using the functional integration method, the effective action of the interaction between a superconductor and a topological insulator is obtained. We obtain corrections to the quasiparticle excitation spectrum of the SSH chain due to tunneling in various limits and discuss the influence of phase fluctuations. We find that for bulk superconductors, the states of the chain are stable for energies lying inside the superconducting gap while in lower-dimensional superconductors phase fluctuations yield finite temperature-dependent lifetimes even inside the gap. We also discuss whether these results can be reproduced within a simple phenomenological approach.

The scaling of entanglement with subsystem size encodes key information about phases and criticality, but the von Neumann entropy is costly to access in experiments and simulations, often requiring full state tomography. The second Rényi entropy is readily measured using two-copy protocols and is often used as a proxy for the von Neumann entanglement entropy, where it is assumed to track its asymptotic scaling. However, Sugino and Korepiny (Int. J. Mod. Phys. B 32, 1850306 (2018)) revealed that in the ground state of some spin models, the scaling of the von Neumann and second Rényi entropies varies from power law to logarithmic scaling as a function of the Rényi index. By constructing a number-conserving many-body state with only two local degrees of freedom, we obtain a Rényi-index-dependent change in the leading entanglement scaling: the second Rényi entropy remains logarithmic while the von Neumann entropy is parametrically larger. We then introduce a symmetry-aware lower bound on the von Neumann entropy built from charge-resolved second Rényi entropies and the subsystem charge distribution. Comparing this bound to the total second Rényi entropy provides a practical diagnostic for anomalous entanglement scaling from experimentally accessible data.

Linear response theory has found many applications in statistical physics. One of these is to compute minimal-work protocols that drive nonequilibrium systems between different thermodynamic states, which are useful for designing engineered nanoscale systems and understanding biomolecular machines. We compare and explore the relationships between linear-response-based approximations used to study optimal protocols in different driving regimes by showing that they arise as controlled truncations of a general causal response (Volterra) expansion. We then construct higher-order response terms and discuss the drawbacks and utility of their inclusion. We illustrate our results for an overdamped particle in a harmonic trap, ultimately showing that the inclusion of higher-order response in calculating optimal protocols provides marginal improvement in effectiveness despite incurring a significant computational expense, while introducing the possibility of predicting arbitrarily low and unphysical negative excess work.

For decades, ``geometry" in band theory has largely meant Berry phase and Berry curvature-quantities that reshape semiclassical dynamics and underpin modern topological matter. Yet the full geometric content of a Bloch band is richer and encoded in the quantum geometric tensor (QGT), whose imaginary part is the Berry curvature and whose real part is the quantum metric. Here, we briefly review the recent progress in direct experimental access to the QGT in real crystalline solids using the polarization- and spin-resolved angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES). The extraction of the QGT in momentum space was successfully addressed by two different approaches: One is by introducing quasi-QGT that faithfully represents the QGT and is directly measurable by ARPES. The other is through pseudospin tomography in a material with simple low energy band structure, which successfully retrieved all matrix components of the quantum metric. We discuss the physical meaning of these two recent progresses, their implication/limitation, and open directions.

We theoretically study the collective excitations in a spin-1 $XY$ model with a quadratic Zeeman term and a long-range interaction that decays algebraically with the distance. Using the quantum-field theory based on the finite-temperature Green's function formalism, we analyze properties of the Nambu-Goldstone (NG) and Higgs modes in order to analytically evaluate the damping rate of the Higgs mode in the $XY$ ferromagnetic ordered phase near the quantum phase transition to the disordered phase. When the power of the algebraic decay is 3 as in the case of dipole-dipole interactions in Rydberg-atom systems, we show that at two dimensions the excitation energy of the Higgs mode exhibits a linear dispersion whereas the dispersion of the NG mode becomes proportional to the square root of the momentum. We find that the damping of the Higgs mode is significantly suppressed by the long-range interaction. We also propose how to excite and probe the Higgs mode in Rydberg-atom experiments.

The release of hydrophilic solutes from micron scale particulate formulations can be understood as an interfacial transport problem in which diffusion across a heterogeneous amphiphilic coating competes with dissolution and convective removal in the surrounding medium. Here we reinterpret a glycerin fatty acid ester (GFAE) coated thiamine (vitamin B1) micro particle formulation as a condensed matter system: a soft matter core shell geometry whose effective permeability is set by the nanoscale organization of amphiphilic lipids at the interface. Using in vivo time course serum measurements in mice as a proxy for a stochastic sink, we compare the coated formulation (UTEV) with a composition matched uncoated comparator (UMFG). Early time systemic appearance is similar, whereas late time levels are enhanced for the coated particles, implying a reduced effective interfacial diffusivity and a broadened release-time distribution. We discuss the results in terms of diffusion barrier physics, heterogeneous interfacial energetics, and coarse grained transport models that map microstructural coating parameters to macroscopic persistence (AUC).

Materials with interesting physical properties are often designed based on our understanding of the target physical effects. The physical properties can be either explicitly observed ("apparent") or concealed by the perceived symmetry ("hidden") but still exist. Both are enabled by specific symmetries and induced by certain physical interactions. Using the underlying approach of condensed matter theory of real materials (rather than schematic model Hamiltonians), we discuss apparent and hidden physics in real materials focusing on the properties of spin splitting and spin polarization. Depending on the enabling symmetries and underlying physical interactions, we classify spin effects into four categories with each having two subtypes; representative materials are pointed out. We then discuss the electric tunability and switch of apparent and hidden spin splitting and polarization in antiferromagnets. Finally, we extend "hidden effects" to views that are farsighted in the sense of resolving the correct atomistic and reciprocal symmetry and replaced by the incorrect higher symmetry. This framework could guide and enable systematic discovery of such intriguing effects.

The nature of the broken time reversal symmetry (BTRS) state in Sr$_2$RuO$_4$ remains elusive, and its relation to superconductivity remains controversial. There are various universal predictions for the BTRS state when it is associated with a multicomponent superconducting order parameter. In particular, in the BTRS superconducting state, spontaneous fields appear around crystalline defects, impurities, superconducting domain walls and sample surfaces. However, this phenomenon has not yet been experimentally demonstrated for any BTRS superconductor. Here, we aimed to verify these predictions for Sr$_2$RuO$_4$ by performing muon spin relaxation ($\mu$SR) measurements on Sr$_{2-y}$La$_{y}$RuO$_4$ single crystals at ambient pressure and stoichiometric Sr$_2$RuO$_4$ under hydrostatic pressure. The study allowed us to conclude that spontaneous fields in the BTRS superconducting state of Sr$_2$RuO$_4$ appear around non-magnetic inhomogeneities and, at the same time, decrease with the suppression of $T_{\rm c}$. The observed behaviour is consistent with the prediction for multicomponent BTRS superconductivity in Sr$_2$RuO$_4$. The results of the work are relevant to understanding BTRS superconductivity in general, as they demonstrate, for the first time, the relationship among the superconducting order parameter, the BTRS transition, and crystal-structure inhomogeneities.

Magnetoresistance (MR) in magnetic materials arises from spin-exchange coupling between local moments and itinerant electrons, representing a challenging many-body open-quantum problem. Here we develop a comprehensive microscopic theory of MR within an open-quantum-system framework by solving the Liouville-von Neumann equation for a hybrid system of free electrons and local moments using the time-convolutionless projection operator method. Our approach reveals both ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic MR as consequences of temperature- and field-dependent spin decoherence, encompassing spin relaxation and dephasing. In particular, the resistance associated with spin decoherence is governed by the order parameters of magnetic materials, such as the magnetization in ferromagnets and the Néel vector in antiferromagnets. This theory deepens the fundamental understanding of MR and offers guidance for interpreting and designing experiments on magnetic materials.

This work investigates dynamical quantum phase transitions (DQPTs) in a one-dimensional Ising model subjected to a periodically modulated transverse field. In contrast to sudden quenches, we demonstrate that DQPTs can be induced in two distinct ways. First, when the system remains within a given phase--ferromagnetic (FM) or paramagnetic (PM), a resonant periodic drive can trigger a DQPT when its frequency matches the energy-level transition of the system. The timescale for the transition is governed by the perturbation strength $\lambda'$, the critical mode $k_c$, and its energy gap $\Delta_{k_c}$, following the scaling relation $\tau \propto \sin^{-1}k_c \Delta_{k_c}\lambda'^{-1}$. Second, for drives across the critical point between the FM and PM phases, low frequencies can always induce DQPTs, regardless of resonance. This behavior stems from the degeneracy of the energy-level at the critical point, which ensures that any drive with a frequency lower than the system's intrinsic transition frequency will inevitably excite the system. However, in the high-frequency regime, such excitation will be strongly suppressed, thereby inhibiting the occurrence of DQPTs. This study provides deeper insight into the nonequilibrium dynamics of quantum spin chains.

Single-walled carbon nanotubes are one-dimensional $sp^2$ carbon materials whose electronic and optical properties are governed by their chirality. Catalytic chemical vapor deposition often uses transition-metal nanoparticles that liquefy at elevated temperature, and vapor-liquid-solid growth is commonly associated with broad chirality distributions. Improved selectivity has been reported for high-melting-point catalysts that remain solid, suggesting vapor-solid-solid growth, but the underlying kinetics and interface structure remain poorly resolved. The mechanisms that control carbon delivery and determine edge structure on solid catalysts are therefore unclear. Here it is shown, using microsecond-scale molecular dynamics driven by a neuroevolution machine-learning interatomic potential, that rhenium nanoparticles remain solid above 1123.15 K and that surface carbon at 5.0 to 6.0 nm$^{-2}$ does not appreciably depress melting. Carbon transport is dominated by facet-dependent surface diffusion, bounding sustainable supply on a 2.0 nm particle to $\sim 44$ carbon atoms per $\mu$s on the slow $(10\bar{1}1)$ facet. Consistently, growth at 50 carbon atoms per $\mu$s occurs only within a narrow window: multiple nucleation or encapsulation is promoted at 1300 K, tubular elongation is obtained at 1400 K, and low-curvature graphitic structures dominate at 1500 K and above. Non-hexagonal rings persist over 12 $\mu$s, while zigzag-rich, strongly Klein-decorated edges are stabilized and deviate from configurational-entropy expectations for liquid catalysts. These results place catalyst reconstruction by surface carbon adsorption, facet-controlled diffusion, and crystalline interfacial thermodynamics at the center of vapor-solid-solid growth control, motivating experimental tuning of temperature and feedstock partial pressure to balance diffusion-limited supply against encapsulation pathways.

We investigate the application of quantum computing algorithms to enhance the efficiency of enumerating self-avoiding walks (SAWs), utilizing quantum properties such as superposition and interference. A Quantum Amplitude Estimation (QAE)-based algorithm is developed to enumerate SAWs on both 2D and 3D lattices. In case of 2D square lattice, SAWs up to N=71 steps are successfully enumerated within 26.9 minutes - significantly improving upon the classical algorithm, which required approximately 231 hours(Jensen et al., 2012, J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 45, 115202). The algorithm is further extended to 3D cubic lattices, where SAWs up to N=40 steps are enumerated in 13.06 minutes, compared to the classical result of N=36 in 250 hours (Schram et al., 2011, J. Stat. Mech. P06019). These results demonstrate a substantial reduction in computational time, highlighting the potential of quantum computing for combinatorial enumeration problems.

Magnetic impurities in strongly correlated electronic systems serve as sensitive probes to a wide range of many-body quantum phenomena. Broken symmetries in such a system can lead to inequivalent lattice sites, and magnetic impurities may interact selectively with particular orbitals or sublattices. However, the microscopic mechanisms behind such site-specific interactions have been poorly understood. Here, we explore the behavior of individual Fe adatoms on a cluster-Mott charge-density-wave (CDW) system of 1T-TaS2 utilizing scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy (STM/STS) and density functional theory (DFT). Our measurements uncover pronounced site-dependent electronic states of CDW clusters with Fe adatoms, indicating distinct local coupling to cluster-Mott states. DFT calculations identify three distinct types of interactions; hybridization with localized correlated electrons, distorting the CDW cluster, and charge transfer. In particular, the hybridization of Fe 3d and half-filled Ta 5dz2 orbitals suppresses the Mott insulating state for an adatom at the center of a CDW cluster. While the results underscore a crucial role of the direct orbital hybridization and the limitation of the prevailing single-site Kondo impurity model, they suggest the possibility of controlling entangled interactions separately in a cluster Mott insulator.

Identifying the pairing symmetry of unconventional superconductors plays an essential role in the ongoing quest to understand correlated electronic matter. A long-standing approach is to study the temperature dependence of the London penetration depth $\lambda$ for evidence of nodal points where the superconducting gap vanishes. However, experimental reports can be ambiguous due to the requisite low-temperature resolution, and the similarity in signatures of nodal quasiparticles and impurity states. Here we study the pairing symmetry of Weyl semimetal $T_d$-MoTe$_2$, where previous measurements of $\lambda$ have yielded conflicting results. We utilize a novel technique based on a microwave resontor to measure the kinetic inductance of MoTe$_2$, which is directly related to $\lambda$. The high precision of this technique allows us to observe power-law temperature dependence of $\lambda$, and to measure the anomalous nonlinear Meissner effect -- the current dependence of $\lambda$ arising from nodal quasiparticles. Together, these measurements provide smoking gun signatures of nodal superconductivity.

Two-dimensional materials are a fertile ground for exploring quantum geometric phenomena, with Berry curvature and its first moment, the Berry curvature dipole, playing a central role in their electronic response. These geometric properties influence electronic transport and result in the anomalous and nonlinear Hall effects, and are typically controlled using static electric fields or strain. However, the possibility of modulating quantum geometric quantities in real-time remains unexplored. Here, we demonstrate the dynamic modulation of Berry curvature and its moments, as well as the generation of a pseudo-electric field using time-dependent strain. By placing heterostructures on a membrane, we introduce oscillatory strain together with an in-plane AC electric field and measure Hall signals that are modulated at linear combinations of the frequencies of strain and electric field. Our measurements reveal modulation of Berry curvature and its first moment. Notably, we provide direct experimental evidence of pseudo-electric field that results in an unusual dynamic strain-induced Hall response. This approach opens up a new pathway for controlling quantum geometry on demand, moving beyond conventional static perturbations. The pseudo-electric field provides a framework for external electric field-free anomalous Hall response and opens new avenues for probing the topological properties.

We apply methods of equivariant homotopy theory, which may not previously have found due attention in condensed matter physics, to classify first the fragile/unstable topological phases of 2D crystalline Chern insulator materials, and second the possible topological order of their fractional cousins. We highlight that the phases are given by the equivariant 2-Cohomotopy of the Brillouin torus of crystal momenta (with respect to wallpaper point group actions) -- which, despite the attention devoted to crystalline Chern insulators, seems not to have been considered before. Arguing then that any topological order must be reflected in the adiabatic monodromy of gapped quantum ground states over the covariantized space of these band topologies, we compute the latter in examples where this group is non-abelian, showing that any potential FQAH anyons must be localized in momentum space. We close with an outlook on the relevance for the search for topological quantum computing hardware. Mathematical details are spelled out in a supplement.

Brownian circuits implement computation through stochastic transitions driven by thermal fluctuations. While the energetic costs of such fluctuation-driven computation have been extensively studied within stochastic thermodynamics, much less is known about its computational complexity, in particular how computation time scales with circuit size. Here, the computation time of explicitly designed Brownian circuits is investigated numerically via the first-passage time to a completed state. For arithmetic circuits such as adders, varying the forward transition rate induces a sharp change in the scaling behavior of the mean computation time, from linear to exponential in circuit size. This change can be interpreted as an easy-hard transition in computational time complexity. The transition suggests that, for meaningful computational tasks, achieving efficient polynomial-time computation generically requires a finite forward bias, corresponding to a nonzero energy input. As a counterexample, it is shown that arbitrary logical operations can be reduced to an effectively one-dimensional stochastic process, for which the zero-bias limit lines within the computationally efficient (easy) regime. However, realizing such a one-dimensional normal form unavoidably leads to an exponential increase in circuit size. These results reveal a fundamental trade-off between computation time, circuit size, and energy input in Brownian circuits, and demonstrate that phase transitions in time complexity provide a natural framework for characterizing the cost of fluctuation-driven computation.

Quantum topology categorizes physical systems in integer invariants, which are robust to some deformations and certain types of disorder. A prime example is the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) model, which has two distinct topological phases, the trivial phase with no edge states and the non-trivial phase with zero-energy edge states. The energy dispersion of the SSH model is dominated by a gap around zero energy, which suppresses the transmission. This exponential suppression of the transmission with system length is determined by the Lyapounov exponent. Here we find an analytical expression of the Lyapounov as a function of energy in the presence of both diagonal and off-diagonal disorder. We obtain this result by finding a recurrence relation for the local density, which can be averaged over different disorder configurations. There is excellent agreement between our analytical expression and the numerical results over a wide range of disorder strengths and disorder types. The real space winding number is evaluated as a function of off-diagonal and on-site disorder for possible applications of quantum topology.

We investigate the electronic transport properties of a superconductor-quantum dot-superconductor Josephson junction coupled to a ferromagnetic metal reservoir in the presence of an external magnetic field. The device is described by an effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonian, whose complex eigenvalues encode the energy (real part) and the broadening (imaginary part) of the Andreev quasi-bound states. When extending the Andreev current formula to the non-Hermitian case, a novel contribution arises that is proportional to the phase derivative of the levels broadening. This term becomes particularly relevant in the presence of exceptional points (EPs) in the spectrum, but its experimental detection is not straightforward. We identify optimal Andreev spectrum configurations where this novel current contribution can be clearly highlighted, and we outline an experimental protocol for its detection. We point out that the phase dependence in the levels imaginary part originates from the breaking of a time-reversal-like symmetry. In particular, spectral configurations in the broken phase of the symmetry and without EPs can be obtained, where this novel contribution can be easily resolved. The proposed protocol would allow to probe for the first time a fingerprint of non-Hermiticity in open junctions that is not strictly related to the presence of EPs.

We develop a fully quantum-mechanical theory of negative magnetoresistance in multi-Weyl semimetals in the ${\bf E}\parallel{\bf B}$ configuration, where the chiral anomaly is activated. The magnetotransport response is governed by Landau quantization and the emergence of multiple chiral Landau levels associated with higher-order Weyl nodes. These anomaly-active modes have unidirectional dispersion fixed by the node's monopole charge and dominate charge transport. As the magnetic field increases, individual chiral branches successively cross the Fermi energy, producing discrete slope changes in the longitudinal conductivity and a step-like negative magnetoresistance. This quantized evolution provides a direct experimental signature of multi-Weyl topology. Bulk Landau levels contribute only at very low fields due to strong disorder scattering and do not affect the anomaly-driven regime. Our results establish a unified, fully quantum-mechanical framework in which negative magnetoresistance arises from the discrete Landau-quantized spectrum and microscopic impurity scattering, beyond semiclassical anomaly descriptions.

X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) is a widely utilized technique for chemical analysis of solid surfaces, sensitive to the chemical environment of atoms via core-level binding energy shifts. While modern instruments allow obtaining the experimental data with ease, their evaluation and interpretation is challenging to newcomers to the field as a profound knowledge of the method is required for a correct analysis. Here we present a concise yet comprehensive introduction to the fundamental principles and methodologies of XPS, covering photoemission processes, chemical shifts, charge referencing, peak fitting, and quantification strategies. This overview aims to bridge the gap between data collection and reliable analysis, providing essential knowledge for correct interpretation. By clarifying key concepts and common practices, this work supports improved accuracy in surface chemical characterization using XPS.

Here we demonstrate the magnetocaloric effect (MCE) of a 4d-4f correlated system, namely Ba3RRu2O9 (R= Ho, Gd, Tb, Nd). The compound Ba3HoRu2O9 antiferromagnetically orders at 50 K where both the Ho and Ru-moments order, followed by another phase transition ~ 10 K. Whereas, the compound Ba3GdRu2O9 and Ba3TbRu2O9 orders at 14.5 and 10.5 K respectively, where the ordering of both R and Ru moments are speculated. Our results reveal robust MCE around low-T magnetic phase transition for all the heavy rare-earth members (Ho, Gd, Tb) in this family. The heavy rare-earth members exhibit an intriguing MCE behavior switching from conventional to non-conventional MCE. Interestingly, the light R-member, Ba3NdRu2O9, orders ferromagnetically below 24 K where Nd-moments order, followed by Ru-ordering below 18 K, exhibits a positive MCE below and above FM-ordering. The compelling MCE are attributed to temperature dependent complex spin-reorientations for different R-members and anisotropy.

In this paper, we report a Brownian dynamics simulation of the mobility-induced phase separation which occurs in a two-dimensional binary mixture of active soft Brownian particles, whose interactions are modeled by non-additive Weeks-Chandler-Andersen potentials inspired in Lennard-Jones potentials used for glass-forming passive mixtures. The analysis of structural properties, such as the radial distribution functions and the hexatic order parameter, shows that the high-density coexisting state in the binary case is spatially disordered, unlike the solid-like state observed for the monocomponent system. Characterization of the mean-square displacement of the active particles shows that both the low- and high-density coexisting states have diffusive behavior for long times. Thus, the high-density coexisting states are liquid-like in the binary cases. Moreover, diffusive behavior is also observed in the high-density solid-like state for the monocomponent system, which is driven by the presence of active topological defects.

The temperature dependence of the spontaneous magnetization of Ni2MnGa and other ferromagnets can be described in reduced coordinates by the superellipse equation using a single dimensionless parameter. This critical exponent parameter equals 2.4 for Ni2MnGa, 2.7 for nickel and cobalt, and 3.0 for iron. Because reduced magnetization and reduced temperature enter the equation symmetrically, the Ms(T) dependence can be measured experimentally only in the low-temperature range, from 0 to 0.5TC. The magnetization curve from 0.5TC to TC can then be obtained by interchanging reduced magnetization and temperature in the superellipse equation. In this way, the experimentally challenging task of measuring spontaneous magnetization near Tc is avoided, as the behavior near Tc is effectively determined from measurements performed near T = 0.

In this study, novel exact solutions of the Duffing equation with their phase portraits have been proposed and reasoned. It is shown that phase trajectories are initially elliptical and become distorted in the unstable area within the growth of the variable parameter. Instability criteria of identified solutions have been determined together with the Fourier series transformation up to the first and high harmonics in a sense of the physical interpretation. An explicit form for the differential operator, corresponding to considered functions, has been derived with evaluation of its main functional spectrum. Non-isothermal creep tests of different materials were completely described using the Duffing equation via noted solutions up to the fracture as processes with personal deformation response. We successfully examined a relationship between the thermal and magnetic properties of the ferromagnetic amorphous alloy under its non-linear deformation, using the critical exponents. With a high linear correlation between our model and experiments, behaviour of organic and metallic systems is well predicted at the same thermo-mechanical testing conditions on the mesoscale.

Double perovskites containing 4d--4f interactions provide a platform to study complex magnetic phenomena in correlated systems. Here, we investigate the magnetic ground state and quasiparticle excitations of the fascinating double perovskite system, Ba$_2$DyRuO$_6$, through Time of flight (TOF) neutron diffraction (TOF), inelastic neutron scattering (INS), and theoretical modelling. The compound Ba$_2$DyRuO$_6$ is reported to exhibit a single magnetic transition, in sharp contrast to most of the other rare-earth (R) members in this family, A$_2$RRuO$_6$ (A = Ca/Sr/Ba), which typically show magnetic ordering of the Ru ions, followed by R-ion ordering. Our neutron diffraction results confirm that long-range antiferromagnetic order emerges at $T_\mathrm{N} \approx 47$~K, primarily driven by 4d--4f Ru$^{5+}$--Dy$^{3+}$ exchange interactions, where both Dy and Ru moments start to order simultaneously. The ordered ground state is a collinear antiferromagnet with Ising character, carrying ordered moments of $\mu_{\mathrm{Ru}} = 1.6(1)~\mu_\mathrm{B}$ and $\mu_{\mathrm{Dy}} = 5.1(1)~\mu_\mathrm{B}$ at 1.5~K. Low-temperature INS reveals well-defined magnon excitations below 10~meV. SpinW modelling of the INS spectra evidences complex exchange interactions and the presence of magnetic anisotropy, which governs the Ising ground state and accounts for the observed magnon spectrum. Combined INS and Raman spectroscopy reveal crystal-electric-field (CEF) excitations of Dy$^{3+}$ at 46.5 and 71.8~meV in the paramagnetic region. The observed CEF levels are reproduced by point-charge calculations consistent with the $O_h$ symmetry of Dy$^{3+}$. A complementary machine-learning approach is used to analyse the phonon spectrum and compare with INS data. Together, these results clarify the origin of phonon and magnon excitations and their role in the ground-state magnetism of Ba$_2$DyRuO$_6$.

We investigate the dynamical pathways of a geometric phase transition in a two-dimensional active lattice gas undergoing motility-induced phase separation. The transition is between metastable morphologies of the liquid cluster: a system-spanning "slab" and a compact "droplet". We generate trajectories of this transition in both directions using forward flux sampling. We find that the droplet-to-slab transition always follows a similar mechanism to its equilibrium counterpart, but the reverse (slab-to-droplet) transition depends on rare non-equilibrium fluctuations. At low Peclet numbers the equilibrium and non-equilibrium pathways compete, while at high Peclet numbers the equilibrium pathway is entirely suppressed, and the only allowed mechanism involves a large vapour bubble. We discuss the implications of these findings for active matter systems more generally.

Through periodic Training we can gradually buildup a reproducible responses in a disordered system where plasticity dominates over elasticity as is known in classical amorphous materials and soft matter 1, 6. Here we show that a similar concept can be extended to disordered quantum systems. Periodic electrical or mechanical driving of a disordered quantum-dot network can sculpt the effective Hamiltonian, producing either a low-energy transport valley that enhances exciton conduction, or a localized regime with many body memory like behavior. Our results establish training as a new paradigm for creating functional order in disordered quantum matter.

Dry active matter systems are well-known to exhibit Motility-Induced Phase Separation (MIPS). However, in wet active systems, attractive hydrodynamic interactions mediated by active particles stalled at a boundary can introduce complementary mechanisms for aggregation. In the work of Caciagli et al. (PRL 125, 068001, 2020), it was shown that the attractive hydrodynamic interactions due to active particles stalled at a boundary can be described in terms of an effective potential. In this paper, we present a model of active Brownian particles, where a fraction of active particles are stalled, and thus, mediate inter-particle interactions through the effective potential. Our investigation of the model reveals that a small fraction of stalled particles in the system allows for the formation of dynamical clusters at significantly lower densities than predicted by standard MIPS. We provide a comprehensive phase diagram in terms of weighted average cluster sizes that is mapped in the plane of the fraction of stalled particles ($\alpha$) and the Peclet number. Our findings demonstrate that even a marginal value of $\alpha$ is sufficient to drive phase separation at low global densities, bridging the gap between theoretical models and experimental observations of dilute active systems.

We present a generalizable scale-bridging computational framework that enables predictive modeling of insertion-type electrode materials from atomistic to device scales. Applied to sodium manganese hexacyanoferrate, a promising cathode material for grid-scale sodium-ion batteries, our methodology employs an active-learning strategy to train a Moment Tensor Potential through iterative hybrid grand-canonical Monte Carlo--molecular dynamics sampling, robustly capturing configuration spaces at all sodiation levels. The resulting machine learning interatomic potential accurately reproduces experimental properties including volume expansion, operating voltage, and sodium concentration-dependent structural transformations, while revealing a four-order-of-magnitude difference in sodium diffusivity between the rhombohedral (sodium-rich) and tetragonal (sodium-poor) phases at 300 K. We directly compute all critical parameters -- temperature- and concentration-dependent diffusivities, interfacial and strain energies, and complete free-energy landscapes -- to feed them into pseudo-2D phase-field simulations that predict phase-boundary propagation and rate-dependent performances across electrode length scales. This multiscale workflow establishes a blueprint for rational computational design of next-generation insertion-type materials, such as battery electrode materials, demonstrating how atomistic insights can be systematically translated into continuum-scale predictions.

We comprehensively study the unconventional pairing and collective modes in the multiband kagome superconductors AV$_3$Sb$_5$ (A=$\mathrm{K},\mathrm{Cs},\mathrm{Rb}$). By solving gap equations at zero temperature, we identify a transition from normal $s++/s\pm$-wave pairing to time-reversal symmetry (TRS) breaking pairing with a variation of inter-pocket interactions or density of states. This TRS breaking pairing originates from the superconducting phase frustration of different Fermi pockets and can account for experimental TRS breaking signal in kagome superconductors. Moreover, we investigate collective modes, including the Higgs, Leggett, and Bogoloubov-Anderson-Goldstone modes, arising from fluctuations of the amplitude, relative phase, and overall phase of the superconducting order parameters, respectively. Remarkably, due to the presence of multibands, one branch of the Leggett modes becomes nearly massless near the TRS breaking transition, providing a compelling smoking-gun signature of TRS-breaking superconductivity, in clear contrast to TRS-breaking charge orders. Our results elucidate the rich superconducting physics and its associated collective modes in kagome metals, and suggest feasible experimental detection of TRS breaking pairing.

Accurate crystal structure prediction (CSP) at finite temperatures with quantum anharmonic effects remains challenging but very prominent in systems with lightweight atoms such as superconducting hydrides. In this work, we integrate machine-learned interatomic potentials (MLIPs) with the stochastic self-consistent harmonic approximation (SSCHA) to enable evolutionary CSP on the quantum anharmonic free-energy landscape. Using LaH$_{10}$ at 150 GPa and 300 K as a test case, we compare two approaches for SSCHA-based CSP: using light-weight active-learning MLIPs (AL-MLIPs) trained on-the-fly from scratch, and foundation models or universal MLIPs (uMLIPs) from the Matbench project. We demonstrate that AL-MLIPs allow to correctly predict the experimentally known cubic Fm$\bar{3}$m phase as the most stable polymorph at 150 GPa but require corrections within the thermodynamic perturbation theory to get consistent results. The uMLIP Mattersim-5m allow to conduct SSCHA-based CSP without requiring per-structure training and even get correct structure ranking near the global minimum, though fine-tuning may be needed for higher accuracy. Our results show that including quantum anharmonicity simplifies the free-energy landscape and is essential for correct stability rankings, that is especially important for high-temperature phases that could be missed in classical 0 K CSP. The proposed approach extends the reach of CSP to systems where quantum nuclear motion and anharmonicity dominate.

Local markers provide an efficient and powerful characterization of topological features of many systems, especially when the translation symmetry is broken. Recently, a universal topological local marker applicable in different symmetry classes of topological systems is proposed. However, it suffers from irregular behaviors at the boundary and its connection to other topological indexes remains elusive. In this work, we construct regularized universal topological local markers that apply to Dirac systems by utilizing position operators that are compatible with periodic boundary conditions. The regularized local markers eliminate the obstructive boundary irregularities successfully, and give rise to the desired global topological invariants such as the Chern number consistently when integrated over all the lattice sites. Furthermore, the regularized form allows us to establish an explicit connection between the local markers and some other known topological indices in two dimensions. For instance, it turns out to be equivalent to the Bott index in classes A, D, and C, and equivalent to the spin Chern number in classes DIII and AII. We further examine the utility and stability of this new marker in disordered scenarios. We find that its variance shows peaks at the phase boundaries, which promotes it as a useful indicator for detecting disorder-induced topological phase transitions.

Improving hydrogen storage density is essential for reducing the extreme conditions required in applications such as nuclear fusion. However, the recognition of metallic hydrogen as the "Holy Grail" of high-pressure science highlights the difficulty of high-density hydrogen aggregation. Here, we report a solid-state crystal H9@C20 formed by embedding hydrogen atoms into C20 fullerene cages and utilizing chemical precompression, which remains stable under ambient pressure and temperature conditions and exhibits metallic properties. This precompression effect is reflected in the formation of C-H bonds within the cage and C-C bonds between cages, resulting in the transformation of all C atoms from sp2 to sp3 hybridization with inward and outward distortions, while promoting delocalized multicenter bonding within the H9 aggregate. In particular, the hydrogen density inside the C20 cage exceeds that of solid hydrogen, achieving a uniform discrete distribution with H9 as monomers. Further study reveals that filling hydrogen molecules into voids between H9@C20 primitive cells can increase hydrogen content while maintaining structural stability, forming a solid-gas mixed hydrogen storage crystal. Our findings provide a basis for developing high-density hydrogen storage materials under ambient conditions.

Linking entropy production (EP) to information is a key step toward data-driven nonequilibrium thermodynamics. We derive an exact identity for overdamped Langevin dynamics that equates the total EP rate to the mutual-information rate between an infinitesimal displacement and its time-symmetric midpoint, up to a bulk mean-flow contribution. This mapping elevates information theory to a thermodynamic calculus: the chain rule yields a canonical, nonnegative split into self and interaction EP, and leads to a tighter bound on learning rate with interaction EP as the necessary cost. As a proof of concept, applying the estimator to red-blood-cell flickering shows that interaction EP robustly exposes active signatures that conventional summaries can miss.

We employ small-angle X-ray and dynamic light scattering to investigate the microscopic structure and dynamics of dense suspensions of ultra-low crosslinked (ULC) poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) microgels. By probing the supercooled and glassy regimes, we characterize the relationship between structure and dynamics as a function of effective volume fraction $\phi$ and probed length scale. We demonstrate that ULC microgels act as fragile glass formers whose dynamics are governed solely by $\phi$. In contrast, the microscopic structure depends on the specific combination of microgel number density and swelling state that define $\phi$. We identify an anomalous glassy regime where relaxation times are orders of magnitude faster than predicted by supercooled extrapolations, and show that in this regime dynamics are partly accelerated by laser light absorption. Finally, we show that the microscopic relaxation time measured for different $\phi$'s and at various scattering vectors may be rationalized by a ``time-length scale superposition principle'' analogous to the time-temperature superposition used to scale onto a master curve rheology or dielectric relaxation data of molecular systems. Remarkably, we find that the resulting master curve also applies to a different microgel system [V. Nigro \textit{et al.}, Macromolecules \textbf{53}, 1596 (2020)], suggesting a general dynamical behavior of polymeric particles.

The performance and scalability of semiconductor quantum-dot (QD) qubits are limited by electrostatic drift and charge noise that shift operating points and destabilize qubit parameters. As systems expand to large one- and two-dimensional arrays, manual recalibration becomes impractical, creating a need for autonomous stabilization frameworks. Here, we introduce a method that uses the full network of charge-transition lines in repeatedly acquired double-quantum-dot charge stability diagrams (CSDs) as a multidimensional probe of the local electrostatic environment. By accurately tracking the motion of selected transitions in time, we detect voltage drifts, identify abrupt charge reconfigurations, and apply compensating updates to maintain stable operating conditions. We demonstrate our approach on a 10-QD device, showing robust stabilization and real-time diagnostic access to dot-specific noise processes. The high acquisition rate of radio-frequency reflectometry CSD measurements also enables time-domain noise spectroscopy, allowing the extraction of noise power spectral densities, the identification of two-level fluctuators, and the analysis of spatial noise correlations across the array. From our analysis, we find that the background noise at 100~$\mu$\si{\hertz} is dominated by drift with a power law of $1/f^2$, accompanied by a few dominant two-level fluctuators and an average linear correlation length of $(188 \pm 38)$~\si{\nano\meter} in the device. These capabilities form the basis of a scalable, autonomous calibration and characterization module for QD-based quantum processors, providing essential feedback for long-duration, high-fidelity qubit operations.

Two-dimensional (2D) metallic systems with intrinsically low lattice thermal conductivity are rare, yet they are of great interest for next-generation energy and electronic technologies. Here, we present a comprehensive first-principles investigation of monolayer tin telluride (SnTe2) in its 1T (CdI2-type, P3m1) structure. Our calculations establish its energetic and dynamical stability, confirmed by large cohesive (10.9 eV/atom) and formation (-4.06 eV/atom) energies and a phonon spectrum free of imaginary modes. The electronic band structure reveals metallicity arising from strong Sn-Te p orbital hybridization. Most importantly, phonon dispersion analysis uncovers a microscopic origin for the ultralow lattice thermal conductivity: the heavy mass of Te atoms, weak Sn-Te bonding, and flat acoustic branches that yield exceptionally low and anisotropic group velocities (~5.0 x 10^3 m/s), together with the absence of a phonon bandgap that enhances Umklapp scattering. These features converge to suppress phonon-mediated heat transport. Complementary calculations of the optical dielectric response and joint density of states reveal pronounced interband transitions and a plasmonic resonance near 4.84 eV, suggesting additional optoelectronic opportunities. These findings establish monolayer SnTe2 as a 2D material whose vibrational softness naturally enforces ultralow lattice thermal conductivity, underscoring its potential for thermoelectric applications.

We use large language models (LLMs) to uncover long-ranged structure in English texts from a variety of sources. The conditional entropy or code length in many cases continues to decrease with context length at least to $N\sim 10^4$ characters, implying that there are direct dependencies or interactions across these distances. A corollary is that there are small but significant correlations between characters at these separations, as we show from the data independent of models. The distribution of code lengths reveals an emergent certainty about an increasing fraction of characters at large $N$. Over the course of model training, we observe different dynamics at long and short context lengths, suggesting that long-ranged structure is learned only gradually. Our results constrain efforts to build statistical physics models of LLMs or language itself.

The graphicality problem -- whether or not a sequence of integers can be used to create a simple graph -- is a key question in network theory and combinatorics, with many important practical applications. In this work, we study the graphicality of degree sequences distributed as a power-law with a size-dependent cutoff and as a double power-law with a size-dependent crossover. We combine the application of exact sufficient conditions for graphicality with heuristic conditions for nongraphicality which allow us to elucidate the physical reasons why some sequences are not graphical. For single power-laws we recover the known phase-diagram, we highlight the subtle interplay of distinct mechanisms violating graphicality and we explain why the infinite-size limit behavior is in some cases very far from being observed for finite sequences. For double power-laws we derive the graphicality of infinite sequences for all possible values of the degree exponents $\gamma_1$ and $\gamma_2$, uncovering a rich phase-diagram and pointing out the existence of five qualitatively distinct ways graphicality can be violated. The validity of theoretical arguments is supported by extensive numerical analysis.

Materials in which electrons occupy interstitial sites as anions are called electrides and exhibit unusual dimensionality-dependent electronic behavior. These properties make electrides attractive for catalysis, transparent conductors, and emergent quantum phenomena, yet their theoretical treatment remains challenging. In conventional materials, the ground-state atomic structure dictates the electronic configuration, whereas in electrides the electronic structure can instead govern the atomic arrangement. Here, the performance of commonly used exchange-correlation functionals is evaluated for representative one-, two-, and three-dimensional electrides. The results show that higher-cost approaches do not necessarily perform better across all cases, while standard methods capture the qualitative electride character and many key energetic and structural trends with surprising reliability. This behavior, likely arising from fortuitous error cancellation, supports the reliability of legacy studies in the field and the viability of efficient high-throughput exploration using low-cost methods. Overall, the findings support a tiered computational strategy for electride modelling, integrating system-specific heuristics with efficient first-principles screening. This approach balances computational feasibility with physical fidelity and underscores the continuing leadership of theory in the predictive discovery of electride materials across dimensionalities.

The continuous matrix product state (cMPS) ansatz is a promising numerical tool for studying quantum many-body systems in continuous space. Although it provides a clean framework that allows one to directly simulate continuous systems, the optimization of cMPS is known to be a very challenging task, especially in the case of multi-component systems. In this work, we have developed an improved optimization scheme for multi-component cMPS that enables simulations of bosonic quantum mixtures with substantially larger bond dimensions than previous works. We benchmark our method on the two-component Lieb-Liniger model, obtaining numerical results that agree well with analytical predictions. Our work paves the way for further numerical studies of quantum mixture systems using the cMPS ansatz.

Symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases in interacting bosonic systems have been extensively studied, yet most realizations rely on fine-tuned interactions or enlarged symmetries. Here we show that a qualitatively different mechanism--parity order coupled to bond dimerization--acts as a fundamental driver of bosonic topology. Using density matrix renormalization group simulations, we identify two distinct topological phases absent in the purely dimerized model: an SPT phase at half filling stabilized by positive parity coupling, and a topological phase at unit filling stabilized by negative coupling that can be adiabatically connected to a trivial phase without breaking any symmetry. Our results establish parity order as a new organizing principle for correlation-driven bosonic topology.

We present a systematic characterization of the fractal conduction pathways governing ionic transport in a non-crystalline solid below the glass-transition temperature. Using classical molecular dynamics simulations of lithium metasilicate, we combine mobility-resolved dynamical analysis with a real-space description of the regions explored by lithium ions. Ensemble-averaged velocity autocorrelation functions rapidly decorrelate and do not resolve the pronounced dynamic heterogeneity of the system, whereas single-ion analysis reveals short-lived episodes of nearly collinear motion. By mapping active-site clusters over increasing time windows, we show that ion-conducting pathways are quasi one-dimensional at short times and evolve into larger, branched structures characterized by a robust fractal dimension $d_f\simeq1.7$. This geometry persists while the silicate backbone remains structurally arrested, whereas near the glass-transition temperature the loss of structural memory leads to the reappearance of small clusters. These results provide a real-space structural interpretation of ionic transport in non-crystalline solids and support fractal pathway models of high-frequency ionic response.

Strange metals represent a foundational problem in quantum condensed matter physics, and heavy fermion systems provide a canonical setting to advance a general understanding. The concept of a Kondo destruction quantum critical point is widely invoked to describe the competition of the Kondo effect and the local-moment magnetism. Here, we develop a unified field-theoretic approach, analyzing this competition from a rare approach that is anchored by the magnetically ordered side. Our analysis reveals, for the first time within a renormalization group framework, a quantum critical point across which the Kondo effect goes from being destroyed to dominating. Our findings elucidate not only the Kondo destruction quantum criticality but also an accompanying global phase diagram of heavy fermion metals.

Supersymmetric conformal field theories (SCFTs) form a unique subset of quantum field theories which provide powerful insights into strongly coupled critical phenomena. Here, we present a microscopic and non-perturbative realization of the three-dimensional $\mathcal{N}=1$ superconformal Ising critical point, based on a Yukawa-type coupling between a 3D Ising CFT and a gauged Majorana fermion. Using the recently developed fuzzy sphere regularization, we directly extract the scaling dimensions of low-lying operators via the state-operator correspondence. At the critical point, we demonstrate conformal multiplet structure together with the hallmark of emergent spacetime supersymmetry through characteristic relations between fermionic and bosonic operators. Moreover, by tuning the Yukawa coupling, we explicitly track the evolution of operator spectra from the decoupled Ising-Majorana fixed point to the interacting superconformal fixed point, revealing renormalization-group flow at the operator level. Our results establish a controlled, non-perturbative microscopic route to 3D SCFTs.

Reliable constraints on iron's melting curve at Earth's inner-core boundary require accurate finite-temperature electronic correlations, yet DFT+DMFT calculations remain too costly for large-scale thermodynamic sampling. Here, we develop a machine-learning accelerator for charge self-consistent DFT+DMFT by training E(3)-equivariant graph neural networks to predict the local self-energy and Fermi level from atomic environments, providing an efficient warm start to the DMFT self-consistency loop. Using high-throughput data for Fe, FeO, and NiO, we obtain a 2-4 times reuduction in DMFT iterations. Leveraging this improvement, we generate correlated energies and forces for Fe at core pressures, train a neural-network interatomic potential, and determine the melting curve via two-phase coexistence simulations. We obtain a predicted melting temperature of 6225 K at 330 GPa.

Although classification for free-fermion topological superconductors (TSC) is established, systematically understanding the classification of 3D interacting TSCs remains difficult, especially those protected by crystalline symmetries like the 230 space groups. We build up a general framework for systematically classifying 3D interacting TSCs protected by crystalline symmetries together with discrete internal symmetries. We first establish a complete classification for fermionic symmetry protected topological phases (FSPT) with purely discrete internal symmetries, which determines the crystalline case via the crystalline equivalence principle. Using domain wall decoration, we obtain classification data and formulas for generic FSPTs, what are suitable for systematic computation. The four layers of decoration data $(n_1, n_2, n_3, \nu_4)$ characterize a 3D FSPT with symmetry $G_b\times_{\omega_2}Z_2^f$, corresponding to $p+ip$, Kitaev chain, complex fermion, and bosonic SPT layers. Inspired by previous works, a crucial aspect is the $p+ip$ layer, where classification involves two possibilities: anti-unitary and infinite-order symmetries (e.g., translation). We show the former maps to some mirror FSPT classification with the mirror plane decorated by a $p+ip$ superconductor, while the latter is determined by the free part of $H^1(G_b, Z_T)$, corresponding to weak TSCs. Another key point is the Kitaev chain decoration for the anti-unitary symmetries, which differs essentially from unitary ones. We explicitly obtain formulas for all three layers of decoration $(n_2, n_3, \nu_4)$, which are amenable to automatic computation. As an application, we classify the 230 space-group topological crystalline superconductors in interacting electronic systems.

Randomness generation through quantum-chaotic evolution underpins foundational questions in statistical mechanics and applications across quantum information science, including benchmarking, tomography, metrology, and demonstrations of quantum computational advantage. While statistical mechanics successfully captures the temporal averages of local observables, understanding randomness at the level of higher statistical moments remains a daunting challenge, with analytic progress largely confined to random quantum circuit models or fine-tuned systems exhibiting space-time duality. Here we study how much randomness can be dynamically generated by generic quantum-chaotic evolution under physical, non-random Hamiltonians. Combining theoretical insights with numerical simulations, we show that for broad classes of initially unentangled states, the dynamics become effectively Haar-random well before the system can ergodically explore the physically accessible Hilbert space. Both local and highly nonlocal observables, including entanglement measures, equilibrate to their Haar expectation values and fluctuations on polynomial timescales with remarkably high numerical precision, and with the fastest randomization occurring in regions of parameter space previously identified as maximally chaotic. Interestingly, this effective randomization can occur on timescales linear in system size, suggesting that the sub-ballistic growth of Renyi entropies typically observed in systems with conservation laws can be bypassed in non-random Hamiltonians with an appropriate choice of initial conditions.

Over the last decade, dendrites within individual biological neurons, which were previously thought to generally perform information pooling and networking, have now been shown to express complex temporal dynamics, Boolean-like logic, arithmetic, signal discrimination, and edge detection for image and sound recognition. Mimicking this rich functional density could offer a powerful primitive for neuromorphic computing, which has sought to replace the aging digital computing paradigms using biological inspirations. Here, using electrically driven Ovonic threshold switching in Sb-Te-doped GeSe, we demonstrate a single two-terminal component capable of self-sustained dynamics and universal Boolean logic, in addition to XOR operations (which is traditionally thought to require a network of active components). We then employ logic-driven dynamics in a single component to detect and estimate the gradients of edges in images, a task that otherwise requires elaborate circuits. A network of Ovonic switches exhibits properties of a half adder and a full adder, in addition to discriminative logic accommodating inhibitory and excitatory signals. We show that this computational primitive is not only seemingly simpler, but also offers many orders of magnitude improved energy efficiency compared to prevailing digital solutions. As such, this work paves the path for potentially emulating dendrites for efficient post-digital neuromorphic computing.

We study the quantum field theory of zero temperature perfect fluids. Such systems are defined by quantizing a classical field theory of scalar fields $\phi^I$ that act as Lagrange coordinates on an internal spatial manifold of fluid configurations. Invariance under volume preserving diffeomorphisms acting on these scalars implies that the long-wavelength spectrum contains vortex (transverse modes) with exact $\omega_T=0$ dispersion relation. As a result, physically interpreting the perturbative quantization of this theory by standard methods has proven to be challenging. In this paper, we show that correlators evaluated in the class of semi-classical (Gaussian) initial states prepared at $t=0$ are well-defined and accessible via perturbation theory. The width of the initial state effectively acts as an infrared regulator without explicitly breaking diffeomorphism invariance. As an application, we compute stress tensor two-point correlators and show that vortex modes give a non-trivial contribution to the response function, non-local in both space and time.

Predicting interfacial thermodynamics across molecular and continuum scales remains a central challenge in computational science. Classical density functional theory (cDFT) provides a first-principles route to connect microscopic interactions with macroscopic observables, but its predictive accuracy depends on approximate free-energy functionals that are difficult to generalize. Here we introduce a physics-informed learning framework that augments cDFT with neural corrections trained directly against molecular-dynamics data through adjoint optimization. Rather than replacing the theory with a black-box surrogate, we embed compact neural networks within the Helmholtz free-energy functional, learning local and nonlocal corrections that preserve thermodynamic consistency while capturing missing correlations. Applied to Lennard-Jones fluids, the resulting augmented excess free-energy functional quantitatively reproduces equilibrium density profiles, coexistence curves, and surface tensions across a broad temperature range, and accurately predicts contact angles and droplet shapes far beyond the training regime. This approach combines the interpretability of statistical mechanics with the adaptability of modern machine learning, establishing a general route to learned thermodynamic functionals that bridge molecular simulations and continuum-scale models.

We apply periodic domain-based local pair natural orbital second-order Møller--Plesset perturbation theory (DLPNO-MP2) to probe the adsorption energy of CO on MgO(001), the consensus toy model system for surface adsorption. A number of robust correlated wavefunction methods now achieve excellent agreement with experiment for the adsorption of a single CO molecule onto the MgO surface. However, studies probing denser coverage ratios are scarce because of the increased computational expense and the larger configuration space to optimize. We leverage the computational efficiency of periodic DLPNO-MP2 to perform simulations beyond a single unit cell. By using large supercells, we highlight the importance of accurately representing the thermodynamic limit of the surface, and demonstrate in turn that different coverage ratios can be consistently probed. In the dilute regime, we show that adsorption energies obtained from periodic DLPNO-MP2 agree with existing benchmarks. We then obtain adsorption energies at increasing densities approaching full monolayer coverage. Our results show a reduction in binding strength at full coverage, agreeing with experimental observations, which is explained by the increasing lateral repulsions between the COs. This study demonstrates the efficacy of periodic DLPNO-MP2 for probing increasingly sophisticated adsorption systems at the thermodynamic limit.

Large language model (LLM) agents currently depend on predefined tools or brittle tool generation, constraining their capability and adaptability to complex scientific tasks. We introduce CASCADE, a self-evolving agentic framework representing an early instantiation of the transition from "LLM + tool use" to "LLM + skill acquisition". CASCADE enables agents to master complex external tools and codify knowledge through two meta-skills: continuous learning via web search and code extraction, and self-reflection via introspection and knowledge graph exploration, among others. We evaluate CASCADE on SciSkillBench, a benchmark of 116 materials science and chemistry research tasks. CASCADE achieves a 93.3% success rate using GPT-5, compared to 35.4% without evolution mechanisms. We further demonstrate real-world applications in computational analysis, autonomous laboratory experiments, and selective reproduction of published papers. Along with human-agent collaboration and memory consolidation, CASCADE accumulates executable skills that can be shared across agents and scientists, moving toward scalable AI-assisted scientific research.

Tensor networks (TNs) are a central computational tool in quantum science and artificial intelligence. However, the lack of unified software interface across tensor-computing frameworks severely limits the portability of TN applications, coupling algorithmic development to specific hardware and software back ends. To address this challenge, we introduce the Tensor Computing Interface (TCI) -- an application-oriented, lightweight application programming interface designed to enable framework-independent, high-performance TN applications. TCI provides a well-defined type system that abstracts tensor objects together with a minimal yet expressive set of core functions covering essential tensor manipulations and tensor linear-algebra operations. Through numerical demonstrations on representative tensor-network applications, we show that codes written against TCI can be migrated seamlessly across heterogeneous hardware and software platforms while achieving performance comparable to native framework implementations. We further release an open-source implementation of TCI based on \textit{Cytnx}, demonstrating its practicality and ease of integration with existing tensor-computing frameworks.

First-principles simulations have played a crucial role in deepening our understanding of the thermodynamic properties of water, and machine learning potentials (MLPs) trained on these first-principles data widen the range of accessible properties. However, the capabilities of different first-principles methods are not yet fully understood due to the lack of systematic benchmarks, the underestimation of the uncertainties introduced by MLPs, and the neglect of nuclear quantum effects (NQEs). Here, we systematically assess first-principles methods by calculating key melting properties using path integral molecular dynamics (PIMD) driven by Deep Potential (DP) models trained on data from density functional theory (DFT) with SCAN, revPBE0-D3, SCAN0 and revPBE-D3 functionals, as well as from the MB-pol potential. We find that MB-pol is in qualitatively good agreement with the experiment in all properties tested, whereas the four DFT functionals incorrectly predict that NQEs increase the melting temperature. SCAN and SCAN0 slightly underestimate the density change between water and ice upon melting, but revPBE-D3 and revPBE0-D3 severely underestimate it. Moreover, SCAN and SCAN0 correctly predict that the maximum liquid density occurs at a temperature higher than the melting point, while revPBE-D3 and revPBE0-D3 predict the opposite behavior. Our results highlight limitations in widely used first-principles methods and call for a reassessment of their predictive power in aqueous systems.

Non-trivial 't Hooft anomaly obstructs the existence of a simple symmetric conformal boundary condition in a CFT. Conversely, there is a common piece of lore that trivial 't Hooft anomaly promises the existence of a simple symmetry conformal boundary condition in a given CFT. Recently, counter examples to this lore was realized in tetracritical Ising CFT [1] and compact boson [2] -- the simple conformal boundary conditions preserving certain anomaly-free subsymmetry are absent in these CFTs. In this work, we uncover the underlying reason for the absence of these boundary conditions in counter examples, and propose a criterion diagnosing when the lore fails for any given 2d CFT. The Symmetry TFT description for boundary conditions plays a crucial role.

In this short review paper the detailed analysis of six two-dimensional quantum {\it superintegrable} systems in flat space is presented. It includes the Smorodinsky-Winternitz potentials I-II (the Holt potential), the Fokas-Lagerstrom model, the 3-body Calogero and Wolfes (equivalently, $G_2$ rational, or $I_6$) models, and the Tremblay-Turbiner-Winternitz (TTW) system with integer index $k$. It is shown that all of them are exactly-solvable, thus, confirming the Montreal conjecture (2001); they admit algebraic forms for the Hamiltonian and both integrals (all three can be written as differential operators with polynomial coefficients without a constant term), they have polynomial eigenfunctions with the invariants of the discrete symmetry group of invariance taken as variables, they have hidden (Lie) algebraic structure $g^{(k)}$ with various $k$, and they possess a (finite order) polynomial algebras of integrals. Each model is characterized by infinitely-many finite-dimensional invariant subspaces, which form the infinite flag. Each subspace coincides with the finite-dimensional representation space of the algebra $g^{(k)}$ for a certain $k$. In all presented cases the algebra of integrals is a 4-generated $(H, I_1, I_2, I_{12}\equiv[I_1, I_2])$ infinite-dimensional algebra of ordered monomials of degrees 2,3,4,5, which is a subalgebra of the universal enveloping algebra of the hidden algebra.

We investigate exceptional points of degeneracy (EPDs) in electromagnetic scattering of a sphere dimer from the electroquasistatic limit to the fully retarded regime. In the quasistatic limit, we prove that $\parity\trev$-symmetric configurations, realized by spheres with complex-conjugate susceptibilities, host EPDs. Beyond this limit, retardation breaks $\parity\trev$-symmetry; nevertheless, by jointly tuning the material dispersion of the two spheres, we derive analytic conditions for the existence of EPDs at \textit{real-frequencies}. Near an EPD, we show that single-parameter perturbations yield the characteristic square-root splitting of the eigenfrequencies, and we quantify its impact on scattering, extinction, and absorption, clarifying sensing implications.

The interplay between topology and non-Hermiticity gives rise to exotic dynamic phenomena that challenge conventional wave-packet propagation and entanglement dynamics. While recent studies have established the non-Hermitian skin effect (NHSE) as a key mechanism for anomalous wave dynamics, a unified framework for characterizing and controlling entanglement evolution in non-Hermitian topological systems remains underdeveloped. Here, by combining theory and experiments, we demonstrate that entanglement entropy (EE) and transport currents serve as robust dynamic probes to distinguish various non-Hermitian topological regimes. Using a generalized non-Hermitian Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model implemented in an acoustic analog platform, we identify three dynamic phases, bulk-like, edge-like, and skin-like regimes, each exhibiting unique EE signatures and transport characteristics. In particular, skin-like dynamics exhibit periodic information shuttling with finite, oscillatory EE, while edge-like dynamics lead to complete EE suppression. We further map the dynamic phase diagram and show that EE scaling and temporal profiles directly reflect the competition between coherent delocalization and NHSE-driven localization. Our results establish a programmable approach to steering entanglement and transport via tailored non-Hermitian couplings, offering a pathway for engineering quantum information dynamics in synthetic phononic, photonic, and quantum simulators.

We present a numerical study on the synchronization and cascade failure behaviour by solving the adaptive second-order Kuramoto model on a large high voltage (HV) European power-grid. This non-perturbative analysis takes into account non-linear effects, which occur even when phase differences are large, when the system is away from the steady state, and even during a blackout cascade. Our dynamical simulations show that improvements in the phase synchronziation stabilization as well as the in the cascade sizes can be related to the finite size scaling behaviour of the second order Kuramoto on graphs with $d_s<4$ spectral dimensions. On the other hand drawbacks in the frequency spread and Braess effects also occur by varying the total transmitted power at large and small global couplings, presumably when the fluctuations are small, causing a freezing in the dynamics. We compare simulations of the fully AC model with those of static or adaptive High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) line replacements. The adaptive (local frequency difference-based) HVDC lines are more efficient in the steady state, at the expense of very long relaxation times.

We introduce and validate a machine learning-assisted protocol to classify time and space correlations of classical noise acting on a quantum system, using two interacting qubits as probe. We consider different classes of noise, according to their Markovianity and spatial correlations. Leveraging the sensitivity of a coherent population transfer protocol under three distinct driving conditions, the various noises are discriminated by only measuring the final transfer efficiencies. This approach reaches around 90% accuracy with a minimal experimental overhead.

Photon echo is observed in n-type Ge uniaxially stressed along the [111] crystallographic direction, with a coherence relaxation time of 300 ps. The nonlinear polarization responsible for the effect originates from antimony donors. Uniaxial stress induces valley splitting of the donor states, substantially enhancing the coherence time and enabling the observation of photon echo.

The mechanical properties of actin filaments are essential to their biological functions. Here, we introduce a highly coarse-grained model of actin filaments that preserves helicity and chirality while enabling mesoscale simulations. The framework is implemented in Cytosim, an open-source cytoskeleton simulation platform. We can predict and finely control the shape and mechanical properties of this helical filament, that can be matched to experimental values. Using this model, we investigated the role of filament chirality in motor-driven dynamics. We first show that in two different experimental configurations, motor movement along a helical filament results in a chiral motion of the filament. In a bundle of helical filaments, dimeric motors exert torques on each filament, inducing collective behaviors in the bundle such as rotation, coiling, and helical buckling, reminiscent of those observed in filopodia. Together, these results demonstrate the central role of helicity and chirality in actin mechanics and motor-driven dynamics, and establish our framework as a powerful tool for mesoscale simulations. This framework can also be used for other helical filaments beyond actin.

We report a compact setup with in-series two-dimensional magneto-optical traps (2D MOTs) that provides high-flux cold lithium and rubidium atoms. Thanks to the efficient short-distance Zeeman slowing, the maximum 3D MOT loading rate of lithium atoms reaches a record value of $6.6\times 10^{9}$ atoms/s at a moderate lithium-oven temperature of 372 degrees Celsius, which is 44 times higher than that without the Zeeman slowing light. The flux of rubidium is also as high as $2.3\times10^9$ atoms/s with the rubidium oven held at room temperature. Meanwhile, the entire vacuum-chamber system, including an ultra-high-vacuum science cell, is within a small volume of $55\times65\times70~\mathrm{cm}^3$. Our work represents a substantial improvement over traditional bulky and complex dual-species cold-atom setups. It provides a good starting point for the fast production of a double-degenerate lithium-rubidium atomic mixture and large samples of ultracold lithium-rubidium ground-state molecules.

We show that the symmetry topological field theory (SymTFT) construction, also known as the topological holography, provides a natural and intuitive framework for the entropic order parameter characterising phases with (partially) broken symmetries. Various examples of group and non-invertible symmetries are studied. In particular, the origin of the distinguishability of the vacua resulting from spontaneously broken non-invertible symmetries is made manifest with an information-theoretic perspective, where certain operators in the SymTFT are excluded from observation.

By injecting configurational entropy into soft ionic lattices, high-entropy halide perovskites offer a compelling route toward photonic materials that are both functionally rich and operationally robust; however, converting compositional complexity into predictable optical function remains challenging. Here we demonstrate device-relevant ultrabroadband near-infrared (NIR) photonics by integrating element-specific roles within an entropy-stabilized lattice. We establish high-entropy rare-earth halide double-perovskite single crystals, Cs2Na(Sb,Re)Cl6 (Re3+ = Sc3+, Er3+, Yb3+, Tm3+), where near-equiatomic B(III)-site alloying yields a single-phase cubic solid solution (S_config about 1.6R) with homogeneous multication incorporation. Sb3+ acts as a broadband sensitizer that unifies excitation and cooperatively activates multiple lanthanide emitters, transforming single-mode emission into wide-coverage NIR output (850-1600 nm) with three fingerprint bands at 996, 1220, and 1540 nm. This tri-peak, self-referenced signature enables redundancy-based ratiometric readout with reduced sensitivity to intensity drift, supporting reliable solvent identification and quantitative mixture sensing. Beyond functional expansion, accelerated aging tests show markedly improved tolerance to humidity and oxygen versus single-component analogues. The robustness is experimentally attributed to octahedral contraction-strengthened metal-halide bonding that increases the kinetic barrier for moisture-triggered bond cleavage, together with entropy-induced lattice distortion that impedes long-range halide migration and suppresses defect/impurity-phase formation. Finally, a UV-pumped phosphor-converted LED delivers spectrally stable, wide-coverage NIR illumination, highlighting configurational-entropy engineering as a practical strategy to couple ultrabroadband photonic function with environmental stability.

The Gaussian phase approximation (GPA) underlies many standard diffusion magnetic resonance (MR) signal models, yet its validity is rarely scrutinized. Here, we assess the validity of the GPA by analytically deriving the excess phase kurtosis $\kappa_4/\kappa_2^2$, where $\kappa_n$ is the $n^{\text{th}}$ cumulant of the accumulated phase distribution due to motion. We consider the signal behavior of the spin echo with constant gradient amplitude $g$ and echo time $T$ in several one-dimensional model systems: (1) a stationary Poisson pore-hopping model with uniform pore spacing $\Delta x$ and mean inter-hop time $\tau_{\text{hop}}$; (2) a trapped-release model in which spin isochromats are initially immobilized and then released with diffusivity $D$ following an exponentially-distributed release time, $\tau_{\text{rel}}$; and (3) restricted diffusion in a domain of length $L$. To our knowledge, this is among the first systematic analytical treatments of spin echo phase kurtosis without assuming Gaussian compartments or infinitesimally short gradient pulses. In the pore-hopping system, $\kappa_4/\kappa^2_2 = (9/5)\tau_{\text{hop}}/T$, inversely proportional to the mean hop number, $T/\tau_{\text{hop}}$. In the trapped-release system, $\kappa_4/\kappa_2^2$ is positive and decreases roughly log-linearly with $T/\langle\tau_{\text{rel}}\rangle$, where $\langle\tau_{\text{rel}}\rangle$ is the average release time. For restriction, $\kappa_4/\kappa_2^2$ vanishes at small and large $L/\sqrt{DT}$, but has complicated intermediate behavior. There is a negative peak at $L/\sqrt{DT}\approx 1.2$ and a positive peak at $L/\sqrt{DT}\approx 4.4$. Monte Carlo simulations are included to validate the analytical findings. Overall, we find that the GPA does not generally hold for these systems under moderate experimental conditions, i.e., $T=10\;\mathrm{ms}$, $g\approx 0.2-0.6\;\mathrm{T/m}$.

Many advanced energy harvesting technologies rely on advanced control of thermal emission. Recently, it has been shown that the emissivity and absorptivity of thermal emitters can be controlled independently in nonreciprocal emitters. While significant progress has been made in engineering these nonreciprocal thermal emitters, realizing a highly efficient, pattern-free emitter capable of supporting dual-polarization nonreciprocal emission remains a challenging task. Existing solutions are largely based on metamaterials and exhibit polarization-dependent behavior. This work proposes pattern-free multilayer heterostructures combining magneto-optical and magnetic Weyl semimetal materials and systematically evaluates their nonreciprocal emission performance for p- and s-polarized waves. The findings show that omnidirectional polarization-independent nonreciprocity can be achieved utilizing multilayer structures with different magnetization directions that do not follow simple vector summation. To further enhance the performance, Pareto optimization is employed to tune the key design parameters, enabling the maximization of nonreciprocal thermal emission in a given wavelength range. This approach offers a versatile strategy for designing high-performance thermal emitters tailored for multi-objective optical functionalities.

With the advent of quantum simulation experiments of lattice gauge theories (LGTs), an open question is the effect of non-Hermiticity on their rich physics. The well-known PXP model, a U$(1)$ LGT with a two-level electric field in one spatial dimension, has become a paradigm of exotic physics in and out of equilibrium. Here, we introduce a non-Hermitian version in which the spin-flip rate differs between the two spin directions. While the naive expectation is that non-Hermiticity might suppress coherent phenomena such as quantum many-body scars, we find that when the facilitating direction of the spin is disfavored, the oscillations are instead \emph{enhanced}, decaying much slower than in the PXP limit. We demonstrate that this can be understood through a similarity transformation that maps our model to the standard PXP model, revealing that the oscillations are enhanced versions of the PXP scars. Our work provides an analytically tractable and conceptually simple example where non-Hermiticity enhances the stability of dynamically non-trivial coherent many-body modes.

We study the interplay between holomorphic conformal field theory and dualities of 3D topological quantum field theories generalizing the paradigm of level-rank duality. A holomorphic conformal field theory with a Kac-Moody subalgebra implies a topological interface between Chern-Simons gauge theories. Upon condensing a suitable set of anyons, such an interface yields a duality between topological field theories. We illustrate this idea using the $c=24$ holomorphic theories classified by Schellekens, which leads to a list of novel sporadic dualities. Some of these dualities necessarily involve condensation of anyons with non-abelian statistics, i.e. gauging non-invertible one-form global symmetries. Several of the examples we discover generalize from $c=24$ to an infinite series. This includes the fact that Spin$(n^{2})_{2}$ is dual to a twisted dihedral group gauge theory. Finally, if $-1$ is a quadratic residue modulo $k$, we deduce the existence of a sequence of holomorphic CFTs at central charge $c=2(k-1)$ with fusion category symmetry given by $\mathrm{Spin}(k)_{2}$ or equivalently, the $\mathbb{Z}_{2}$-equivariantization of a Tambara-Yamagami fusion category.

We construct a four-dimensional lattice-gas model with finite-range interactions that has non-periodic, ``quasicrystalline'' Gibbs states at low temperatures. Such Gibbs states are probability measures which are small perturbations of non-periodic ground-state configurations corresponding to tilings of the plane with Ammann's aperiodic tiles. Our construction is based on the correspondence between probabilistic cellular automata and Gibbs measures on their space-time trajectories, and a classical result on noise-resilient computing with cellular automata. The cellular automaton is constructed on the basis of Ammann's tiles, which are deterministic in one direction, and has non-periodic space-time trajectories corresponding to each valid tiling. Repetitions along two extra dimensions, together with an error-correction mechanism, ensure stability of the trajectories subjected to noise.

In this perspective, we consider the development of statistical hydrodynamics, focusing on the way in which the intrinsic stochasticity of turbulent phenomena was identified and is being explored. A major purpose of our discussion is to bring out the role of anomalies in turbulent phenomena, in ways that are not usually done, and to emphasize how the description of turbulent phenomena requires delicate considerations of asymptotic limits. The scope of our narrative includes selected historical aspects that are not usually emphasized, primarily due to G.I. Taylor, as well as discussions of certain aspects of the laminar-turbulent transition, the behaviour of turbulent drag at intermediate Reynolds numbers, and the statistics of fully-developed turbulence that exhibit spontaneous stochasticity.

Parametrically driven oscillators can emerge as a basis for the next generation of qubits. Classically, these systems exhibit two stable oscillatory states with opposite phases. Upon quantization, these states turn into a pair of closely spaced Floquet states, which can serve as the logical basis for a qubit. However, interaction with the environment induces phase-slip events which set a limit on qubit coherence. Such phase slips persist even at zero temperature due to a mechanism known as quantum activation \cite{QuantumActivation}. In contrast to conventional tunneling, the quantum activation is described by a {\em real-time} instanton trajectory in the complexified phase space of the system. In this work, we show that the phase-slip rate is exponentially sensitive to weak AC perturbations. The spectrum of the system's response -- captured by the so-called logarithmic susceptibility (LS) -- enables a direct observation of characteristic features of real-time instantons. Studying this spectrum suggests new means of efficient qubit control.

We present experimental evidence of a thermally-driven amplitude-frequency nonlinearity in a thin-film quartz phononic crystal resonator at millikelvin temperatures. The nonlinear response arises from the coupling of the mechanical mode to an ensemble of microscopic two-level system defects driven out of equilibrium by a microwave drive. In contrast to the conventional Duffing oscillator, the observed nonlinearity exhibits a mixed reactive-dissipative character. Notably, the reactive effect can manifest as either a softening or hardening of the mechanical resonance, depending on the ratio of thermal to phonon energy. By combining the standard TLS theory with a thermal conductance model, the measured power-dependent response is quantitatively reproduced and readout-enhanced relaxation damping from off-resonant TLSs is identified as the primary mechanism limiting mechanical coherence. Within this framework, we delineate the conditions under which similar systems will realize this nonlinearity.

Defects trap photocarriers and hinder solar water splitting. The nanoscale photocarrier transport, trapping, and recombination mechanisms are usually inferred from ensemble-averaged measurements and remain elusive. Because an individual high-performing nanoparticle photocatalyst may outperform the ensemble average, design rules that would otherwise enhance catalytic efficiency remain unclear. Here, we introduce photomodulated electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) in an optically coupled scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) to map photocarrier localization. Using rhodium-doped strontium titanate (SrTiO3:Rh) solar water-splitting nanoparticles, we directly image the carrier densities concentrated at oxygen-vacancy surface trap states. This is achieved by separating photothermal heating from photocarrier populations through experimental and computational analyses of low-loss spectra. Photomodulated STEM-EELS enables angstrom-scale imaging of defect-induced photocarrier traps and their impact on photocatalytic efficiency.

Neural quantum states efficiently represent many-body wavefunctions with neural networks, but the cost of Monte Carlo sampling limits their scaling to large system sizes. Here we address this challenge by combining sparse Boltzmann machine architectures with probabilistic computing hardware. We implement a probabilistic computer on field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and use it as a fast sampler for energy-based neural quantum states. For the two-dimensional transverse-field Ising model at criticality, we obtain accurate ground-state energies for lattices up to 80 $\times$ 80 (6400 spins) using a custom multi-FPGA cluster. Furthermore, we introduce a dual-sampling algorithm to train deep Boltzmann machines, replacing intractable marginalization with conditional sampling over auxiliary layers. This enables the training of sparse deep models and improves parameter efficiency relative to shallow networks. Using this algorithm, we train deep Boltzmann machines for a system with 35 $\times$ 35 (1225 spins). Together, these results demonstrate that probabilistic hardware can overcome the sampling bottleneck in variational simulation of quantum many-body systems, opening a path to larger system sizes and deeper variational architectures.

Using a global rotation by theta about the z-axis in the spin sector of the Jordan-Wigner transformation rotates Pauli matrices X and Y in the x-y-plane, while it adds a global complex phase to fermionic quantum states that have a fixed number of particles. With the right choice of angles, this relates expectation values of Pauli strings containing products of X and Y to different products, which can be employed to reduce the number of measurements needed when simulating fermionic systems on a quantum computer. Here, we derive this symmetry and show how it can be applied to systems in Physics and Chemistry that involve Hamiltonians with only single-particle (hopping) and two-particle (interaction) terms. We also discuss the consequences of this for finding efficient measurement circuits in variational ground state preparation.

We construct holonomic quantum gates for qubits that are encoded in the near-degenerate vibrational $E$-doublet of a deformable three-body system. Using Kendall's shape theory, we derive the Wilczek--Zee connection governing adiabatic transport within the $E$-manifold. We show that its restricted holonomy group is $\mathrm{SU}(2)$, implying universal single-qubit control by closed loops in shape space. We provide explicit loops implementing a $\pi/2$ phase gate and a Hadamard-type gate. For two-qubit operations, we outline how linked holonomic cycles in arrays generate a controlled Chern--Simons phase, enabling an entangling controlled-$X$ (CNOT) gate. We present a Ramsey/echo interferometric protocol that measures the Wilson loop trace of the Wilczek--Zee connection for a control cycle, providing a gauge-invariant signature of the non-Abelian holonomy. As a physically realizable demonstrator, we propose bond-length modulations of a Cs($6s$)--Cs($6s$)--Cs($nd_{3/2}$) Rydberg trimer in optical tweezers and specify operating conditions that suppress leakage out of the $E$-manifold.

Floquet engineering offers an unparalleled platform for realizing novel non-equilibrium topological phases. However, the unique structure of Floquet systems, which includes multiple quasienergy gaps, poses a significant challenge to classification using conventional analytical methods. We propose a novel unsupervised machine learning framework that employs a kernel defined in momentum-time ($\boldsymbol{k},t$) space, constructed directly from Floquet-Bloch eigenstates. This approach is intrinsically data-driven and requires no prior knowledge of the underlying topological invariants, providing a fundamental advantage over prior methods that rely on abstract concepts like the micromotion operator or homotopic transformations. Crucially, this work successfully reveals the intrinsic topological characteristics encoded within the Floquet eigenstates themselves. We demonstrate that our method robustly and simultaneously identifies the topological invariants associated with both the $0$-gap and the $\pi$-gap across various symmetry classes (1D AIII, 1D D, and 2D A), establishing a robust methodology for the systematic classification and discovery of complex non-equilibrium topological matter.

We explore the phase diagram of a lattice fermion model that exhibits three distinct phases: a massless fermion (MF) phase; a massive fermion phase with spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB) induced by a fermion bilinear condensate; and a massive fermion phase with symmetric mass generation (SMG). Using the fermion-bag Monte Carlo method on large cubical lattices, we find evidence for traditional second-order critical points separating the first two and the latter two phases. Remarkably, these critical points appear to merge at a multicritical point with enhanced symmetry when the symmetry breaking parameter is tuned to zero, giving rise to the recently discovered direct second-order transition between the massless and symmetric massive fermion phases.

A capacitor consisting of the [bmim][NTf$_2$] ionic liquid (IL) confined in between planar graphite electrodes has been investigated by molecular dynamics based on an all-atom, unpolarizable force field. Structural and dynamical properties such as: (i) the density and orientation of the [bmim]$^+$ and [NTf$_2$]$^-$ ions throughout the capacitor; (ii) the electrostatic double layer at the electrode / electrolyte interface; (iii) the ions' mobility perpendicular and parallel to the graphite plates are determined as a function of the electrostatic charge of the capacitor, the concentration of absorbed water, the temperature and pressure. Grouping the [bmim]$^+$ and [NTf$_2$]$^-$ ions into neutral ion pairs reveals an intriguing ordering normal to the interface that is related to correlations among the dipole moments of the neutral ion pairs. These correlations might explain the observation of an anomalous Stark effect (Pockels effect) reported a few years ago in Langmuir, vol. 37, 5193-5201, (2021), and provides useful insight for the multitude of electro-chemical applications that involve electrode / ionic liquid interfaces.

We present an \emph{ab initio} calculation within quantum statistical field theory and linear response theory, of the dissipative correction to the momentum spectrum of scalar particles emitted at decoupling (freeze-out) from a relativistic fluid assuming the initial state to be in local thermodynamic equilibrium. We obtain an expansion of the Wigner function of the interacting quantum field in terms of the gradients of the classical thermo-hydrodynamic fields - four-temperature vector and reduced chemical potential - evaluated on the initial local-equilibrium hypersurface, rather than on the decoupling (freeze-out) hypersurface as usual in kinetic theory. The gradient expansion includes an unexpected zeroth order term depending on the differences between thermo-hydrodynamic fields at the decoupling and the initial hypersurface. This term encodes a memory of the initial state which is related to the long-distance persistence of the correlation function between Wigner operator and stress-energy tensor and charged current that is discussed in detail. We address the phenomenological implications of these corrections for the momentum spectra measured in relativistic nuclear collisions.

We predict two different universal scaling regimes for the quantum transmission of metallic nanodevices following the addition of a small amount of uncorrelated disorder. A nanodevice is connected to two thin semi-infinite uniform leads, and the Non-Equilibrium Green's Function (NEGF) methodology yields the electron transmission ${\cal T}(E)$ as a function of the injected electron energy $E$. Ballistic nanodevices have no disorder and have ${\cal T}(E)=1$ for all $E$ that allow electron propagation in the leads. Quantum dragon nanodevices can have extremely strong properly correlated disorder, and still have ${\cal T}(E)=1$ for all $E$. Additional uncorrelated site disorder leads to Fano resonances in ${\cal T}(E)$. Averaging over the uncorrelated disorder we predict using perturbation theory two universal scaling regimes for ${\cal T}_{\rm ave}(E)$. The functional form of both universal scaling regimes depend on the device length and width, energy, and variance of the uncorrelated disorder. The second scaling regime, valid for small but somewhat larger uncorrelated disorder than the first scaling regime, also has the form dependent on the density of states of the system. These two scaling regimes are demonstrated to be valid via large scale computer calculations.

We investigate the non-equilibrium dynamics and steady-state properties of a driven-dissipative Bose-Hubbard chain using a self-consistent Gutzwiller mean-field (GMF) approach. By employing a robust Picard iteration scheme, we solve the non-linear master equation for the non-equilibrium steady state (NESS) in the presence of strong Kerr nonlinearity. We identify two distinct dynamical regimes governed by the interplay between coherent drive, dissipation, and interaction: a regular quasilinear regime and a chaotic regime. Linear stability analysis reveals that the transition to the chaotic regime is triggered by parametric instabilities arising from the drive-induced coherence. Furthermore, we characterize the onset of quantum chaos by calculating the out-of-time-order correlator (OTOC). Our results show that in the strong coupling regime, the OTOC exhibits rapid exponential growth and saturation, providing a clear signature of information scrambling in this open quantum system. The proposed numerical framework offers an efficient pathway to explore many-body correlations in larger photonic lattices.

We derive an analytical expression for the strain field during steady-state crack propagation in viscoelastic solids described by the standard linear solid (Zener) model. This expression reveals three regions in the fracture profile and in the strain field ahead of the crack tip, each distinguished by power-law exponents that evolve with distance from the crack tip. These features explain the experimentally observed crack-tip sharpening in rubbers and gels as the crack-propagation velocity increases, often associated with catastrophic failure triggered by a velocity jump. Furthermore, we establish de Gennes' viscoelastic trumpet on a continuum-mechanical foundation, previously based only on a scaling argument.

A systematic non-fluid to fluid transition framework and comparative research on Lorenz ratios for graphene and nonrelativistic systems have been studied to identify their Wiedemann-Franz law violation domain. Here, Lorenz ratio is defined as thermal conductivity divided by electrical conductivity times temperature times Lorenz number. In non-fluid framework, Lorenz ratio become exactly one, which means that the Wiedemann-Franz is obeyed within a Fermi Liquid domain. When one enters from Fermi Liquid to Dirac Fluid domain, Lorenz ratio becomes less than one in non-fluid framework but in fluid framework, it always remain greater than one for both domain. By compiling our outcomes and connecting with experimental data, a non-fluid to fluid transition framework is expected during the transition from Fermi Liquid to Dirac Fluid domain.

A long-standing challenge in impact mitigation is the development of versatile and omnifarious protective structures capable of encompassing a wide spectrum of scenarios, for example, ranging from low-speed pedestrian impacts to high-speed vehicle collisions. However, most existing impact mitigation strategies rely on fixed geometries or pre-tuned material properties targeting specific impact speed, lacking the ability to adapt in real time. Here, we draw inspiration from origami to design impact mitigation structures that exhibit multi-modal and self-adaptive behavior. We introduce a Resch-patterned origami structure that hosts two distinctive deformation modes: a monostable folding mode and a bistable unfolding mode featuring snap-through. Impact experiments reveal a speed-dependent dynamic bifurcation, wherein the structure autonomously switches between folding and unfolding in response to the applied impact velocity. This dynamic bifurcation, intrinsically distinct from kinematic or static origami bifurcations, enables real-time selection of deformation pathways that enhance energy dissipation across a broad range of impact conditions. We further demonstrate the scalability and practical relevance of this mechanism by fabricating tessellations in a bumper-like configuration and evaluating their performance using a pendulum-based mannequin impact test. Together, these results establish dynamic bifurcation in origami-based structures as an adaptive impact mitigation strategy. This approach enables scalable and programmable protective systems that autonomously select deformation modes in real time, with broad relevance to adaptive robotics, smart protective armor, and aerospace damping technologies.

Quantum Hall states are characterized by a topological invariant, the many-body Chern number, which determines their quantized Hall conductivity. This invariant also emerges in circular dichroic responses, namely, by applying a circular drive and comparing excitation rates for opposite orientations. This work explores the dichroic response of confined, isolated quantum Hall systems, where bulk and edge contributions cancel exactly:~When the edge response is properly isolated, the circular dichroic signal becomes quantized, serving as a direct and elegant probe of the many-body Chern number encoded in the edge physics. We demonstrate that this quantized edge response is entirely captured by low-energy chiral edge modes, allowing for a universal description of this effect based on Wen's edge theory. Its low-energy nature implies that the quantized edge response can be distinguished from the bulk response in the frequency domain. The edge response is also shown to be a sensitive diagnostic of geometric features. This opens the possibility of characterizing the shape of quantum Hall droplets through edge spectroscopic measurements, without requiring knowledge of the system's boundary profile. We illustrate our findings using realistic models of integer and fractional Chern insulators, with different edge geometries, and propose detection schemes suitable for ultracold atoms.

In this work, we investigate the underlying physical mechanism for electric-field induced resistive switching in Au/MoS2/Au based memristive devices by combining reactive Molecular Dynamics (MD) and ab-initio quantum transport calculations. Using MD with Au/Mo/S ReaxFF potential, we observe the formation of realistic conductive filament consisting of gold atoms through monolayer MoS2 layer when sufficient electric field is applied. We furthermore instigate the rupture of the gold atom filament when a sufficiently large electric field is applied in the opposite direction. To calculate the conductance of the obtained structures and identify the High Resistance (HR) and Low Resistance (LR) states, we employ the ab-initio electron transport calculations by importing the atomic structures from MD calculations. For single-defect MoS2 memristors, the obtained LRS, HRS current densities are in order of 10^7 A/cm^2 which agrees reasonably well with the reported experiments.

With the advent of self-driving labs promising to synthesize large numbers of new materials, new automated tools are required for checking potential duplicates in existing structural databases before a material can be claimed as novel. To avoid duplication, we rigorously define the novelty metric of any periodic material as the smallest distance to its nearest neighbor among already known materials. Using ultra-fast structural invariants, all such nearest neighbors can be found within seconds on a typical computer even if a given crystal is disguised by changing a unit cell, perturbing atoms, or replacing chemical elements. This real-time novelty check is demonstrated by finding near-duplicates of the 43 materials produced by Berkeley's A-lab in the world's largest collections of inorganic structures, the Inorganic Crystal Structure Database and the Materials Project. To help future self-driving labs successfully identify novel materials, we propose navigation maps of the materials space where any new structure can be quickly located by its invariant descriptors similar to a geographic location on Earth.

Low carrier densities in topological semimetals (TSMs) enable the exploration of novel magnetotransport in the quantum limit (QL). Recent findings consistent with 3D quasi-quantum Hall effect (QQHE) have positioned TSMs as promising platforms for exploring 3D quantum Hall transport, but the lack of tunability in the Fermi level has thus far limited the ability to observe a QQHE signal. Here, we tune the defect concentrations in the Dirac semimetal Cd${}_3$As${}_2$ to achieve ultra-low carrier concentrations at 2 K around $2.9\times10^{16}$cm${}^{-3}$, giving way to QQHE signal at modest fields near 10 T. At low carrier densities, where QQHE is most accessible, we find that clear QQHE is obscured by a carrier density dependent background originating from Coulomb disorder from charged point defects and Landau level broadening. Our results highlight the interplay between QQHE and Coulomb disorder, demonstrating that clear observation of QQHE in TSMs intricately depends on Fermi level and disorder magnitudes. We find that Coulomb disorder, as theoretically predicted, is an essential ingredient for understanding the magnetoresistivity for a spectrum of Fermi levels in Cd${}_3$As${}_2$, anchoring the role of defects and charged disorder in TSM applications. We discuss future constraints and opportunities in exploring 3D QQHE and quantum Hall effects in TSMs.

Since the discovery of heavy-fermion superconductivity in CeCu$_{2}$Si$_{2}$, the material has attracted great interest particularly with regard to the nature of the superconducting pairing and its mechanism. Consequently, it is essential to better understand the electronic Fermi surface topology and its role in strong antiferromagnetic fluctuations. The standard density functional theory method is insufficient to model the interplay of strong onsite Coulomb repulsion in localized 4{\it f}-electrons and their hybridization with itinerant ligand-orbital electrons. We have performed electronic ground state calculations on CeCu$_{2}$Si$_{2}$ using the Gutzwiller wavefunction approximation. The Gutzwiller approximation captures the quasiparticle band renormalization from the strong onsite Coulomb repulsion. We have performed an analysis of this effect on the electronic structure and the Fermi surface topology by varying the interaction strength and taking into account the crystal-field splitting. Using the de Haas van Alphen effect, the extremal Fermi surface cross-sectional areas were calculated to quantify the effects of quasiparticle mass renormalization on the Fermi surface. Our results confirm two Fermi surface sheets corresponding to the heavy (488m$_{e}$) and light (4.35m$_{e}$) quasiparticles, which is in close agreement with experimental measurements as well as the renormalized band method.

We find non-monotonic equilibrium energy distributions, qualitatively different from the Fermi-Dirac and Bose-Einstein forms, in strongly-interacting many-body chaotic systems. The effect emerges in systems with finite energy spectra, supporting both positive and negative temperatures, in the regime of quantum ergodicity. The results are supported by exact diagonalization calculations for chaotic Fermi-Hubbard and Bose-Hubbard models, when they have Wigner-Dyson statistics of energy spectra and demonstrate eigenstate thermalization. The proposed effects may be observed in experiments with cold atoms in optical lattices.

We investigate the structural and topological properties of hydrophobic homopolymer chains in aqueous solutions using molecular dynamics simulations and circuit topology (CT) analysis. By combining geometric observables, such as radius of gyration and degree of aggregation, with CT data, we capture the relationship between coil-globule and aggregation transitions, resolving the system's structural changes with temperature. Our results reveal a temperature-driven collective transition from isolated coiled chains to globular aggregates. At a characteristic transition temperature $T_c$, each chain in multichain systems undergoes a rapid coil-globule collapse, coinciding with aggregation, in contrast to the gradual collapse observed in single-chain systems at infinite dilution. This collective transition is reflected in geometric descriptors and a reorganization of CT motifs, shifting from intrachain-dominated motifs at low temperatures to a diverse ensemble of multichain motifs at higher temperatures. CT motif enumeration provides contact statistics while offering a topologically detailed view of polymer organization. These findings highlight CT's utility as a structural descriptor for polymer systems and suggest applications to biopolymer aggregation and folding.

The semi-empirical pseudopotential method (SEPM) has been widely applied to provide computational insights into the electronic structure, photophysics, and charge carrier dynamics of nanoscale materials. We present "DeepPseudopot", a machine-learned atomistic pseudopotential model that extends the SEPM framework by combining a flexible neural network representation of the local pseudopotential with parameterized non-local and spin-orbit coupling terms. Trained on bulk quasiparticle band structures and deformation potentials from GW calculations, the model captures many-body and relativistic effects with very high accuracy across diverse semiconducting materials, as illustrated for silicon and group III-V semiconductors. DeepPseudopot's accuracy, efficiency, and transferability make it well-suited for data-driven in silico design and discovery of novel optoelectronic nanomaterials.

We present a new formulation of the lack-of-fit reduction in non-equilibrium thermodynamics using the path-integral formalism. The formulation is based on the Onsager-Machlup variational principle, and it allows us to find reduced dynamical equations by minimizing information discrepancy with respect to the detailed evolution. The reduced evolution consists of a Hamiltonian vector field and a gradient flow. The reduction method is illustrated on the Kac-Zwanzig model, where we show how irreversibility emerges from purely Hamiltonian evolution by ignoring some degrees of freedom. We also show how to generalize the Fisher information matrix and Kullback-Leibler divergence between two probability distributions to the case when the two distributions are related by the principle of maximum entropy, even in the case when the entropy is not of Boltzmann-Gibbs type (for instance Tsallis-Havrda-Charvat entropy).

One-dimensional (1D) chains offer unique opportunities for nanoelectronics and spintronics, yet their experimental realization remains challenging because 1D motifs are often thermodynamically disfavored relative to higher-dimensional phases. Here we present a high-throughput first-principles exploration of 1D single-atomic transition-metal chalcogenide and halide chains, screening 6,832 candidates constructed from binary combinations of 28 metals and 8 non-metals. To assess kinetic accessibility, we compare the formation energetics of 1D chains with competing two-dimensional polymorphs at the nucleation stage across relevant chemical-potential windows, using nucleation-stage thermodynamic selectivity as a proxy. This workflow identifies 183 kinetically accessible 1D chains. Interpretable machine-learning analysis reveals two simple stability descriptors as key drivers of 1D stabilization. The accessible chains exhibit diverse magnetic configurations with different magnetic characters. We further uncover their pronounced magnetoelastic couplings, exemplified by CrTe with giant magnetostriction reaching 5.93%. Finally, we show that selected metallic ferromagnetic chains retain robust edge magnetism on superconducting substrates, laying the groundwork for proximity-induced topological superconductivity and Majorana zero modes.

We theoretically study spin and valley transport in a transition-metal dichalcogenide(TMDC)/ferromagnet heterostructure under a perpendicular magnetic field. We find that microwave-driven spin pumping induces a valley-selective spin excitation, a direct consequence of the valley-asymmetric Landau levels in the TMDC conduction band. This process generates a pure valley current which, as our central finding, exhibits pronounced quantum oscillations as a function of chemical potential. These oscillations provide a definitive experimental signature of the quantized valley states and establish another pathway to interface spintronics and valleytronics.

Magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) are crucial components in high-performance spintronic devices. Traditional MTJs rely on ferromagnetic (FM) materials but significant improvements in speed and packing density could be enabled by exploiting antiferromagnetic (AFM) compounds instead. Here, we report all-collinear AFM tunnel junctions (AFMTJs) fabricated with van der Waals A-type AFM metal (Fe0.6Co0.4)5GeTe2 (FCGT) electrodes and nonmagnetic semiconducting WSe2 tunnel barriers. The AFMTJ heterostructure device achieves a tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) ratio of up to 75% in response to magnetic field switching. Our results demonstrate that the TMR exclusively emerges in the AFM state of FCGT, rather than during the AFM-to-FM transition. By engineering FCGT electrodes with either even- or odd-layer configurations, volatile or non-volatile TMR could be selected, consistent with an entirely interfacial effect. TMR in the even-layer devices arose by Néel vector switching. In the odd-layer devices, TMR stemmed from interfacial spin-flipping. Experimental and theoretical analyses reveal a new TMR mechanism associated with interface-driven spin-polarized transport, despite the spin-independent nature of bulk FCGT. Our work demonstrates that collinear AFMTJs can provide comparable performance to conventional MTJs and introduces a new paradigm for AFM spintronics, in which the spin-dependent properties of AFM interfaces are harnessed.

We report a remarkable bias voltage dependent specific negative capacitance in multidomain La-doped Pb(Zr$_{0.4}$Ti$_{0.6}$)O$_3$ (PLZT) ferroelectric capacitors. The specific negative capacitance maximizes at a specific bias voltage because of emergence of maximum domain-wall density during ``switching" of the domains. Domain configuration changes from such an ``optimum" state if higher or lower bias voltage is applied at a much faster or slower rate. Phase-field simulation using time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau equation corroborates the experimental results and shows dependence of the domain-wall length during switching on the bias voltage amplitude and its maximization at a specific bias voltage amplitude. Interestingly, the radius of curvature of the resulting polarization ($P$) versus voltage ($V$) hysteresis loop at the coercive voltage ($V_C$), as well, turns out to be depending on the bias voltage. All these results indicate a close correlation among the bias voltage pulse profile (amplitude and time scale), domain-wall length during switching, shape of the resulting ferroelectric hysteresis loop, and the transient negative capacitance. It may have important ramifications both in the context of physics behind negative capacitance in a multidomain ferroelectric capacitor and devices being developed by exploiting its advantages.

In biosensing and diagnostic applications, a key objective is to design detection systems capable of identifying targets at very low concentrations, i.e., achieving high sensitivity. Here, we propose a linker-mediated detection scheme in which the presence of multivalent target molecules (linkers) facilitates the adsorption of ligand-coated guest nanoparticles onto a receptor-coated host substrate. Through a combination of computer simulations and mean-field theory, we demonstrate that, at fixed overall binding strength, increasing the valency of linkers exponentially lowers the concentration threshold for detection. This counterintuitive behavior arises from the combinatorial entropy associated with multivalent binding configurations, which tremendously amplifies the adsorption sensitivity and enables the identification of targets at extremely low concentrations. Our findings highlight multivalency engineering of linkers as a powerful strategy to substantially enhance the sensitivity of biodetection systems.

We propose a mechanism to control the motion of magnetic Skyrmions through the generation of a Skyrmion number current. This current is induced and tuned by an explicitly time-dependent Hamiltonian that includes a Zeeman term arising from the interaction between the spin system and circularly polarized light. To capture the effect, we apply a first-order perturbation method to the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation, using a breathing Skyrmion ansatz based on the Belavin-Polyakov profile. This approach reveals that the time-dependent deformation of the Skyrmion boundary produces an anisotropic breathing mode, which in turn generates a nonzero Skyrmion number current. The resulting dynamics in momentum space form a limit cycle, whose characteristics depend on the external magnetic field amplitude, the Heisenberg exchange coupling, and the Gilbert damping constant. Our formulation not only clarifies the topological origin of optically driven Skyrmion motion but also points to Skyrmion number currents as a low-dissipation alternative to electric currents for efficient Skyrmion control.

Guiding active motion is important for targeted delivery, sensing, and search tasks. Many active systems exhibit circular swimming, ubiquitous in chemical, physical, and biological systems, that biases motion and reduces transport efficiency. We show that stochastic position-orientation resetting can overcome these limitations in two-dimensional chiral active Brownian particles by interrupting circular motion, resulting in tunable dynamics. When resets are infrequent compared to chiral rotation, the steady-state mean-squared displacement varies non-monotonically with rotational diffusion. Steady state excess kurtosis and orientation autocorrelation yields spatiotemporal state diagram comprising three states: an activity-dominated chiral state, and two resetting-dominated states with and without chiral rotation; in contrast, the achiral(or non-chiral) counterpart supports only the resetting-dominated state without chiral rotation. Chirality thus enriches the dynamical landscape, enabling tunable transitions between transport modes absent in achiral systems. A simple reset protocol can therefore transform chiral active dynamics and offer a practical strategy for optimizing search and transport in circle swimmers.

The ice-rubber interface is critical in applications such as tires and shoe outsoles, yet its molecular tribology remains unclear. Using all-atom molecular dynamics simulations, we studied premelting layers at the basal face of ice in contact with styrene-butadiene rubber from 254 to 269 K. Despite its hydrophobicity, rubber enhances structural disorder of interfacial water, promoting premelting. In contrast, water mobility is suppressed by confinement from polymer chains, leading to glassy dynamics distinct from the ice-vapor interface. Near the melting point, rubber chains become more flexible and penetrate the premelting layer, forming a mixed rubber-water region that couples the dynamics of both components. These results suggest that nanoscale roughness and morphology of hydrophobic polymers disrupt ice hydrogen-bond networks, thereby enhancing premelting. Our findings provide molecular-level insight into ice slipperiness and inform the design of polymer materials with controlled ice adhesion and friction.

We investigate recurrent neural networks with asymmetric interactions and demonstrate that the inclusion of self-couplings or sparse excitatory inter-module connections leads to the emergence of a densely connected manifold of dynamically accessible stable configurations. This representation manifold is exponentially large in system size and is reachable through simple local dynamics, despite constituting a subdominant subset of the global configuration space. We further show that learning can be implemented directly on this structure via a fully local, gradient-free mechanism that selectively stabilizes a single task-relevant network configuration. Unlike error-driven or contrastive learning schemes, this approach does not require explicit comparisons between network states obtained with and without output supervision. Instead, transient supervisory signals bias the dynamics toward the representation manifold, after which local plasticity consolidates the attained configuration, effectively shaping the latent representation space. Numerical evaluations on standard image classification benchmarks indicate performance comparable to that of multilayer perceptrons trained using backpropagation. More generally, these results suggest that the dynamical accessibility of fixed points and the stabilization of internal network dynamics constitute viable alternative principles for learning in recurrent systems, with conceptual links to statistical physics and potential implications for biologically motivated and neuromorphic computing architectures.

Altermagnets host an array of magnetic multipoles, which are often visualized and studied in the reciprocal space. In the real space, the relative phase of the multipoles of the spin-density around atoms determines whether a system is an altermagnet or a conventional antiferromagnet. In this study, we approach these real space multipoles in altermagnets using a combination of first principles calculations and group theory. We show that even in collinear magnets, the local spin density is necessarily noncollinear due to spin-orbit coupling. Moreover, the noncollinear contributions often provide a more direct illustration of the magnetic multipolar character of altermagnetism than the collinear contribution, which is dominated by the dipolar term. Our first principles calculations also show that 32-poles, in addition to the octupoles, can be visible in spin-density of d-wave altermagnets, and they must be taken into account in discussions of the macroscopic response. Finally, we elucidate the interplay between magnetism and subtle crystal structural distortions in perovskite altermagnets, which provide a fertile playground for studying phase transitions between antiferromagnetic and altermagnetic phases.

The diffusion of tracer particles immersed in a granular gas under uniform shear flow (USF) is analyzed within the framework of the inelastic Boltzmann equation. Two different but complementary approaches are followed to achieve exact results. First, we maintain the structure of the Boltzmann collision operator but consider inelastic Maxwell models (IMM). Using IMM allows us to compute the collisional moments of the Boltzmann operator without knowing the velocity distribution functions of the granular binary mixture explicitly. Second, we consider a kinetic model of the Boltzmann equation for inelastic hard spheres (IHS). This kinetic model is based on the equivalence between a gas of elastic hard spheres subjected to a drag force proportional to the particle velocity and a gas of IHS. We solve the Boltzmann--Lorentz kinetic equation for tracer particles using a generalized Chapman--Enskog--like expansion around the shear flow distribution. This reference distribution retains all hydrodynamic orders in the shear rate. The mass flux is obtained to first order in the deviations of the concentration, pressure, and temperature from their values in the reference state. Due to the velocity space anisotropy induced by the shear flow, the mass flux is expressed in terms of tensorial quantities rather than the conventional scalar diffusion coefficients. The exact results derived here are compared with those previously obtained for IHS by using different approximations [JSTAT P02012 (2007)]. The comparison generally shows reasonable quantitative agreement, especially for IMM results. Finally, we study segregation by thermal diffusion as an application of the theory. The phase diagrams illustrating segregation are shown and compared with IHS results, demonstrating qualitative agreement.

A Chain of Springs and Masses (CSM) model is used in the interpretation of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of movement of atoms in orientated FCC crystals. A force of dynamic origin is found that is perpendicular to the direction of the external shear pressure. It is proportional to the square of the applied pressure; It causes breaking of axial symmetry for propagation of transverse acoustic waves. It leads to a non-linear elastic response of crystals and to chaotic patterns in the motion of atoms. We provide an analytical derivation of an effective atomistic 3D potential for interaction between crystallographic layers. The potential is found to possess a component that has an anharmonic threefold axial symmetry around one direction. It reduces to the H{é}non-Heinen potential in a 2D cross-section, leading to mathematically rich, complex dynamic features. Results of simulation predict displacements of atoms that are inconsistent with the static theory of elasticity that may have been overlooked in experiments.

We consider the asymmetric version of the Popkov-Schütz two-lane lattice gas with general jump rates, subject to the stationary measure being of product form. This still leaves five free parameters. At density 1/2 the eigenvalues of the flux Jacobian are degenerate. We compute the second order expansion of the average fluxes at density 1/2 and thereby identify the universality classes.

Symbolic regression offers a promising route toward interpretable machine learning, yet existing methods suffer from poor predictability and computational intractability when exploring large expression spaces. I introduce GoodRegressor, a general-purpose C++-based framework that resolves these limitations while preserving full physical interpretability. By combining hierarchical descriptor construction, interaction discovery, nonlinear transformations, statistically rigorous model selection, and stacking ensemble, GoodRegressor efficiently explores symbolic model spaces such as $1.44 \times 10^{457}$, $5.99 \times 10^{124}$, and $4.20 \times 10^{430}$ possible expressions for oxygen-ion conductors, NASICONs, and superconducting oxides, respectively. Across these systems, it produces compact equations that surpass state-of-the-art black-box models and symbolic regressors, improving $R^2$ by $4 \sim 40$ %. The resulting expressions reveal physical insights, for example, into oxygen-ion transport through coordination environment and lattice flexibility. Independent ensemble runs yield nearly identical regressed values and the identical top-ranked candidate, demonstrating high reproducibility. With scalability up to $10^{4392}$ choices without interaction terms, GoodRegressor provides a foundation for general-purpose interpretable machine intelligence.

NbOI$_2$ has recently emerged as a new van der Waals material combining semiconducting behavior with intrinsic in plane ferroelectricity and pronounced transport and optical anisotropy. However, its photocarrier dynamics remain largely unexplored. Here we report transient absorption spectroscopy of NbOI$_2$ using femtosecond pump probe reflectance measurements. A pronounced transient absorption feature is observed near the 2.34 eV excitonic resonance, arising from photocarrier induced excitonic energy shifts and saturation. The decay dynamics reveal an exciton lifetime of several tens of picoseconds and show density-dependent behavior consistent with exciton exciton annihilation and defect-assisted Auger recombination, yielding a rate of 0.4 cm$^2$ s$^{-1}$, which is comparable to that in monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides. Polarization resolved measurements further reveal a pronounced in-plane anisotropy in the transient response that follows the linear absorption anisotropy. These findings provide fundamental insight into photocarrier dynamics in NbOI$_2$ and establish key parameters for understanding and exploiting its optoelectronic behavior.

Many biological, culinary, and engineering processes lead to the co-encapsulation of several soft particles within a liquid interface. In these situations the particles are bound together by the capillary forces that deform them and influence their biological or rheological properties. Here we introduce an experimental approach to encapsulate a controlled number of soft beads within aqueous droplets in oil. These droplet-encapsulated gels are manipulated in a deformable microfluidic device to merge them and modify the liquid fraction. In the dry limit the contact surface between the hydrogels is found to be determined by the elastocapillary number $E_c$, with the contact radius scaling as $E_c^{1/3}$, indicating that the deformation increases for soft or small particles. When multiple beads are co-encapsulated within a single droplet they can be arranged into linear or three-dimensional aggregates that remain at a local energy minimum.

Bilayer graphene cavities where electrons are confined within finite graphene flakes provide an alluring platform not only for the future nanoelectronic devices owing to the tunable energy gap but also for investigating the quantum nature of chaos due to the trigonal warping of their Fermi surface. Here we demonstrate that rotating the cavity boundary relative to the underlying lattice structure drives a quantum transition from nearly integrable dynamics to chaotic regime, observed as a concomitant crossover of eigenvalue statistics and eigenstate profiles. Complementing the full quantum treatment, we examine the classical backbone of this onset of chaos by employing semiclassical ray dynamics. Our results position bilayer graphene cavities as a promising venue for investigating and engineering quantum-chaotic behavior in graphene-based devices.

Over the past decade, a combinatorial framework for discrete, finite, and irreversibly aggregating systems has emerged. This work reviews its progress, practical applications, and limitations. We outline the approach's assumptions and foundations, based on direct enumeration of system states, contrasting with classical Smoluchowski and Marcus-Lushnikov methods. Using the constant kernel as an example, we derive combinatorial expressions for the average number of clusters of a given size and their standard deviation, and present the complete probability distribution for cluster counts. The method is then extended to several kernels (additive, product, linear-chain, condensation) by explicitly enumerating ways to form clusters of a given size. For general kernels, approximate solutions are obtained via recursive expressions, enabling predictions without explicit solutions. Applications to aerosol growth and planetesimal formation are demonstrated, with comparisons to numerical results. We summarize issues of validity and precision and propose open problems. The appendix includes partial Bell polynomials, generating functions, Lagrange inversion, potential applications, and links between combinatorial and scaling solutions of the Smoluchowski equation.

We predict hydrodynamic Turing instability of current-carrying Dirac electron fluids that drives spontaneous self-oscillatory transport. The instability arises near charge neutrality, where carrier kinetics make current dissipation strongly density dependent. Above a critical drift velocity, a uniform electronic flow becomes unstable and undergoes a dynamical transition to a state with coupled spatial modulation and temporal oscillations--an electronic analogue of Kapitsa roll waves in viscous films. The transition exhibits two clear signatures: a nonanalytic, second-order-like onset in the time-averaged current and narrow-band electromagnetic emission at a tunable washboard frequency $f=u/\lambda$. Although reminiscent of sliding charge-density waves, the mechanism is intrinsic and disorder independent. Owing to the small effective mass of Dirac carriers, hydrodynamic time scales translate into emission frequencies in the tens to hundreds of gigahertz range, establishing Dirac materials as a platform for high-frequency self-oscillatory electron hydrodynamics.

Recent minimalist modeling indicates that overdamped polar chiral active matter can support inviscid Euler turbulence, despite the system's strictly dissipative microscopic nature. In this article, we establish the statistical mechanical foundation for this emergent inertial regime by deriving a formal isomorphism between the model's agent dynamics and the overdamped Langevin equation for disordered Josephson junctions. We identify the trapped agent state as carrying non-dissipative phase rigidity supercurrents, a mapping we confirm empirically by demonstrating a disorder-broadened Adler-Ohmic crossover in the system's slip velocity. Generalizing this framework to three dimensions ($S^1\to S^2$), we show that polar alignment on the unit sphere is geometrically equivalent to the Gilbert damping term in spintronics, and that the two-dimensional Kuramoto coupling term naturally appears in the tangent-plane projection of spin relaxation. This constraint generates inertial spin waves (ferromagnetic magnons) from the overdamped active bath, recovering the macroscopic transport predicted by Toner-Tu theory without invoking microscopic inertia. Our results indicate that chiral active matter should strictly be considered a dissipative spintronic fluid, where phase gradient transport is ensured by the Goldstone modes of the underlying broken symmetry.

Jackiw-Rebbi zero modes were first proposed in 1976 as topologically protected zero-energy states localized at domain walls in one-dimensional Dirac systems. They have attracted widespread attention in the field of topological quantum computing, as they serve as non-superconducting analogs of Majorana zero modes and support non-Abelian statistics in topological insulator systems. %In the braiding process of the Jackiw-Rebbi zero modes, their braiding properties are closely related to the strength of disorder. However, compared to their Majorana cousins, the braiding properties of Jackiw-Rebbi zero modes are vulnerable to the on-site energy deviation between the modes involved in the experiment. In this work, we propose to estimate the braiding properties of Jackiw-Rebbi zero-modes through measurements of transport signatures, which are readily measurable in current experiments. We find that the fidelity of braiding operation reaches unity when the current noise is fully suppressed, while this braiding fidelity monotonously decreases with the increasing of the current noise. Based on these transport signatures, we further discuss the correspondence between Majorana and Jackiw-Rebbi zero modes, highlighting their similarity in supporting non-Abelian statistics.

The potential energy landscape, PEL, theory stands as one of the most successful frameworks for understanding supercooled liquids and glassy systems. A central element of this theory is the configurational entropy, Sc, which is traditionally represented by a symmetric Gaussian distribution. However, the asymmetric nature of the potential energy of inherent structures, Eis, poses a challenge to such a representation across wide regions of configurational space. In addition, the Gaussian distribution fails to represent fragile to strong transition, FST, observed in various fluids. In this work, we demonstrate that an asymmetric distribution, specifically the Gamma distribution, provides effective description of both Sc and Eis over broad ranges of density and temperature, T. The FST is interpreted through shifts of the Eis distribution and the curvature change of the Eis vs 1/T relation. In terms of energy changes, the FST is comparable to a liquid-liquid phase transition. Moreover, the revised PEL framework yields an equation of state that incorporates a singular term diverging at a glassy or jammed state, an important feature for accurately describing the pressure behavior of these systems.

Non-Abelian topological charges (NATCs), characterized by their noncommutative algebra, offer a framework for describing multigap topological phases beyond conventional Abelian invariants. While higher-order topological phases (HOTPs) host boundary states at corners or hinges, their characterization has largely relied on Abelian invariants such as winding and Chern numbers. Here, we propose a coupled-wire scheme of constructing non-Abelian HOTPs and analyze a non-Abelian second-order topological insulator as its minimal model. The resulting Hamiltonian supports hybridized corner modes, protected by parity-time-reversal plus sublattice symmetries and described by a topological vector that unites a non-Abelian quaternion charge with an Abelian winding number. Corner states emerge only when both invariants are nontrivial, whereas weak topological edge states of non-Abelian origins arise when the quaternion charge is nontrivial, enriching the bulk-edge-corner correspondence. The system further exhibits both non-Abelian and Abelian topological phase transitions, providing a unified platform that bridges these two distinct topological classes. Our work extends the understanding of HOTPs into non-Abelian regimes and suggests feasible experimental realizations in synthetic quantum systems, such as photonic or acoustic metamaterials.

This study presents a first principles investigation of the structural, thermodynamic, electronic, optical and thermoelectric properties of aluminum antimonide (AlSb) in its cubic (F-43m) and hexagonal (P63mc) phases. Both structures are dynamically and mechanically stable, as confirmed by phonon calculations and the Born Huang criteria. The lattice constants obtained using the SCAN and PBEsol functionals show good agreement with experimental data. The cubic phase exhibits a direct band gap of 1.66 to 1.78 eV, while the hexagonal phase shows a band gap of 1.48 to 1.59 eV, as confirmed by mBJ and HSE06 calculations. Under external pressure, the band gap decreases in the cubic phase and increases in the hexagonal phase due to different s p orbital hybridization mechanisms. The optical absorption coefficient reaches 1e6 cm-1, which is comparable to or higher than values reported for other III V semiconductors. The Seebeck coefficient exceeds 1500 microV per K under intrinsic conditions, and the thermoelectric performance improves above 600 K due to enhanced phonon scattering and lattice anharmonicity. The calculated formation energies (-1.316 eV for F-43m and -1.258 eV for P63mc) confirm that the cubic phase is thermodynamically more stable. The hexagonal phase exhibits higher anisotropy and lower lattice stiffness, which is favorable for thermoelectric applications. These results demonstrate the strong interplay between crystal symmetry, phonon behavior and charge transport, and provide useful guidance for the design of AlSb based materials for optoelectronic and energy conversion technologies.

We predict a new class of topological electronic crystals in bilayer graphene-Mott insulator heterostructures. Interlayer charge transfer creates a charge neutral electron hole bilayer, in which itinerant carriers in graphene interact attractively with localized carriers from a flat Hubbard band. In the heavy fermion limit and dilute limit, this interplay leads to symmetry breaking crystalline phases stabilized not only by pure repulsion, but also by interlayer Coulomb attraction shaped by band topology. Using comprehensive Hartree Fock calculations, we uncover triangular, honeycomb, and kagome charge orders hosting different quantized anomalous Hall effects at moderate interlayer attraction.

For more than 50 years, an elegant energy gap (EG) law developed by Englman and Jortner [Mol. Phys. {\bf 18}, 145 (1970)] has served as a key theory to understand and model nearly exponential dependence of nonradiative transition rates on the difference of energy between the initial and final states. This work revisits the theory, clarifies key assumptions involved in the rate expression, and provides a generalization for the cases where the effects of temperature dependence and low frequency modes cannot be ignored. For a specific example where the low frequency vibrational and/or solvation responses can be modeled as an Ohmic spectral density, a simple generalization of the EG law is provided. Test calculations demonstrate that this generalized EG law brings significant improvement over the original EG law. Both the original and generalized EG laws are also compared with stationary phase approximations developed for electron transfer theory, which suggests the possibility of a simple interpolation formula valid for any value of EG.

The concept of an exciton as a quasiparticle that represents collective excited states was originally adapted from solid-state physics and has been successfully applied to molecular aggregates by relying on the well-established limits of the Wannier exciton and the Frenkel exciton. However, the study of excitons in more complex chemical systems and solid materials over the past two decades has made it clear that simple concepts based on Wannier or Frenkel excitons are not sufficient to describe detailed excitonic behavior, especially in nano-structured solid materials, multichromophoric macromolecules, and complex molecular aggregates. In addition, important effects such as vibronic coupling, the influence of charge-transfer (CT) components, spin-state interconversion, and electronic correlation, which had long been studied but not fully understood, have turned out to play a central role in many systems. This has motivated new experimental approaches and theoretical studies of increasing sophistication. This article provides an overview of works addressing these issues that were published for A Special Topic of the Journal of Chemical Physics on "Excitons: Energetics and spatio-temporal dynamics" and discusses their implications.

Polaron-transformed quantum master equation (PQME) offers a unified framework to describe the dynamics of quantum systems in both limits of weak and strong couplings to environmental degrees of freedom. Thus, PQME serves as an efficient method to describe charge and exciton transfer/transport dynamics for a broad range of parameters in condensed or complex environments. However, in some cases, the polaron transformation (PT) being employed in the formulation invokes an over-relaxation of slow modes and results in premature suppression of important coherence terms. A formal framework to address this issue is developed in the present work by employing a partial PT that has smaller weights for low frequency bath modes. It is shown here that a closed form expression of a 2nd order time-local PQME including all the inhomogeneous terms can be derived for a general form of partial PT, although more complicated than that for the full PT. All the expressions needed for numerical calculation are derived in detail. Applications to a model of two-level system coupled to a bath of harmonic oscillators, with test calculations focused on those due to homogeneous relaxation terms, demonstrate the feasibility and the utility of the present approach.

A classical Monte Carlo algorithm based on the quasi-classical approximation is applied to the pseudospin Hamiltonian of the model cuprate. The model takes into account both local and non-local correlations, Heisenberg spin-exchange interaction, single-particle and correlated two-particle transfer. We define the state selection rule that gives both the uniform distribution of states in the phase space and the doped charge conservation. The simulation results show a qualitative agreement of a phase diagrams with the experimental ones.

$\mathcal{N}=1$ superconformal minimal models are the first series of unitary conformal field theories (CFTs) extending beyond Virasoro algebra. Using coset constructions, we characterize CFTs in $\mathcal{N}=1$ superconformal minimal models using combinations of a parafermion theory, an Ising theory and a free boson theory. Supercurrent operators in the original theory also becomes sums of operators from each constituent theory. If we take our $\mathcal{N}=1$ superconformal theories as the neutral part of the edge theory of a fractional quantum Hall state, we present a systematic way of calculating its ground state wavefunction using free field methods. Each ground state wavefunction is known previously as a sum of polynomials with distinct clustering behaviours. Based on our decomposition, we find explicit expressions for each summand polynomial. A brief generalization to $S_3$ minimal models using coset construction is also included.

In this study, we establish a connection between timelike and spacelike entanglement entropy. We show that timelike entanglement entropy is closely related to spacelike entanglement entropy and its temporal derivative. For a broad class of states, it can be uniquely determined by a linear combination of spacelike entanglement entropy and its first-order temporal derivative. This relation holds, for instance, in states conformally equivalent to the vacuum in two-dimensional conformal field theories. For more general states, we demonstrate that the relation can be constructed perturbatively. Our results suggest that timelike entanglement entropy is constrained by causality. Moreover, this relation provides a unified framework for timelike and spacelike entanglement entropy, within which the imaginary component of timelike entanglement entropy can be understood as arising from the non-commutativity between the twist operator and its first-order temporal derivative.

Empirical complex systems can be characterized not only by pairwise interactions, but also by higher-order (group) interactions influencing collective phenomena, from metabolic reactions to epidemics. Nevertheless, higher-order networks' apparent superior descriptive power -- compared to classical pairwise networks -- comes with a much increased model complexity and computational cost, challenging their application. Consequently, it is of paramount importance to establish a quantitative method to determine when such a modeling framework is advantageous with respect to pairwise models, and to which extent it provides a valuable description of empirical systems. Here, we propose an information-theoretic framework, accounting for how structure affect diffusion behaviors, quantifying the entropic cost and distinguishability of higher-order interactions to assess their reducibility to lower-order structures while preserving relevant functional information. Empirical analyses indicate that some systems retain essential higher-order structure, whereas in some technological and biological networks it collapses to pairwise interactions. With controlled randomization procedures, we investigate the role of nestedness and degree heterogeneity in this reducibility process. Our findings contribute to ongoing efforts to minimize the dimensionality of models for complex systems.

The fundamental model of any periodic crystal is a periodic set of points at all atomic centres. Since crystal structures are determined in a rigid form, their strongest equivalence is rigid motion (composition of translations and rotations) or isometry (also including reflections). The recent classification of periodic point sets under rigid motion used a complete invariant isoset whose size essentially depends on the bridge length, defined as the minimum `jump' that suffices to connect any points in the given set. We propose a practical algorithm to compute the bridge length of any periodic point set given by a motif of points in a periodically translated unit cell. The algorithm has been tested on a large crystal dataset and is required for an efficient continuous classification of all periodic crystals. The exact computation of the bridge length is a key step to realising the inverse design of materials from new invariant values.

Radio-frequency (RF) control is a key technique in cold atom experiments. We present a compact and efficient RF circuit based on a capacitive transformer network, where a low-frequency coil operating up to 30MHz serves as both an intrinsic inductor and a power-sharing element. The design enables high current delivery and flexible impedance matching across a wide frequency range. We integrate both broadband and narrowband RF networks into a unified configuration that overcomes the geometric constraints imposed by the metallic chamber. In evaporative cooling, the broadband network allows a reduction of the applied RF input power from 14.7dBW to -3.5dBW, owing to its non-zero coil current even at ultra-low frequencies. This feature enables the Bose-Fermi mixture to be cooled below 10{\mu}K. In a Landau-Zener protocol, the coil driven by the narrowband network transfers 80% of rubidium atoms from |F = 2,mF = 2> to |2,-2> in 1 millisecond, achieving a Rabi frequency of approximately 9 kHz at an input power of 0.1dBW.

Quantum measurements performed on a subsystem of a quantum many-body state can generate entanglement for its remaining constituents. The whole system including the measurement record is described by a hybrid mixed state, which can exhibit exotic phase transitions and critical phenomena. We demonstrate that generic measurement-induced phase transitions (MIPTs) can be cast as decoherence-induced critical mixed states in one higher dimension, by constructing a projected entangled pair state (PEPS) prior to decoherence or measurement. In this context, a deeper conceptual understanding of such mixed-state criticality is called for, particularly with regard to algebraic symmetry as an advanced organizing principle for such entangled states of matter. Integrating these connections we investigate the role of self-dual symmetry -- a fundamental notion in theoretical physics -- in mixed states, showing that the decoherence of electric (e) and magnetic (m) vortices from the 2D bulk of the toric code, or equivalently, a 2D cluster state with symmetry-protected topological order, can leave a (1+1)D quantum critical mixed state protected by a weak Kramers-Wannier self-dual symmetry. The corresponding self-dual critical bulk is described by the N->1 limit of the 2D Non-linear Sigma Model in symmetry class D with target space SO(2N)/U(N) at $\Theta$-angle $\pi$, and represents a "measurement-version" of the Cho-Fisher network model subjected to Born-rule randomness...

We revisit the Markov Entropy Decomposition, a classical convex relaxation algorithm introduced by Poulin and Hastings to approximate the free energy in quantum spin lattices. We identify a sufficient condition for its convergence, namely the decay of the effective interaction. The effective interaction, also known as Hamiltonians of mean force, is a widely established correlation measure, and we show our decay condition in 1D at any temperature as well as in the high-temperature regime under a certain commutativity condition on the Hamiltonian building on existing results. This yields polynomial and quasi-polynomial time approximation algorithms in these settings, respectively. Furthermore, the decay of the effective interaction implies the decay of the conditional mutual information for the Gibbs state of the system. We then use this fact to devise a rounding scheme that maps the solution of the convex relaxation to a global state and show that the scheme can be efficiently implemented on a quantum computer, thus proving efficiency of quantum Gibbs sampling under our assumption of decay of the effective interaction.

We generalize the equivalence between off-equilibrium state and gravitational perturbation of equilibrium state from dynamics of macroscopic quantities to that of microscopic particles. We also generalize the equivalence to incorporate off-equilibrium state with vorticity by torsional perturbation to equilibrium state. The equivalence is achieved by mapping kinetic theories of spinless and spinning particles in torsional curved space to flat space through suitable choice of inertial frame that eliminates geodesic forces on particles. The equivalence has been shown for hydrodynamic and elastic regimes. In the latter case, we predict spin polarization induced by time-variation of shear strain in elastic materials. We also provide an order-of-magnitude estimate for the polarization in Dirac semi-metal.

Let $A$ be a condensable algebra in a modular tensor category $\mathcal{C}$. We define an action of the fusion category $\mathcal{C}_A$ of $A$-modules in $\mathcal{C}$ on the morphism space $\mbox{Hom}_{\mathcal{C}}(x,A)$ for any $x$ in $\mathcal{C}$, whose characters are generalized Frobenius-Schur indicators. This fusion action can be considered on $A$, and we prove a categorical generalization of the Schur-Weyl duality for this action. For any fusion subcategory $\mathcal{B}$ of $\mathcal{C}_A$ containing all the local $A$-modules, we prove the invariant subobject $B=A^\mathcal{B}$ is a condensable subalgebra of $A$. The assignment of $\mathcal{B}$ to $A^\mathcal{B}$ defines a Galois correspondence between this kind of fusion subcategories of $\mathcal{C}_A$ and the condensable subalgebras of $A$. In the context of VOAs, we prove for any nice VOAs $U \subset A$, $U=A^{\mathcal{C}_A}$ where $\mathcal{C}=\mathcal{M}_U$ is the category of $U$-modules. In particular, if $U = A^G$ for some finite automorphism group $G$ of $A,$ the fusion action of $\mathcal{C}_A$ on $A$ is equivalent to the $G$-action on $A.$

We present CrystalDiT, a diffusion transformer for crystal structure generation that achieves state-of-the-art performance by challenging the trend of architectural complexity. Instead of intricate, multi-stream designs, CrystalDiT employs a unified transformer that imposes a powerful inductive bias: treating lattice and atomic properties as a single, interdependent system. Combined with a periodic table-based atomic representation and a balanced training strategy, our approach achieves 8.78% SUN (Stable, Unique, Novel) rate on MP-20, substantially outperforming recent methods including FlowMM (4.21%) and MatterGen (3.66%). Notably, CrystalDiT generates 63.28% unique and novel structures while maintaining comparable stability rates, demonstrating that architectural simplicity can be more effective than complexity for materials discovery. Our results suggest that in data-limited scientific domains, carefully designed simple architectures outperform sophisticated alternatives that are prone to overfitting.

Understanding how quantum materials return to equilibrium after being driven into excited states is a fundamental problem in condensed matter physics. A prototypical material, 1T-TaS$_2$, exhibits complex electronic textures made up of domain walls, which slowly reorganize into a more uniform structure as the system relaxes. At low temperatures, this process becomes dominated by quantum rather than thermal effects. In this work, we use large-scale noise-driven quantum simulations-spanning more than 2000 qubits-to study this relaxation process through an effective model known as the transverse-field Ising model in a longitudinal field. By mathematically transforming this model into a simpler form, we identify the basic microscopic steps involved: rather than moving collectively, the domain walls evolve through a sequence of noise-driven single-particle tunneling events. A detailed analysis of how the relaxation rate depends on temperature and model parameters confirms this picture. Our findings show that quantum simulation can provide rare, predictive insight into the inner workings of real quantum materials, and establish a practical pathway for studying complex non-equilibrium processes using current-generation quantum hardware.

Entanglement dynamics are fundamental to quantum technologies, yet navigating their temporal profiles (trajectories) remains challenging. Here, we propose a scalable solid-state platform based on RKKY exchange, where two spin qubits couple to a central spin qudit that oscillatorily spin-polarizes the surrounding conduction electrons. We introduce the exchange-time integral (ETI), which maps the spatial motion of the qubits to a time-dependent exchange interaction and serves as an effective "trajectory clock" governing the system evolution. We focus specifically on entanglement trajectories initially near the entanglement-unentanglement boundary, with the distance to this boundary quantified by concurrence extended to include negative values. By alternating the sign changes of the exchange, implemented through vibrational motion of qubits, the ETI enables programmable entanglement trajectories. For in-phase and antiphase vibrations, including scenarios with controlled stopping at the RKKY exchange-free nodes, we identify distinctive trajectories: snake (repeatedly crossing the boundary), bouncing (immediately reversing upon reaching the boundary), boundary-residing (remaining at the transition point), and pulse (controllable entanglement intervals). The vibration phase creates asymmetric shifts to the trajectories. The proposed device offers built-in error correction against dephasing by utilizing both ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic regimes. Out-of-phase vibrations drive trajectories away from the boundary, accessing larger entanglement values but with irregular/unsteady final states. To stabilize these trajectories, we introduce a damping mechanism. Our framework offers a systematic method for navigating and engineering entanglement dynamics in quantum systems, with potential applications in quantum computation, cryptography, and metrology.

In classical mechanics, driven systems with dissipation often exhibit complex, fractal dynamics known as strange attractors. This paper addresses the fundamental question of how such structures manifest in the quantum realm. We investigate the quantum Duffing oscillator, a paradigmatic chaotic system, using the Caldirola-Kanai (CK) framework, where dissipation is integrated directly into a time-dependent Hamiltonian. By employing the Husimi distribution to represent the quantum state in phase space, we present the first visualization of a quantum strange attractor within this model. Our simulations demonstrate how an initially simple Gaussian wave packet is stretched, folded, and sculpted by the interplay of chaotic dynamics and energy loss, causing it to localize onto a structure that beautifully mirrors the classical attractor. This quantum "photograph" is inherently smoothed, blurring the infinitely fine fractal details of its classical counterpart as a direct consequence of the uncertainty principle. We supplement this analysis by examining the out-of-time-ordered correlator (OTOC), which shows that stronger dissipation clarifies the exponential growth associated with the classical Lyapunov exponent, thereby confirming the model's semiclassical behavior. This work offers a compelling geometric perspective on open chaotic quantum systems and sheds new light on the quantum-classical transition.

Stability achieved by large angular momentum is ubiquitous in nature, with examples ranging from classical mechanics, over optics and chemistry, to nuclear physics. In atoms, angular momentum can protect excited electronic orbitals from decay due to selection rules. This manifests spectacularly in highly excited Rydberg states. Low angular momentum Rydberg states are at the heart of recent breakthroughs in quantum computing, simulation and sensing with neutral atoms. For these applications the lifetime of the Rydberg levels sets fundamental limits for gate fidelities, coherence times, or spectroscopic precision. The quest for longer Rydberg state lifetimes has motivated the generation, coherent control and trapping of circular Rydberg atoms, which are characterized by the maximally allowed electron orbital momentum and were key to Nobel prize-winning experiments with single atoms and photons. Here, we report the observation of individually trapped circular Rydberg atoms with lifetimes of more than 10 milliseconds, two orders of magnitude longer-lived than the established low angular momentum orbitals. This is achieved via Purcell suppression of blackbody modes at room temperature. We coherently control individual circular Rydberg levels at so far elusive principal quantum numbers of up to $n=103$, and observe tweezer trapping of the Rydberg atoms on the few hundred millisecond scale. Our results pave the way for quantum information processing and sensing utilizing the combination of extreme lifetimes and giant Rydberg blockade.

Coarse-graining (CG) reduces molecular details to extend the time and length scales of molecular dynamics simulations to microseconds and micrometers. However, the CG approaches have long been limited by the difficulty of constructing both accurate and transferable models efficiently, considering the large diversity of chemical structures of materials. Among CG force fields, Martini is the most widely used, as it retains essential chemical features while offering substantial computational efficiency. Its most recent version, Martini 3, expands chemical resolution through a much broader bead set, particularly for small molecules. However, this flexibility also complicates the mapping of organic molecules because of context-dependent rules and the lack of standardized procedures. To address this issue, we present an automated framework that builds Martini 3 models directly from SMILES (Simplified Molecular Input Line Entry System) strings by combining a curated bead dictionary with a hierarchical, rule-based algorithm. Our framework, Martini Mapper, generated Martini 3 models for more than 5,000 molecules across four chemically diverse datasets. A curated subset of 1,081 mapped structures was benchmarked through octanol-water free-energy ($\Delta G_{OW}$) and partition-coefficient ($\log P$) calculations, yielding strong agreement with experimental values. The workflow can also map large molecules containing up to 126 heavy atoms, exceeding the capabilities of existing automated approaches. The algorithm and the complete set of more than 5,000 mapped itp/top files are available at the \href{this https URL}{Martini Mapper}. Our framework, therefore, enables systematic and scalable Martini 3 structures for high-throughput simulations relevant to drug discovery and materials design.

Metal-free porphyrins can switch between hydrogen-bonded tautomers, potentially enabling reversible control in molecular electronics. However, electric field gating of porphyrin tautomerism, which is critical for device integration, has not been fully realized. We propose metal-free benziporphyrins (MFBPs), in which one pyrrole ring is replaced with a phenol group, as a new platform for tautomer-based molecular electronics. This approach introduces asymmetry, which allows for three distinct tautomers, each possessing a characteristic aromatic or antiaromatic electronic structure. Density functional theory and quantum transport calculations show that: i) experimentally realisable electric fields can selectively stabilize each tautomer, and ii) each tautomer exhibits a characteristic conductance profile. The strong switching capability of MFBPs is demonstrated by ON/OFF ratios exceeding 500 at low bias. Fused MFBPs further expand functionality by providing multiple tautomeric states for multistate molecular registers and enabling wire-like architectures with enhanced conductance. These results establish MFBPs as versatile building blocks for electric-field-responsive molecular devices and open new research opportunities for molecular-scale logic and memory.

We investigate crystalline-like behavior of the spectral form factor (SFF) in unitary quantum systems with extremely strong eigenvalue repulsion. Using a low-temperature Coulomb gas as a model of repulsive eigenvalues, we derive the Debye-Waller factor suppressing periodic oscillations of the SFF and estimate the order of its singularities at multiples of the Heisenberg time. We also reproduce this crystalline-like behavior using perturbed permutation circuits and random matrix ensembles associated with Lax matrices. Our results lay a foundation for future studies of quantum systems that exhibit intermediate level statistics between standard random matrix ensembles and permutation circuits.

Analysis of space-charge effects on electron emission typically makes some assumption of continuity and smoothness, whether this is continuity of charge as in the classical derivation of the Child-Langmuir current, or the mean-field approximation used in particle-in-cell simulations. However, when studying the physics of electron emission and propagation at the mesoscale it becomes necessary to consider the discrete nature of electronic charge to account for the space-charge effect of each individual point charge. In this paper we give an extensive analysis of some previous work on the distribution of electrons under space-charge limited conditions. We examine the spacing of electrons as they are emitted from a planar surface, We present simplified models for analysis of such conditions to derive scaling laws for emission and compare them to computer simulations.