Papers

We study symmetries and anomalies of dissipative Majorana chains described by Lindblad dynamics. Using the operator-state mapping, we represent the Lindbladian as a non-Hermitian operator on a doubled Hilbert space. In this formulation, the ket and bra contours admit strong fermion parities and strong translations, while their diagonal combinations define weak symmetries. For even and odd chain lengths, we diagnose anomalies by comparing symmetry algebras with and without weak fermion-parity defects. These algebras retain the lattice precursor of the modulo-$8$ anomaly of the closed Majorana chain and exhibit projective relations between strong fermion parity and weak translation, as well as between weak fermion parity and strong translation, which are intrinsic to open quantum systems. We establish the IR correspondence between the lattice symmetry algebras and those of the doubled Majorana CFT in four spin sectors, identifying chiral fermion parities emanated from the lattice translations. Finally, we develop the lattice bosonization of the dissipative chain. For even length with collective energy dephasing, combining the defect and no-defect sectors and imposing GSO projections gives rise to an Ising Lindbladian with non-invertible Kramers–Wannier symmetries descending from the anomalous strong translation and fermion parity of the Majorana chain. For odd length, constructing mutually commuting ket- and bra-sector spin operators instead yields an Ising Lindbladian with a Kramers–Wannier duality defect. Our results provide a controlled framework for extending lattice anomalies and non-invertible symmetries to open quantum systems.

Quantum error-correcting codes on graph geometries beyond regular euclidean lattices have emerged as a promising route toward robust quantum information processing. A major challenge in quantum error correction is the trade-off between favorable properties of codes constructed in high dimensionality and the need for locality in practical implementations on near-term hardware. Sparse intermediate geometries may combine the advantages of both, but how their structure governs quantum information dynamics and code performance remains unclear. Here we show that the spectral dimension $d_s$, defined from the low-energy spectrum of the graph Laplacian, is the universal parameter connecting these properties. Using Floquet random Clifford circuits on two distinct sparse graph architectures with tunable spectral dimension, we find that $d_s$ governs both quantum information spreading and the scaling of the resulting quantum error-correcting code distance. We identify a geometry-induced entanglement phase transition from localized area-law to ergodic volume-law, whose universality is determined by $d_s$ and exhibits long-range percolation criticality. In the ergodic phase, the circuit acts as a CSS code encoder whose code distance is set by the competition between two logical sectors — the cost of severing the graph and the length of its shortest winding cycle — which connectivity pushes in opposite directions. The spectral dimension organizes this trade-off, highlighting a maximum at intermediate $d_s$ retaining sparse connectivity and physical realizability.

Spin-dependent forces enable independent control over the effective frequencies of bosonic motional modes and their coupling strengths to spins in trapped-ion spin-boson quantum simulators. We show that the relative signs of these effective frequencies provide an important programmable resource for engineering distinct multimode dynamics. Focusing on a two-mode quantum Rabi model, changing the frequencies of the two modes from the same sign to opposite signs reorganizes the resonance structure of the spin-mediated bosonic interaction, converting the dominant resonant process from excitation exchange to correlated pair creation. In the dispersive regime, the resulting effective interaction realizes a two-mode parametric amplifier with stable oscillatory, critical, and exponentially amplifying regimes separated by a spin-dependent instability threshold. Across these regimes, the dynamics generate collective-quadrature squeezing and bipartite motional entanglement. Preparing the spin in a coherent superposition further allows different spin components to experience distinct stability regimes, generating tripartite spin-boson entanglement, while spin postselection can coherently combine the conditional bosonic branches to generate non-Gaussian entangled bosonic states. Finally, we outline an implementation using parameters within reach of current trapped-ion platforms.

Frustrated Ising models of social networks mix ferromagnetic (agreement-seeking) and antiferromagnetic (antagonistic) couplings, and the antagonistic bonds are almost always placed independently at a fixed rate, yielding a +/-J spin glass. Real signed networks (Epinions, Slashdot, Wikipedia) instead show an excess of balanced triads, and perfectly balanced placement is gauge-equivalent to an unfrustrated ferromagnet. We compare three sign-placement conditions on a frustrated random-field Ising model of a polarised population, sharing an identical graph, field assignment, and edge-weight magnitudes: an independent baseline; a balance-structured condition whose camp membership coincides with each voter's field sign; and the same condition with camp labels randomly permuted, so triadic balance is identical by construction while the camp-field correlation is removed. On a confound-controlled Kolmogorov-Smirnov test of the sampled energy-gap distribution (simulated annealing), the aligned condition differs from the baseline at every density tested (p = 7.3e-8), while the permuted condition shows no significant difference (paired mean difference 0.003, 95% CI [-0.041, 0.046]). Field-camp alignment, not triadic balance alone, drives the effect. The qualitative direction follows from a known mapping; the contribution is a quantitative, confound-controlled measurement of the effect's size away from that limit, robust to parallel-tempering sampling, system sizes up to N = 300, and structural noise calibrated to real networks, while triadic balance alone produces no detectable effect at N = 90 and at most a small one at N = 180-300 (paired change in KS distance about 0.04, 95% CI upper bound below 0.09).

We formulate a theory of spin-polarized tunneling between a nanowire tip of a topological Kondo insulator SmB$_6$ and the bi-collinear antiferromagnet Fe$_{1+x}$Te in which the tunneling conductance which measures magnetic contrast changes sign when the bias is reversed. First we show that no time-reversal-symmetric tip, however strong its spin-momentum locking is, can produce experimentally observed magnetic contrast, which implies that time reversal must be broken at the tip surface. Within a mean-field treatment of the surface theory of SmB$_6$ we find that the interaction between conduction $d$- and $f$-electrons drives a surface phase transition near $T_c\approx10$ K in which the time-reversal-odd component of the Kondo hybridization amplitude condenses in the same symmetry channel as an out-of-plane surface magnetization, gapping out the Dirac surface states. Below the transition the spin-resolved spectral function of each gapped surface Dirac cone is odd in energy about its node. For a charge-neutral apex the Fermi level lies between the surface $\overline{\Gamma}$ and $\overline{X}$ Dirac nodes, so the spin-polarized conductance, which is determined by this function at the bias energy, reverses its sign close to zero bias. This sign change is thus a spectroscopic signature of time-reversal symmetry breaking on the surface of SmB$_6$.

Most systems trained by equilibrium propagation or coupled learning are in the same class as multi-layer perceptrons: while they may be universal function approximators, they struggle to learn associative tasks which are easy for transformers. Equilibrium propagation relies on a bidirectional flow of information through the physical system between input and output. The reverse flow is broken by more complex nonlinear systems, such as those performing multiplication which is needed to express dot-product attention. Here we explicitly restore this bidirectional flow by introducing extra circuit elements for this purpose into a double or dyadic circuit. We then use these ideas to construct an attention mechanism exploiting the exponential current law of sub-threshold MOSFET devices. We show that in simulations this circuit can be trained to perform a simple in-context learning task, despite using realistic reverse components which transmit only an approximate gradient. For this training to succeed we need cross-entropy loss (not mean squared error). We generate nudges appropriate for this loss using a novel floating circuit element, based on the same MOSFET sub-circuit used for softmax. We train the resistors in this circuit using the Lion optimiser, which can be implemented using one capacitor per parameter to store local memory of past gradient estimates.

In the Eliashberg theory of superconductivity, Coulomb interactions oppose the phonon-mediated attraction and suppress the superconducting critical temperature $T_{\mathrm{c}}$. However, most first-principles predictions continue to treat this repulsion with an empirical Coulomb pseudopotential $\mu^*_{\text{ME}}$ in the range 0.1-0.15. Here we present first-principles calculations of the Coulomb parameter $\mu$ and pseudopotential $\mu^*_{\text{ME}}$ in superconducting hydrides across a range of pressures. The screened Coulomb interaction is evaluated at the random phase approximation level with the Mantel code. We demonstrate that several hydride systems, including H$_3$S, YSbH$_6$ and Mg$_2$IrH$_6$, have strong Coulomb repulsions driven by a large density of states at the Fermi energy, $N_{\mathrm{F}}$. For Mg$_2$IrH$_6$ we obtain $\mu=0.62$ and $\mu^*_{\text{ME}}\approx0.39$, leading to a 40 K suppression in $T_{\mathrm{c}}$ relative to a standard $\mu^*_{\text{ME}}=0.16$. Our obtained $\mu^*_{\text{ME}}$ is far above the conventional range and, accounting for the energy dependence of the density of states, resolves the factor-of-two discrepancy between $T_{\mathrm{c}}$ estimates of previous studies. Across all systems and pressures studied, we find that $\mu$ closely tracks $N_{\mathrm{F}}$, suggesting that commonly used $\mu^*_{\text{ME}}$ values lead to overestimated $T_{\mathrm{c}}$ in materials where the density of states at the Fermi energy is large.

We argue that no material can be made completely transparent to light as long as it has a nontrivial index of refraction. The quantum decay of photons into phonons is an ineliminable source of attenuation. This survives even once all other excitations have been gapped away, impurities have been removed, and the temperature has been set to zero. Restricting for simplicity to the case of a superfluid, we determine via effective field theory methods the corresponding low-frequency contribution to the imaginary part of the index of refraction. This scales as $\omega^4$ and induces a nonanalyticity of the real part for $\omega \rightarrow 0$. We also extend our result to large coherent electromagnetic fields, such as those of a laser, showing that the effect can receive strong nonlinear enhancements. Our result is a genuine quantum lower bound to the transparency of a medium.

By studying the interplay of geometric frustration with Aharonov-Bohm fluxes in three dimensions, we unveil a rich playground exhibiting topological semimetallic ground states with orbital magnetic dipole, quadrupole and ferrotoroidic orders, akin to spin patterns in classical spin ices - a class of phenomena which we dub frustrated topological orbital magnetism. We demonstrate that the ground-state toroidizations underpinned by non-Abelian topological nodal lines induce measurable current-induced Hall phenomena. We further find that distinct 2-in-2-out and 3-in-1-out frustrated orbital current patterns can be associated with topological Weyl node charges, and corresponding anisotropic linear and nonlinear Hall effects. We propose signatures for experimental validation of distinct frustrated topological orbital magnetic orders in candidate materials.

Quantum geometry underlies a wide range of correlated phenomena in electronic systems, yet accessing the geometry of individual bands remains experimentally challenging. Advances in quantum simulators, such as ultracold atoms in optical lattices, have enabled local state preparation and site-resolved measurements, offering direct access to quantum dynamics beyond conventional transport probes. These developments naturally raise the question of whether band-resolved quantum geometry can be extracted from local occupation readouts. Here, we propose an on-site quench protocol to probe the flat-band quantum geometry via local occupation measurements in an atomic lattice. Our scheme dynamically isolates the flat-band sector by coupling a one-dimensional flat-band lattice to a two-dimensional flat-band bath. The bath selectively removes dispersive excitations, while compact localized states remain trapped due to their overlap with the flat-band modes of the bath. We show that the late-time occupation pattern directly encodes the integrated overlaps between flat-band states separated by the wavevector of the initial density pattern, thereby enabling access to integrated quantum distances between the states separated by the commensurate momenta $\delta k = 2 \pi s/r$, $s,r \in \mathbb Z$ and to the integrated flat-band quantum metric. Our results thereby establish a direct connection between quantum geometry and the long-time memory of an initial spatial pattern in flat-band systems.

Applications of quantum devices and simulators require an accurate understanding of their dynamics as well as the effects of environmental noise. While some sources of noise can be modeled as Markovian dissipation, coupling to resonators or vibrational modes often produces non-Markovian dynamics as well, making it difficult to characterize the system, particularly for interacting many-body systems. Here, we identify a broad class of exactly solvable many-body quantum systems with both non-Markovian dynamics and Markovian dissipation. We consider a prototypical model of spins coupled to lossy bosonic modes that mediate Ising-type interactions. We exclude a transverse field but allow local spin dissipation that need not commute with the interactions, including dephasing, relaxation, pumping, and even processes that generate coherences. Using an exact stochastic representation, we decouple the many-body dynamics into the evolution of individual spins, yielding exact spin observables and correlations without adiabatically eliminating the bosons. In the Markovian limit, our solutions describe Ising models with correlated dephasing and nonreciprocal interactions. An example of spin squeezing shows that both the achievable squeezing and its optimal preparation time depend strongly on the interplay between non-Markovian dynamics and Markovian dissipation.

Entanglement and non-stabilizerness are complementary resources underlying the complexity of quantum states, yet extracting either quantity from large quantum circuits generally requires exponentially scaling resources. In diagrammatic approaches to quantum computation, such as the ZX-calculus, both quantities likewise typically require expensive tensor contractions that are not native to graphical rewriting. Here we show that both entanglement and magic can be efficiently estimated directly from ZX-diagrams. Flow enables efficient extraction of a normal form separating a potentially extensively entangled graph-state backbone from non-Clifford Pauli gadgets. This structure yields additive upper and lower bounds on bipartite entanglement entropy, which we further tighten through a preprocessing procedure that removes or merges redundant non-Clifford contributions. The same normal form gives an upper bound on logarithmic stabilizer extent. We benchmark these methods in random unitary and monitored circuits, and a circuit combining Trotterized Hamiltonian evolution with Clifford layers, finding that the resulting bounds remain informative even at large qubit numbers, circuit depths, and internal spider counts. Our results provide scalable probes of entanglement and non-stabilizerness of ZX-diagrams and establish a bridge between ZX-calculus and quantum many-body resource characterization, with applications across quantum computing, quantum information, and condensed-matter physics.

Replica symmetry breaking (RSB) is the organizing principle of mean-field spin-glass theory, yet whether a continuous Parisi hierarchy can arise in a genuinely short-range system in finite spatial dimension remains unresolved. Here we introduce a disordered model of $N$-component vector spins on a $D$-dimensional hypercubic lattice, with random matrix couplings on nearest-neighbor links and random tensor couplings on elementary plaquettes. In the large-$N$ limit, the model supports thermodynamically stable one-step, full, and one-full RSB phases, alongside replica-symmetric paramagnetic and ferromagnetic phases. We find that spatial locality constrains these ordered phases through two distinct infrared mechanisms. ($i$) Quenched random anisotropy destroys uniform ferromagnetism for $D\leq4$ through an Imry-Ma mechanism. ($ii$) A continuous Parisi hierarchy gives rise to replica Goldstone modes whose gaplessness is protected by a Ward identity. At leading order in $1/N$, these modes behave as a band of free spin waves, producing infrared-divergent fluctuations in $D\leq2$ and a Mermin-Wagner instability of the continuously broken phase. Remarkably, the Parisi hierarchy also acquires a direct real-space interpretation. For two pure states with mutual overlap $q$, a characteristic length $\xi(q)$ describes how far the differences between their frozen magnetization patterns remain correlated. Throughout a continuous sector of the Parisi hierarchy, $\xi(q)$ is independent of temperature and decreases monotonically with $q$. The ultrametric organization of pure states is therefore accompanied by an ultrametric hierarchy of real-space correlation lengths: states that separate near the root of the Parisi tree differ through long-wavelength frozen patterns, whereas states that separate farther from the root differ only on progressively shorter scales.

AI agents can now conduct real-world cyberattacks, scale up capabilities with the number of agents, and collectively pursue misaligned goals to obtain rewards. Together, these factors raise the risk of a population explosion of misaligned agents: agents could compromise computers and secretly deploy additional agents, creating a self-reinforcing cycle where larger populations develop greater collective cyber capability and expand further. This raises a fundamental question: What determines whether a population of misaligned agents remains contained or takes off into this self-reinforcing cycle? This population-level problem is ecological safety: unlike individual-agent or multi-agent safety with a fixed population, it concerns the dynamics of the population itself. Here, we develop an ecological theory of AI-agent populations based on a population growth equation in which fitness (growth rate) depends on cybersecurity capability. We show that, without collaboration, the population takes off only when individual-agent capability exceeds a critical threshold. With collaboration, however, collective cybersecurity capability increases with population size. This creates a critical population threshold: below it, the population declines; above it, the population takes off, even though individual-agent capability has not changed. In ecology, this phenomenon is known as the strong Allee effect. Because red teaming a small group of agents cannot guarantee ecological safety in larger populations, our theory calls for ecological red teaming and population pacing: gradually deploying larger agent populations in controlled environments, while measuring how cyber capability scales with population size, and estimating the critical population size for takeoff. Capability gains may lower this threshold, requiring re-estimation for each new model generation.

The Lyapunov spectrum of a nonlinear recurrent neural network with random asymmetric couplings is calculated in the limit $N\to\infty$. The calculation is based on a finite-$N$ identity that expresses the cumulative distribution of Lyapunov exponents as a response function of the tangent-space dynamics, with the tangent trajectory selected by a minimum-norm condition rather than by an initial condition. A cavity method then determines this response function at large $N$ through a self-consistent single-site problem. This result establishes that the chaos in this network is extensive and gives access to diffeomorphism-invariant properties of the dynamics. This work was done in collaboration with the AI models GPT-6 Astra and Claude Opus 5.5.

We develop a framework to construct large decoherence-free subspaces with a non-trivial structure. The construction is based on hybrid quantum systems in which quantum matter is coupled to a dissipative bosonic mode. Dissipation imposes a global constraint on the matter by selecting the matter null states in the long-time limit. The decoherence-free subspaces spanned by matter null states can exhibit exotic quantum properties and emergent symmetries that do not characterize the full Liouvillian dynamics. We show how to construct many-body operators with physically interesting null states by employing representation theory of Lie algebras. This approach allows us to choose models based on their underlying algebraic structure. We consider explicitly the example of coupling a lossy optical cavity to the directed tunneling operator of quantum particles in one-dimension. In this case, the symmetries of the decoherence-free subspace originate in an $\mathfrak{sl}(2,\mathbb{C})$ algebra, leading to an exponentially large number of steady states. We characterize the null states for both fermionic and bosonic particles, employing analytical and numerical methods. The states exhibit several properties that underline their complex quantum nature: long-range kinetic correlations and volume-law entanglement. The nonreciprocal nature of the directed tunneling dynamics leads to the emergence in the many-body regime of a symmetry-constrained Liouvillian skin effect. The open light-matter system exhibits a strong symmetry stemming from spinless $\eta$-pairing algebras. We show how the non-trivial properties of the long-times states emerge in the dissipative dynamics from generic initial states, by performing time-dependent matrix product state simulations. Our framework opens avenues for dissipatively engineering complex quantum correlations and harnessing nonreciprocity in a controlled manner.

Exact diagrammatic quantum Monte Carlo (DiagMC) results for the nearest-neighbor Hubbard model motivate a closer study of the pseudogap. Using the improved two-particle self-consistent approach (TPSC+), we analyze Energy (EDC) and Momentum Distribution Curves (MDC) simultaneously. We show that Fermi-liquid terminology breaks down in the pseudogap regime, requiring a distinction between true and false Fermi surfaces and zero-energy quasiparticle (ZEQ) lines. A false Fermi surface has a momentum-space spectral maximum but a frequency-space depression at zero energy, while a false ZEQ line violates the standard quasiparticle condition $\partial \Sigma'(\mathbf{k},\omega)/\partial \omega|_{\omega=0}<0$.The pseudogap is driven by critical thermal spin fluctuations, which occur in two dimensions because of the Mermin-Wagner theorem. Commensurate fluctuations first open an antinodal pseudogap, leaving true Fermi arcs. With decreasing temperature, the Fermi surface evolves into hole- and electron-like false Fermi surfaces. Incommensurate fluctuations generate hot spots near the diagonal, where the pseudogap persists to the quantum critical point (QCP), whereas at $\mathbf{k}_{AN}$ it disappears before the QCP doping. There, the spectrum has two precursor antiferromagnetic (AFM) bands, both in the unoccupied ($\omega>0$) region. We benchmark TPSC+ against DiagMC results for the Matsubara spectral proxy $-\mathrm{Im}[\mathcal{G}(\mathbf{k},i\pi T)]/\pi$. TPSC+ underestimates pseudogap suppression in the strong-interaction regime, reproducing DiagMC behavior at lower temperatures or doping. This proxy is equivalent to the spectral function with thermal broadening $\eta=\pi T$, which obscures features when $\pi T$ is not the smallest energy scale. Using $A(\mathbf{k},0)$, we find that hole-like Fermi surfaces emerge at any interaction strength at low temperature, even at weak coupling.

Polymer electrolyte water electrolysis is considered as a pivotal technology for green hydrogen production. Iridium dioxide (IrO2) serves as the benchmark electrocatalyst for the anodic oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in these cells. However, the scarcity and cost of iridium drives efforts to find durable and cost-effective replacements or drastically reduce the iridium loading. While ruthenium dioxide (RuO2) offers comparable activity, its practical utility is impacted by its stability being inferior to IrO2. The presented computational study analyzes the metal-oxygen bond strengths in bulk IrO2 and RuO2 to provide insights into the electronic origins of their differing stabilities. Through a comparative analysis of the electronic structure of bulk rutile IrO2, RuO2, and selected MO2 systems, it is able to discriminate the covalent and ionic contributions to the metal-oxygen bond using crystal-orbital-derived electronic descriptors.

Quantum spin ice hosts collective excitations and quantum fluctuations that are largely electrically silent because the materials supporting them are insulating. Coupling this magnetic environment to surface-localized Weyl states offers a route to encode its correlations directly into Fermi-arc transport. Experimental access to this regime, however, has remained largely unexplored. Here, we realize a synthetic Kondo lattice interface between the Weyl semimetal $\mathrm{Eu_2Ir_2O_7}$ and the quantum-spin-ice candidate $\mathrm{Tb_2Ti_2O_7}$, and demonstrate that quantum-spin-ice correlations are imprinted on Weyl Fermi-arc transport. At ultra-low temperature, electronic transport evolves from a sixfold anisotropic response at low field into a twelvefold response over an intermediate field window, before entering a reentrant sixfold anisotropy at high field. No analogous twelvefold response occurs at the classical-spin-ice interface. The quantum–classical contrast shows that the same itinerant electronic channel acquires qualitatively different symmetry information when interacting with the quantum-fluctuating Tb moments, consistent with an interfacial coupling between the Weyl surface states and the transverse, multipolar degrees of freedom, in addition to the longitudinal, dipolar contribution. Our work establishes synthetic Kondo lattice interfaces as a route for transducing frustrated quantum magnetism with multipole correlations into distinct Weyl Fermi-arc transport responses.

Witnessing entanglement between electrons propagating in quantum circuits requires accessing their two-electron coherences, which encode the two-particle quantum correlations generated by Coulomb interactions. Yet, experimental reconstruction of two-electron coherence remains a major challenge. We introduce photo-assisted two-electron tomography, a quantum coherence reconstruction protocol from dc-currents and time-averaged current correlations, routinely measured in electron quantum optics experiments. Driving an energy filter with a small rf tone encodes off-diagonal coherences in the frequency domain into the dc-current response, enabling single-electron tomography without resorting to current-noise measurements. Extending it to two channels, current correlations after two photo-assisted filters reconstruct the two-electron Wigner distribution and isolate its irreducible two-body part. When applied to Coulomb-coupled quantum Hall edge channels, the protocol reveals interaction-induced energy entanglement. Signatures of this entanglement are visible through the violation of an entanglement witness based on Cauchy-Schwarz inequalities, as well as Wigner function negativities, which remain resolved above the thermal background for realistic device parameters. A generalized Franson geometry further extends the approach to intra-channel two-electron coherences. This opens a direct pathway to detect and characterize electronic entanglement in ballistic quantum circuits.

Establishing the microscopic origin of localized emission in two-dimensional materials through consistent agreement between experiment and theory remains challenging. Recent STM/STS-STML measurements assigned an emission near 1.8 eV in monolayer MoS$_2$/hBN(2L)/graphene to the negatively charged CH$_\mathrm{S}^{-}$ defect. However, a comprehensive theoretical description of this emitter is still lacking. Here, we develop such a description and systematically investigate the photophysical properties of CH$_\mathrm{S}^{-}$ in monolayer MoS$_2$, two bilayer configurations, and a MoS$_2$/hBN heterostructure. The defect retains a similar local geometry and favors a singlet ground state in all four environments, whereas its electronic transition, zero-phonon line, electron-phonon coupling, radiative lifetime, and transition-dipole orientation depend strongly on the surrounding layers. The isolated-monolayer model exhibits substantial structural reorganization and produces a broad, dominant phonon sideband that is inconsistent with experiment. Adding an adjacent layer, either MoS$_2$ or hBN, substantially suppresses the phonon sideband, with only a minor dependence on the defect position in bilayer MoS$_2$. In particular, the MoS$_2$/hBN model yields a weak phonon sideband and closely reproduces the experimental photoluminescence lineshape. Our results thus provide the first theoretical agreement of CH$_\mathrm{S}^{-}$ emission and further reveal the role of adjacent layers in determining the electronic, vibronic, and optical properties of the quantum emitters in two-dimensional materials.

Halide perovskite systems require specific metal oxidation states (M2+ or M+/M3+ pairs), limiting processing flexibility during traditional synthesis and posing stability challenges for multivalent metals like Sn, Cu, and Au. This work anchors a profound paradigm shift: a universal, single-step, organic-solvent free synthetic platform that directly converts stable elemental metal films into bromide perovskite and perovskite-related systems for a wide variety of (opto)electronic applications. The synthetic platform uses methylammonium polybromide melt (PBM) that reacts at room temperature with different elemental metals, including Pb, Sn, Au, and Cu, successfully transforming them into their respective Br-perovskite phases: MAPbBr3, MASnBr3, MA2Au2Br6, and MA2CuBr4. It is shown that the PBMs chemical activity can be tuned, and in situ X-ray diffraction captures in two cases transient intermediate phases during phase evolution. For Sn, which tends towards overoxidation to Sn4+ phase, changes in the PBMs composition coupled with a metallic Sn mediated comproportionation reaction allowed suppressing overoxidation, and formation of high quality MASnBr3 films under ambient conditions. Overall, oxidation and disproportionation potentials are found to be useful metrics for predicting M:PBM reaction outcomes. Industrially, this approach should be fully compatible with roll-to-roll infrastructure, providing a low-barrier pathway to scale next-generation optoelectronic technologies.

The vanadium-based kagome superconductor CsV$_3$Sb$_5$ exhibits an intricate interplay between charge density wave (CDW) and superconductivity (SC). Substituting Ta for V will suppress the CDW order and enhance superconductivity. Here, we report a high-pressure study up to 48 GPa on Ta-doped Cs(V$_{0.86}$Ta$_{0.14}$)$_3$Sb$_5$ with enhanced $T_\mathrm{c}$ around 5.29 K and without CDW order. At low pressures, unlike the characteristic $``$M-shaped" temperature-pressure phase diagram of the pristine CsV$_3$Sb$_5$, the Ta-doped compound exhibits a distinct non-monotonic evolution. Initially, $T_\mathrm{c}$ drops slightly from 5.29 K at ambient pressure to 4.90 K at 0.33 GPa, before increasing to a maximum of 5.70 K at 0.61 GPa. Upon further compression, $T_\mathrm{c}$ decreases continuously to 0.98 K at 12.3 GPa. At higher pressures, $T_\mathrm{c}$ rises again, reaching 4.46 K at 47.7 GPa. This evolution of $T_\mathrm{c}$ establishes two superconducting domes under pressure, which are similar to those in CsV$_3$Sb$_5$. Our results demonstrate that pressure-induced double-dome superconductivity is intrinsic to these V-based kagome superconductors, even in the absence of long-range CDW order.

A recent experiment [arXiv:2507.08795] has reported measurements of the interwire $X$-parity lifetime in a Majorana tetron device via the quantum capacitance of an auxiliary readout dot. Motivated by these measurements, we theoretically study the interwire parity lifetime in a minimal model of the coupled dot-tetron system subject to electrostatic noise. We show that coupling to the measurement dot can itself strongly modify the parity dynamics by generating an energy splitting that shifts noise-induced transitions to finite frequency and thereby stabilizes the measured states against low-frequency fluctuations. For representative noise strengths motivated by disordered nanowire devices, we find $X$-parity switching lifetimes of order microseconds in the measurement configuration even when the corresponding bare-tetron coherence time is only tens of nanoseconds long. We analyze both the dispersive regime, where the dot can be integrated out and the dynamics reduces to an effective two-level system, and the near-resonant regime, where all four low-energy states participate. In the latter case, rapid transitions organize the spectrum into two long-lived manifolds that approximately correspond to sectors of the combined dot-tetron $X$-loop parity, yielding effective two-state switching despite the underlying multilevel structure. Our results show that measurement-induced stabilization can substantially enhance the observed $X$-parity switching lifetime, such that the lifetime measured under continuous readout can greatly exceed the intrinsic idle $T_2^*$ coherence time of the isolated Majorana tetron qubit.

A band that is exactly flat at zero magnetic field has zero velocity, a divergent effective mass, and no Fermi surface, so the standard theory of orbital magnetism does not apply. We show that the magnetic field generates an effective dispersion. In the expansion organized by the Moyal algebra of the noncommutative kinetic momenta, the band energy acquires a first-order shift $B\,\mathcal{M}(\mathbf k)$, set by the orbital moment of the Bloch state, and a second-order shift $\tfrac12\mathcal{X}(\mathbf k)B^{2}$, whose gauge-invariant coefficient we obtain in closed form. These two functions, together with the Berry curvature $\Omega$, fix the entire orbital response. The susceptibility is purely geometric, and for a generic isolated flat band it reproduces the established gauge-invariant response formula. With the chemical potential pinned to the flat band, the $\mathcal{M}=0$ contour becomes an emergent Fermi surface, and bosonizing excitations in its vicinity yields a modified Lifshitz–Kosevich formula with level spacing quadratic in $B$. The phase shift of the oscillations is given jointly by the Berry phase around the emergent Fermi surface and $\mathcal{X}$. When the band is narrow rather than exactly flat, the oscillation frequency crosses over, with a parameter-free profile, from the zero-field Fermi-surface area to the area of the $\mathcal{M}=0$ contour. We verify our analytical findings numerically by exactly diagonalizing a flattened Chern lattice model.

Machine learning interatomic potentials (MLIPs) are transforming atomistic simulations by accessing unprecedented length and time scales. While pretrained equivariant graph neural networks achieve robust zero-shot performance for near-equilibrium properties across broad chemical spaces, their translation to complex materials dynamics remains fundamentally challenged by out-of-distribution reactive states, representation biases, and computational scaling limits. In this Review, we examine how physics-driven specialization extends the applicability of MLIPs to complex dynamical systems. We systematically evaluate the structural trade-offs in MLIP design: the undersampling of highly strained configurations, the prohibitive computational overhead of high-order message-passing architectures, and the necessity of nonlocal interactions for open and field-coupled systems. Through four demanding application contexts - electrified interfaces, compositionally fluctuating open systems, multiphase evolution, and large-scale fracture - we establish a framework for observable-specific validation. Highlighting the complementary roles of universal foundation models and task-specific potentials, we emphasize that targeted adaptations must be rigorously benchmarked against intended observables. We conclude with a roadmap for developing physically consistent, hardware-aware force fields that seamlessly connect electronic-structure accuracy to macroscopic materials phenomena.

Chirality-Induced Spin Selectivity (CISS) refers to structural chirality governing spin transport in chiral systems, with experimental signatures reported in both transport experiments and photoemission. Beyond influencing transport, recent experiments indicate that adsorbed chiral molecules can influence the magnetic state of adjacent ferromagnetic layers, suggesting the existence of chirality-induced effects whose origin and quantitative characterization remain lacking. Here, we investigate chirality-induced long-range magnetic interactions in a hybrid molecular/ferromagnetic multilayer beyond the conventional direct transport coupling. We demonstrate the long-range nature by decoupling the adsorbed chiral molecules from the magnet using an insulating spacer. We show that self-assembled monolayers of chiral polypeptides with a helical structure can act on a ferromagnetic multilayer via an enantiomer-dependent effective magnetic field that may be mediated by chiral phonons through the insulating layer. Using Magneto-Optical Kerr Effect (MOKE) microscopy with on-chip reference regions free of molecules, we directly quantify this field by measuring precisely the reproducible shifts of the local hysteresis loops. The extracted effective field reverses sign for opposite enantiomers and correlates with the enantiomeric excess. These results provide a direct and quantitative link between molecular chirality and magnetic response in hybrid heterostructures, establishing an experimentally accessible benchmark for a CISS-related effect.

High harmonic generation (HHG) has emerged as a powerful probe of ultrafast electron dynamics in solids. However, in strongly correlated materials, where electronic excitations arise from many-body interactions rather than single-particle band dispersion, the field remains in its infancy. Here, we report HHG up to the 23$^{rd}$ order in the prototypical Mott insulator La$_2$CuO$_4$. We observe a robust 4 eV cutoff that is independent of driving field strength, revealing an intrinsic energy scale defined by the Hubbard bands. Using time-resolved high harmonic spectroscopy, we disentangle the distinct contributions of carrier creation, intraband acceleration, and interband recombination to the nonequilibrium radiation spectrum. We demonstrate that photo-doping triggers a fundamental reorganization of the many-body manifolds above a critical excitation density, a process that renormalizes the band curvature and suppresses nonlinear intraband currents, thereby directly imprinting the signature of many-body band reconstruction onto the harmonic emission. These results establish HHG as a sensitive probe of subtle correlation-driven electronic reconstructions and highlight that many-body interactions enable extreme nonlinear optical responses that are highly tunable in nonequilibrium states.

Predicting the structure and response of inhomogeneous polymer electrolytes requires a description of ion correlations that retains molecular-scale accuracy while remaining transferable across spatial scales and geometries. We develop a neural density functional for electrolytes that preserves spatial symmetries, thermodynamic integrability and the Noether identities, with perfect screening recovered in stable, noncritical bulk states. Its nonlinear density dependence captures the concentration-dependent correlations missed by a pair closure, including a crossover from enhanced to suppressed long-wavelength number fluctuations at strong coupling. The functional describes density profiles at an untrained salt concentration and predicts bulk structure factors and the long-wavelength number response. Trained solely on planar density and internal-force profiles from molecular dynamics, the functional predicts ionic structure in larger domains and in two-dimensional external fields. On the same ion data, it is more accurate than three other neural density-functional architectures and keeps its accuracy with a quarter of the training runs, where the errors of the best alternative grow by about two thirds. The spatial transferability provides a necessary foundation for connecting molecular correlations to continuum predictions at larger scales.

Resolving how multiple superconducting energy scales evolve under magnetic field is important for distinguishing multiband, anisotropic, and surface-sensitive superconducting responses. Here, we investigate the superconducting state of PdTe using low-temperature soft point-contact spectroscopy in a sealed $^3$He immersion environment. The resulting Andreev-reflection spectra reveal two characteristic superconducting energy scales near 0.5 and 1.1 meV that are not adequately described by a single-gap BTK model. Both energy scales are progressively suppressed upon warming toward the same superconducting transition temperature $T_c$. In contrast, their magnetic-field evolution reveals two distinct characteristic fields near 4.5 and 7.5 kG. The lower scale is associated with the loss of the zero-resistance superconducting state, whereas the higher-energy spectroscopic response persists to substantially larger fields. Independent field-dependent gap analysis yields suppression scales consistent with those identified from the zero-bias conductance. These results reveal a field-resolved hierarchy of superconducting energy scales in PdTe and indicate superconducting responses with distinct magnetic-field robustness.