Papers

Crystal structure governs material properties, making crystal structure prediction (CSP) a fundamental problem in materials science. Generative models are a promising approach for solving this problem, but the prevalence of polymorphism, coupled with large unit cells and complex packing geometry, makes the molecular CSP task challenging for existing models. To address this, we introduce Coarse-Grained Open Materials Generation (CG-OMatG), an equivariant Riemannian flow-based generative model. CG-OMatG predicts molecular crystal structures via a coarse-grained, hierarchical representation. CG-OMatG treats molecules as rigid bodies—performing both inter- and intra-molecular message passing to construct a geometric representation for molecular packings—and learns to reconstruct molecule centroid positions, orientations, and lattice parameters, conditioned on chemical species and conformer geometry. We train the model on subsets of the Open Molecular Crystals (OMC25) and Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) datasets. Further, we fine-tune the model via policy gradient reinforcement learning to steer the model towards generating low-energy candidate structures. We validate the generated structures on the CSP blind test benchmark, assessing agreement with experimentally determined crystals using COMPACK packing-similarity analysis. CG-OMatG exhibits strong performance for generative molecular crystal structure prediction, paving the way for accelerated polymorph screening and organic solid-state materials discovery.

Membrane curvature has been shown to bias the location of lipid or protein domains, but the roles of bending rigidity, spontaneous curvature, Gaussian bending modulus, and line tension are difficult to separate in general. We develop a small-domain description for a membrane whose shape is held fixed, e.g. by strong adhesion to a curved substrate. Combining a local Helfrich energy with the small-area isoperimetric expansion gives a position-dependent energy determined by the local mean and Gaussian curvatures. We identify four generic regimes of curvature preference whose boundaries depend on only two dimensionless parameters. On specific membrane shapes with complex curvature, we show that this curvature preference determines the energy landscapes experienced by small domains, which are strongly dependent on the size of the domain through the line tension contribution. For example, on an oblate-shaped membrane, very small domains tend to localize at the poles, whereas larger domains prefer to localize at the equator. Whether this transition is continuous or discontinuous is found to strongly depend on the spontaneous curvature of the domain. This ordering suggests a mechanism by which small domains can collect and coalesce at one location before relocating as they grow.

We study the reversible reaction $1+2\rightleftarrows3+4$ in a dilute gas described by a Boltzmann system. We prove that the outgoing flux of one product species determines the forward collision kernel throughout the domain on a prescribed admissible set of relative velocities and outgoing directions. The elastic collision laws are known, and the reverse kernel is fixed by a prescribed reciprocity relation. The measurements use two synchronized incoming packets with fixed relative velocity and a common velocity tending to infinity. Under bounded angularly integrated collision rates, the short transit time allows us to isolate the contribution of one forward reaction, with estimates uniform as the packets concentrate. Suitable tests of the product flux yield the spatial line integrals of the kernel and a Fourier reconstruction, without differentiating the nonlinear boundary map. We also estimate the effects of finite beam speed, packet width, detector resolution, and measurement noise on the recovered line integrals.

With the assistance of AI (Artificial Intelligence) tools, we revisit some mathematically well-formulated problems from our previous studies of BMN (Berenstein-Maldacena-Nastase) strings on type IIB string theory pp-wave background. These mathematical problems have important physical implications, relating to the computations of higher-genus critical superstring amplitudes, possible estimate of the cosmological constant. We make significant progress on some problems, while others remain unresolved.

Measurements and feedforward enhance the power of shallow quantum circuits, enabling the deterministic implementation of global unitary operations and the preparation of long-range entangled states. We establish a general correspondence between all such protocols and quantum error-correcting codes: the circuit preceding the measurements acts as an encoder, and unitary feedforward can eliminate post-selection if and only if the measurement projectors are detectable errors on the codespace. This correspondence provides a common framework for state preparation and implementation of global unitaries with measurements and feedforward, turning both into a code-design problem. For stabilizer codes with Pauli measurements, although the resulting operation can be non-Clifford, we show that its nonstabilizerness originates entirely from the encoder. We overcome this restriction using non-Pauli measurements or non-additive codes, constructing protocols that generate long-range nonstabilizerness while requiring only single-qubit unitary corrections.

We study superfluid vortices in two-color QCD and more general pseudoreal gauge theories with even flavor number $N_f=2m$ at finite baryon density. The antisymmetric diquark condensate admits fractional minimal vortices with baryon-phase winding $\nu=1/m$, corresponding to $1/m$ of the conventional circulation quantum, each localizing an $Sp(2)\simeq SU(2)$ core sector. For vortices embedded in mutually orthogonal flavor planes, the leading-order chiral action factorizes exactly. Off-diagonal flavor zero modes are non-normalizable at finite separation but become localized at coincidence, enhancing the normalizable sector from $[Sp(2)]^m$ to $Sp(2m)$. For fundamental fermions of an $Sp(2N)$ gauge theory, the bulk Wess–Zumino–Witten (WZW) term descends compatibly: a cluster of $n$ coincident minimal vortices carries an $Sp(2n)_N$ WZW theory, while a flavor-symmetric vortex with positive integer baryon-phase winding $\nu$ carries $Sp(2m)_{N\nu}$. At unit winding this yields the vortex map to $Sp(2m)_N$, with central charge $c=Nm(2m+1)/(N+m+1)$ at the WZW fixed point, and suggests a broader nonsupersymmetric four-dimensional/two-dimensional correspondence.

Motivated by the discovery of a meteor with velocity more than 300~km/s (Afanasiev et al. 2007) we study how dust grains formed in the supernova (SN) ejecta at its free-expansion phase can keep their high velocity obtained from the gas, where these grains were born. Using a one-dimensional spherically symmetric Lagrangian approach we follow the dynamics of grains during the interaction of a SN ejecta with the ambient interstellar gas. We found that grains larger $\sim 0.3~\mu$m can cross the SN forward shock front and reach the ambient interstellar medium. They are destroyed inefficiently, thus, their sizes remain close to the initial ones. In a diffuse interstellar gas of density $\lesssim 1$ cm$^{-3}$ grains larger as $\gtrsim 1~\mu$m move with velocity around $1-2$ thousand km/s and spread over distances exceeding $\sim 40-90$ pc from the SN origin within tens of kiloyears. In dense environment the propagation of grains is significantly suppressed: even large grains do not spread over distances greater than 50% of the current SN remnant size. Grains born close to the edge of the SN ejecta core in less-massive ejecta reach greater distances. Thus, high-velocity grains are expected to be formed in this part of the ejecta with mass lower than $\sim 3~M_\odot$ of the SN remnant evolving in a diffuse gas with density $\lesssim 1$ cm$^{-3}$. We discuss possible consequences for dust transport out from galactic disks.

We present a unified algebraic theory of Clifford spacetime quantum fault tolerance, which underpins universal fault-tolerant quantum computation. We construct a spacetime chain complex from a tensor network representation of a circuit that encodes fault propagation, detector syndromes, and logical actions through the associated gauge and stabilizer structure. We show that this theory (1) unifies various formulations of quantum fault tolerance including spacetime codes, Gottesman's gadget framework, fault complexes, and ZX calculus; (2) connects spacetime distances to the gadget-level correctness properties in Gottesman's formalism; (3) naturally accommodates a range of fault models, in particular phenomenological and circuit-level models, bringing these often separately formulated descriptions into a common algebraic framework through different tensor decompositions and fault assignments; and (4) recovers many known fault tolerance constructions and results as special cases, including repeated syndrome extraction, correlated detectors for transversal and fold-transversal gates, Steane- and Knill-type syndrome extraction gadgets, and single-shot error correction.

The structure of $^{22}$C remains unsettled more than a decade after the 2010 reaction-cross-section measurement. The nucleus sits at $N=16$, where the spherical closure of $^{24}$O competes with the deformation of $^{20}$C. We develop a multi-reference density functional approach that restores particle number and angular momentum and mixes quadrupole shapes while retaining the continuum. The calculation gives a deformed two-neutron halo with matter radius of 3.29 fm, closer to the carbon-target extraction, and a long $s$-wave tail. The ground state $0_{1}^{+}$ is dominated by oblate configurations, with $B(E2)$ values comparable to those of $^{20}$C. The valence neutrons occupy mixed $sd$ orbits; the $N=16$ closure established in $^{24}$O is substantially weakened in $^{22}$C.

We study the noise threshold for positive quantum capacity for the qubit depolarizing channel. We explore analytically the action of the qubit depolarizing channel on the symmetric subspaces of the input qubits, in the limit of asymptotically many uses of the channel. We observe the emergence of a bosonic Gaussian channel. Furthermore, the codes previously developed for the depolarizing channel can be translated to codes for the emergent Gaussian channel, and it is easier to further optimize these codes for the simpler emergent Gaussian channel. Translating these codes back to the depolarizing channel leads to extremely good input states for the coherent information of the depolarizing channel producing new lower bounds on the noise threshold for positive capacity. In addition to improved lower bounds on the threshold, this newly found link between depolarizing noise and Gaussian channels offers a novel perspective contributing to our understanding of these symmetric codes.

The mixing-plane method plays a pivotal role in steady simulations of multiple turbomachinery components. With advances in computational power, a whole-engine gas turbine simulation is no longer an elusive approach. However, whole-engine simulations require simultaneous coupling of the compressor, turbine and combustor. A key challenge is that the working fluid after the combustor can no longer be treated as a perfect gas, since the combustion introduces composition variations and combustion products. Conventional mixing-plane methods based on a fixed-composition gas cannot guarantee a thermodynamically consistent mixed-out state. To overcome the difficulty, this paper extends the classic mixing-plane approach to handle compressible reacting flows. The nonlinearity in the thermodynamic closure is addressed using a novel nested algorithm combining an outer pressure-root search with an inner enthalpy inversion. Physical state checks and power-law pressure sampling are incorporated to improve numerical robustness at low normal velocities where the pressure root approaches its upper physical bound. The performance of the method is demonstrated in three configurations: a quasi-1D interface test elucidating the thermodynamic stiffness of the proposed mixing-plane formulation for different fuel types and flow conditions; the Darmstadt transonic compressor case that verifies the proposed method reduces to the classic mixing-plane formulation when the mixture fraction reduces to zero; and a whole-engine simulation of the KJ66 micro-turbojet is used to demonstrate the performance of the method for multiphysics turbomachinery simulations. Good agreement with experimental data is observed, and the maximum relative mass-flow error across the mixing planes remains below 0.11%, demonstrating conservative and thermodynamically consistent interface coupling for compressible reacting turbomachinery flows.

Real nodal lines (RNLs) featuring real Chern numbers and second-order boundary modes have attracted widespread attention. In all previously reported realizations, an RNL is linked by another nodal line, and whether an RNL can be linked by other types of band degeneracies has remained open. Here, we propose a second-order real nodal-line semimetal in which a pair of RNLs is linked by a nodal surface. We show that this state can be realized in spinless systems with both $PT$ and nonsymmorphic $S_{2z}T$ symmetries, where the $S_{2z}T$-enforced nodal surface prevents the pair of RNLs from annihilation. Each nodal line carries a nontrivial real Chern number $\nu_R=1$, giving rise to topological hinge Fermi arcs located at a pair of $PT$-related hinges. Guided by this construction, we identify the interpenetrated graphene network (IGN) as a promising material realization. First-principles calculations confirm that a pair of nodal lines traversing the Brillouin zone are linked by a nodal surface and each nodal line carries double nontrivial $Z_2$ charges. The bulk-boundary correspondence of IGN manifests as a pair of hinge Fermi arcs together with drumhead surface states. Our work establishes nodal surfaces as a new linking partner for real nodal lines and provides a roadmap for exploring higher-order real topology in carbon-based and other light-element systems.

Halo nuclei are mostly studied through reactions. In breakup reactions, the projectile is sent upon a target, which induces the dissociation of the loosely-bound halo from the core of the nucleus. In most cases, a spectroscopic factor for the core-halo structure is inferred from experimental data. In this contribution, we present a new analysis of the Coulomb breakup of 11Be on 208Pb at 69A MeV measured at RIKEN. We use an effective multi-channel particle-rotor model of the projectile, which accounts for the excitation of the 10Be core. The calculations are in excellent agreement with the data, independently of the value of the spectroscopic factor. This confirms that breakup cross sections are insensitive to this value and that spectroscopic factors cannot be inferred from such measurements. In the near future, we plan to extend this idea to other reactions.

The two-dimensional sphere embedded in three-dimensional Euclidean space S2, plays a central role in a variety of scientific and engineering domains, including geophysics, planetary science, geodesy, atmospheric physics, quantum chemistry, cosmology, and virtual reality, among many others. As machine learning increasingly permeates these fields, the demand grows for robust tools that process and model functions on the sphere, while respecting the inherent topological and symmetry properties of the domain. We present torch-harmonics, a comprehensive library that offers efficient, differentiable implementations of advanced signal processing and machine learning (ML) methods for spherical data. These include the spherical harmonic transform (SHT), the spherical analogue of the Fourier transform, vector spherical harmonics, discrete-continuous and spectral convolutions, as well as both global and neighborhood spherical attention mechanisms. Beyond traditional representations, torch-harmonics provides the building blocks for state-of-the-art spherical ML architectures such as spherical transformers in order to enable scalable, rotationally-aware learning and inference in modern scientific and engineering applications.

Causal loops escape paradoxes if they generate valid probabilities under arbitrary independent local interventions. We show that a deterministic classical process is logically consistent if and only if it contains no signaling loops: cyclic signaling is forbidden but cyclic causation is not, allowing indefinite causal order. Logical consistency is then found to hold exactly when the list of events of a process is pairwise exclusive and complete, providing the first event-based, intervention-free, non-recursive characterization of consistent causal loops. Our results repair a previously introduced intervention-free criterion that misses global loops and reveal that what makes deterministic classical communications without causal order consistent is a multipartite form of Specker's principle: if any two of several questions can be answered jointly, so can all of them.

Claims of quantum advantage rest on the classical hardness of simulating quantum circuits. Magic, operator scrambling, anticoncentration, and non-Gaussianity for fermionic circuits are standard diagnostics of complex quantum dynamics. For pure states, some of these have been rigorously connected to classical simulability. Whether these diagnostics reliably track the limits of efficient classical simulation under noise remains unclear. Here, we show that in noisy Clifford+$T$ and nearest-neighbour matchgate+SWAP circuits, dynamical diagnostics and classical simulability can separate in both directions. In particular, the diagnostics can remain nontrivial after classical simulation becomes efficient, or become trivial before known efficient classical algorithms apply. We trace this mismatch to the different statistical properties they probe: magic and scrambling depend on fourth-order statistics of the Pauli spectrum, whereas the simulation algorithms depend primarily on second-order moments, which local noise suppresses at different rates. Thus, dynamical diagnostics measured on a noisy quantum device do not by themselves constitute evidence for classical hardness.

Supernova remnants (SNRs) are extended radio sources whose morphology and evolution are shaped by the interaction of strong shocks with the surrounding medium. We combined the 0.944 GHz Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) image from the Evolutionary Map of the Universe (EMU) survey with 0.088-0.200 GHz MWA-GLEAM data to characterize the integrated radio spectrum of G343.1$-$00.7 and perform its first sensitive spatially resolved spectral analysis. We derived an integrated spectral index of $\alpha=-0.50\pm0.01$, confirming the previously reported value with improved accuracy. We redefined the radio morphology of the remnant, providing the first morphological and spectral evidence that filamentary structures overlapping the nearby \hii\ G343.147$-$00.44 are associated with the SNR. Local brightness-brightness analysis revealed flatter-spectrum filaments along the south-eastern shell, consistent with a possible thermal bremsstrahlung contribution from radiative or partially radiative shocks. Comparison with \hi\ and CO data identified gas components kinematically consistent with the SNR distance, although no clear morphological evidence of interaction was found. The gas distribution around the \hii\ suggests an expanding \hi\ shell partially embedded within its parent molecular cloud. Theoretical models place G343.1$-$00.7 between the late Sedov and early pressure-driven phases, suggesting different evolutionary stages across the remnant. These results highlight the potential of high-resolution ASKAP observations for spatially resolved studies of poorly characterized SNRs in complex Galactic environments.

Coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS) microscopy enables label-free chemical imaging of biological samples and materials. Conventionally, CARS is implemented using a point-scanning approach that probes a single vibrational mode at a time. Hyperspectral CARS enhances chemical specificity by sequentially addressing multiple Raman modes. However, the measured CARS intensity is distorted by an undesired non-resonant background, which broadens and shifts the Raman peaks, thereby hindering the interpretability of hyperspectral images. Here, we introduce a phase-sensitive, wide-field hyperspectral CARS microscopy scheme that suppresses the non-resonant background. The proposed approach combines three key components: a high-power picosecond tunable optical parametric amplifier (OPA), speckle illumination, and quantitative phase imaging based on quadriwave lateral shearing interferometry (QLSI). The high-power OPA provides the peak power required for efficient nonlinear excitation. Speckle illumination distributes the optical energy over the objective back pupil and mitigates coherent imaging artifacts. QLSI enables the simultaneous measurement of the amplitude and phase of the CARS field, thereby allowing separation of resonant and non-resonant contributions, without the need for an external reference beam. This unique combination enables practical phase-resolved CARS imaging over a field of view exceeding $60 \times 60~\text{\textmu m}^2$ at a frame rate of 1.4 Hz. We illustrate the approach by acquiring hyperspectral images of microplastics and liver steatosis across the entire CH-stretching region.

In the context of a spatially flat FLRW background, we perform a symmetry classification of $k$-essence models with Lagrangian densities of the form $f_1(\phi)R+f_2(\phi,X)$. The kinetic term $X$ is introduced as an independent degree of freedom via a Lagrange multiplier, and the lapse function is treated as a dynamical variable. The symmetry analysis is applied to the constrained system prior to any gauge fixing. This approach reveals symmetries which otherwise are lost when the lapse is fixed at the level of the action. The derived families of $k$-essence models admitting nontrivial symmetries fall to two general classes: minimally coupled and nonminimally coupled theories to gravity. We use the corresponding Noetherian conservation laws to derive exact cosmological solutions. We find that, when the numerical value of the conserved charges is zero, the field equations reduce to an algebraic relation. We subsequently derive power-law expressions for the scale factor with exponents determined by the particular $k$-essence function.

We study a high-dimensional Kuramoto model with attractive pairwise coupling and a repulsive higher-order effect. Although the pairwise interaction favors synchronization, the higher-order interaction prevents complete synchronization and selects an intermediate level of coherence corresponding to the balanced equilibria. For the unit sphere of dimension at least two, we provide an explicit basin of attraction for the balanced equilibria. We also classify nonzero-mean equilibria and show that all non-balanced equilibria are linearly unstable. This indicates that balanced states are the only natural stable candidates in the higher dimensions. In contrast, on the circle, the same model reduces to a higher-order Kuramoto-type model which exhibits a qualitatively different selection mechanism that depends fundamentally on the dimension. In this case, population imbalance at finite $N$ prevents exact stationary balance and instead generates a common angular drift producing phase-locked states. We construct basins of attraction for two-cluster locked states, in which the phases split into two groups, and identify the corresponding finite-$N$ selected values of the order parameters. This phenomenon is called continuous-versus-quantized order-parameter selection. We further demonstrate, through a root-selection mechanism, why such two-cluster locked states are typically observed in most simulations. Finally, we show that two-cluster locked states with a large population imbalance are linearly unstable, which explains why only certain locked states are dynamically robust.

We briefly review the predictions of holographic QCD in hard-wall AdS/QCD models for the contribution of pseudoscalars and axial-vector mesons to the hadronic light-by-light amplitude and consequently to the muon anomalous magnetic moment, which allows one to satisfy the Melnikov-Vainshtein constraint in a purely hadronic model. Moreover, we discuss the role of tensor mesons in satisfying the remaining short-distance constraints, and provide details for a minimal model of tensor mesons that turns out to agree remarkably well with available data from BELLE as well as preliminary low-$Q^2$ data from BESIII. In an appendix, we also provide analytical results for the short-distance limits in hQCD and compare with the leading-order OPE result as given by the massless quark loop.

A precise measurement of prompt and non-prompt ${\rm D}^{\rm *+}$-meson spin alignment with respect to the helicity and production axes in proton-proton (pp) collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 13.6$ TeV is presented, using data collected with the ALICE experiment at the LHC. The spin alignment is quantified by measuring the diagonal spin density matrix element $\rho_{\rm 00}$ for ${\rm D}^{\rm *+}$ mesons at midrapidity ($|y|<0.8$). The measurement is performed in the transverse-momentum ($p_{\rm T}$) range $3<p_{\rm T}<100$ GeV/$c$ for prompt ${\rm D}^{\rm *+}$ mesons and $3<p_{\rm T}<30$ GeV/$c$ for non-prompt ${\rm D}^{\rm *+}$ mesons, respectively. The measured $\rho_{\rm 00}$ values for prompt ${\rm D}^{\rm *+}$ mesons are consistent with the unpolarised expectation of $1/3$ over the entire $p_{\rm T}$ range, indicating no evidence of spin alignment. In contrast, $\rho_{\rm 00}$ of non-prompt ${\rm D}^{\rm *+}$ mesons exhibit a deviation from $1/3$, consistent with expectations from weak beauty-hadron decays and well described by PYTHIA 8 simulations coupled with the EvtGen decay package. These results confirm and extend previous measurements, providing a precise baseline for future studies of ${\rm D}^{\rm *+}$ spin alignment in heavy-ion collisions.

How much time is fundamentally required to extract the syndrome of a stabilizer code on hardware with a given connectivity graph? Previous bounds answer through a chosen list of checks (Delfosse, Beverland, and Tremblay, 2021) or through the global code parameters (Baspin, Fawzi, and Shayeghi, 2023). Here, we show that neither determines the interaction that a particular hardware cut requires. We therefore define the intrinsic cut cost, $\chi$, directly from the stabilizer group, independent of the generating set used to describe the code. It is computable from the check matrix alone, and equals the mutual information across the cut in the maximally mixed code state. We show that every exact extraction circuit, however adaptive, needs at least $\chi/2$ two-qubit operations across the cut, and alternatively with free local processing exactly $\chi$ shared Bell pairs. Guided by this intrinsic cut cost, we construct annular surface codes with constant-depth local extraction that give a counterexample to Corollary 1 of Delfosse, Beverland, and Tremblay. Furthermore, for a fixed quantum Tanner family, $\chi$ grows at least linearly with the size of every sufficiently small region, giving a depth guarantee at each corresponding bottleneck in every layout. This strengthens the global perspective of Baspin, Fawzi, and Shayeghi and, together with our matching square-grid construction, yields a tight space–depth tradeoff. Our results connect the interaction required by syndrome extraction to hardware communication capacity and thus provide a way to assess unavoidable circuit costs before committing to a particular layout.

Plane gravitational waves play a role both in relativistic and in non-relativisitic physics, highlighted by two different mass parameters. The large-distance behaviour of a sandwich gravitational wave can be approximated by a continuous but not necessarily smooth profile, providing us with a simplified description of particle motion. Our model is consistent with the Carroll symmetry. Our strategy is illustrated by the Pöschl-Teller profile. The limitations of the sandwich approximation are discussed.

Here we demonstrate quantum–classical break-even for chemical dynamics applications, reaching useful accuracy with a quantum-hardware wall-clock time comparable to that estimated for practical classical computing resources. To this end, we develop a workflow for problems that are hardware-native but classically hard. We target large ring-shaped molecules that map naturally onto quantum hardware with neighboring connections. Exploiting the spatial locality of interactions, we compress short-time evolution within a small region using tensor networks. We then use rotational symmetry to replicate the compressed circuit in space and time, enabling long-time dynamics of large systems with practical classical processing times. We apply the workflow to conjugated macrocycles with rotational periodicity, 12-qubit benzene and 120-qubit [60]annulene, by embedding their electronic structure onto loops of IBM quantum processors. For the annulene, we compared the quantum-processing-unit (QPU) wall-clock times for hole-doped nonequilibrium dynamics to the estimated wall-clock time of two state-of-the-art classical methods, Majorana propagation and matrix-product-state time evolution based on the time-dependent variational principle. We show a situation in which a hybrid quantum–classical strategy is comparable to a classical-only counterpart in terms of both accuracy and computational time for a conventional high-performance computing system under ideal parallelization. These results show that quantum hardware can become a realistic computational option for chemical simulations for practitioners in chemical science and engineering.

We show that the light-ray algebra of unitary supersymmetric Lorentzian conformal field theories contains a universal supersymmetric generalized $\mathfrak{bms}$ algebra. We construct parallel light-ray operators using the supersymmetry current, $R-$symmetry current and the stress tensor supported on a co-dimension one null hypersurface and determine their graded commutators in $d=3,4$ to verify this claim. Our construction only relies on global supersymmetry and fundamental physical principles such as microcausality, unitarity and Lorentz invariance and thus applies to strongly coupled theories. As a corollary, we show that the averaged null energy operator is a positive operator using the local supersymmetry algebra on the null sheet, providing a supersymmetric derivation of the averaged null energy condition (ANEC). Finally, we verify our results in free massless supersymmetric theories and present arguments to support that the local supersymmetry continues to ensure the ANEC is satisfied even in general supersymmetric quantum field theories.

As quantum networks move toward multi-user architectures, a central question is how the performance of entanglement distribution scales with the numbers of network nodes $N$ and active users $M$, yet existing studies use different objectives, resource assumptions, and normalizations. To account for delivery distance under multi-user demand, we define entanglement transport, which weights each delivered Bell pair meeting a fixed fidelity threshold by its endpoint separation. In a two-layer framework, (i) a resource layer measures capacity per activation slot under different aggregation regimes, and (ii) a physical layer measures service per second under implementation constraints. For matched implementations with a bounded number of activation slots per second, asymptotic-aggregation capacity sets a service ceiling, whereas achievable service must be established separately. On expanding honeycomb lattices with one random session, fixed-window entanglement-percolation constructions achieve $\Theta(N^{-1})$ entanglement transport per activation slot below their thresholds and $\Theta(\sqrt N)$ above them. For homogeneous chains, asymptotic aggregation exceeds fixed-window capacity by a factor $\Theta(N^2/M)$, and in spatial expansion a noisy physical implementation achieves $\Theta(M/N)$ service per second. These examples show that entanglement-transport scaling depends not only on connectivity but also on resource aggregation and physical implementation. The framework provides a common basis on which quantum-network scaling laws can be established.

Dwarf and low-mass galaxies are highly sensitive to stellar feedback and gas flows, yet their spatially resolved gas-phase metallicity remains poorly characterised. We measure radial gas-phase metallicity gradients for 382 star-forming low-mass galaxies from MaNGA DR17, spanning $7.2 \leq \log(M_{\star}/M_{\odot}) \leq 9.1$ and $z \leq 0.05$. Spectra are stacked in elliptical radial bins and metallicity is derived from the N2 index. After removing the primary dependence on local stellar mass surface density, we define a residual metallicity $\Delta Z$ to isolate secondary dependencies. Gradients are flat on average (median slope $-0.007$\,dex\,$R_e^{-1}$). The residual gradients correlate most strongly with light concentration ($r = 0.304$, $r^2 = 0.092$, $p < 0.001$) and gas velocity dispersion ($r = 0.204$, $p < 0.001$), though both account for at most 9 per cent of the variance. Large-scale environment shows no significant correlation. The concentration result is robust to measurement uncertainties and persists with a stricter resolution cut, suggesting internal structural properties shape the radial metal distribution in low-mass galaxies.

Melting temperature calculation is one of the important topics in computational materials science. In high-throughput in silico screening and artificial intelligence assisted design of materials, it usually requires a rapid and autonomous assessment of the melting temperature of the target. Unfortunately, molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of the melting point require many cumbersome and manual operations, making large-scale calculation of the melting point challenging. In this work, we introduce MyTm, a toolkit that employs MD to automatically determine the melting point. The method is fully modularized, and by combining these modules, the program enables fully automated melting calculations by using commonly adopted approaches, including the direct-heating method, the void method, the modified void method, the solid-liquid coexistence method, and the Z method. Moreover, a machine learning (ML) method is proposed and employed to recognize and classify the solid like and liquid like atoms, which effectively resolve the low accuracy issue in conventional classification approaches, thus making the automated high throughput pipeline of melting-point calculation possible. The robustness and efficacy of MyTm have been demonstrated by several well studied systems.

We establish sufficient conditions for preparing quantum thermal states of noncommuting local Hamiltonians with polylogarithmic circuit depth in arbitrary fixed spatial dimension. Our conditions combine locality and stability bounds on the effective interactions of reduced density matrices of a Gibbs state with a quantitative high-temperature condition and access to coarse classical reference Hamiltonians. When these references can be generated locally, the classical preprocessing cost is $N^{1+o(1)}$ for $N$ sites at inverse-polynomial global accuracy. We construct the preparation circuit from spatially localized Petz recovery maps. Quantum corrections derived from the microscopic Hamiltonian enable accurate recovery while the classical references remain coarse. After preprocessing, the resulting circuit prepares the canonical purification using $N\operatorname{polylog}(N/\varepsilon)$ gates and qubits, where $\varepsilon$ is the preparation error. These results link two fundamental questions: how correlations are organized in thermal equilibrium, and how efficiently the corresponding states can be realized through operations allowed by quantum mechanics. By translating static equilibrium structure into explicit preparation circuits, they give equilibrium locality a constructive computational interpretation and a physically grounded role in quantum algorithm design.