SmileyLlama: Modifying Large Language Models for Directed Chemical Space Exploration

This paper introduces SmileyLlama, a large language model transformed via supervised fine-tuning and direct preference optimization to function as a chemical language model that reliably generates novel drug-like molecules with user-specified properties and optimized 3D conformations.

Joseph M. Cavanagh, Kunyang Sun, Andrew Gritsevskiy, Dorian Bagni, Yingze Wang, Thomas D. Bannister, Teresa Head-Gordon2026-04-14🔬 physics

Seniority-Zero Canonical Transformation Theory: Reducing Truncation Error with Late Truncation

This paper introduces a Seniority-Zero Canonical Transformation Theory that achieves high accuracy (104\sim 10^{-4} Hartree) for small- to medium-sized systems by exactly evaluating the first three commutators of a unitary transformation applied to a seniority-zero reference wavefunction, while approximating higher-order terms to reduce truncation errors.

Daniel F. Calero-Osorio, Paul W. Ayers2026-04-14🔬 physics

Accuracy and resource advantages of quantum eigenvalue estimation with non-Hermitian transcorrelated electronic Hamiltonians

This paper demonstrates that applying a quantum eigenvalue estimation algorithm to non-Hermitian transcorrelated Hamiltonians with the xTC approximation can achieve chemical accuracy comparable to standard qubitization on significantly larger basis sets for small atoms, though the method's accuracy degrades for larger second-row elements.

Alexey Uvarov, Artur F. Izmaylov2026-04-14⚛️ quant-ph

Quantum Simulation of Ligand-like Molecules through Sample-based Quantum Diagonalization in Density Matrix Embedding Framework

This paper demonstrates that combining Sample-based Quantum Diagonalization (SQD) with Density Matrix Embedding Theory (DMET) enables accurate, chemically precise ground-state energy calculations for complex, low-symmetry ligand-like molecules on IBM's Eagle R3 quantum hardware by effectively managing subsystem-dependent entanglement variations.

Ashish Kumar Patra, Anurag K. S. V., Sai Shankar P., Ruchika Bhat, Raghavendra V., Rahul Maitra, Jaiganesh G2026-04-14⚛️ quant-ph

El Agente Estructural: An Artificially Intelligent Molecular Editor

The paper introduces El Agente Estructural, a multimodal, natural-language-driven AI agent that mimics human experts to perform precise, context-aware 3D molecular editing and geometry manipulation through the integration of vision-language models and domain-specific tools, thereby enabling complex chemical tasks like site-selective functionalization and stereochemical control without rebuilding entire molecular frameworks.

Changhyeok Choi, Yunheng Zou, Marcel Müller, Han Hao, Yeonghun Kang, Juan B. Pérez-Sánchez, Ignacio Gustin, Hanyong Xu, Andrew Wang, Mohammad Ghazi Vakili, Chris Crebolder, Alán Aspuru-Guzik, Varinia Bernales2026-04-14🔬 physics

A critical assessment of bonding descriptors for predicting materials properties

This paper demonstrates that incorporating quantum-chemical bonding descriptors into machine learning models significantly improves the prediction of elastic, vibrational, and thermodynamic properties of approximately 13,000 solid-state materials while also enabling the discovery of intuitive physical expressions for these properties.

Aakash Ashok Naik, Nidal Dhamrait, Katharina Ueltzen, Christina Ertural, Philipp Benner, Gian-Marco Rignanese, Janine George2026-04-14🔬 cond-mat.mtrl-sci

Learning noisy phase transition dynamics from stochastic partial differential equations

This paper introduces a physics-aware machine learning surrogate for the 3D stochastic Cahn-Hilliard equation that parameterizes inter-cell fluxes to guarantee mass conservation and thermodynamic interpretability, enabling the accurate simulation of noise-driven phenomena like nucleation and coarsening with significant generalization to larger spatial and temporal scales.

Luning Sun, Van Hai Nguyen, Shusen Liu, John Klepeis, Fei Zhou2026-04-14🔬 physics

Heterogeneous Molecular Signatures of Human Odor Perception

By employing interpretable machine learning models on first-principles molecular descriptors, this study reveals that human odor perception lacks a universal physicochemical determinant, instead relying on heterogeneous, odor-specific patterns of feature importance that reflect unique structure-odor relationships for each scent.

P. Zanineli, E. V. C. Lopes, G. R. Schleder, L. N. Lemos, F. Crasto de Lima, A. Fazzio2026-04-14🔬 cond-mat.mtrl-sci

Interference Limited Absorption in Dense Molecular Nanolayers Near Reflecting Surfaces

This paper investigates how interference effects in dense molecular nanolayers near reflecting surfaces lead to non-monotonic absorption behavior, revealing that while free-standing films are limited to 50% absorption due to symmetry, mirror-backed configurations can achieve unity absorption through critical coupling by balancing radiative leakage with intrinsic loss.

Zeyu Zhou, Maxim Sukharev, Abraham Nitzan, Joseph E. Subotnik2026-04-14🔬 physics.optics

How Does Intercalation Reshape Layered Structures? A First-Principles Study of Sodium Insertion in Layered Potassium Birnessite

This first-principles study investigates how sodium intercalation into layered potassium birnessite alters its structural stability, ion diffusion barriers, vibrational modes, and electronic properties, revealing that the process induces significant lattice distortions and transforms the material into a tunable bipolar magnetic semiconductor with potential applications in energy storage and spintronics.

Adriana Lee Punaro, Daniel Maldonado-Lopez, Jorge L. Cholula-Díaz, Marcelo Videa, Jose L. Mendoza-Cortes2026-04-14🔬 cond-mat.mtrl-sci

Symplectic Constraints in Classical Reaction Dynamics: From Gromov's Camel to Reaction Rates

This paper explores how concepts from symplectic topology, particularly Gromov's non-squeezing theorem, offer a novel geometric framework for understanding classical reaction dynamics near saddle points by identifying symplectic width scales that reveal how initial phase-space distributions influence reactivity and reaction bottlenecks beyond traditional flux-based metrics.

Stephen Wiggins2026-04-14🌀 nlin

CovAngelo: A hybrid quantum-classical computing platform for accurate and scalable drug discovery

CovAngelo is a hybrid quantum-classical platform that utilizes a novel QM/QM/MM embedding model and quantum-information metrics to accurately and scalably model ligand-protein binding reactions, such as the covalent docking of zanubrutinib, while demonstrating potential speedups on current and future quantum hardware to improve drug discovery efficiency.

Linn Evenseth, Kamil Galewski, Witold Jarnicki, Piero Lafiosca, Vyom N. Patel, Grzegorz Rajchel-Mieldzioc, Martin Šimka, Michał Szczepanik, Emil \.Zak2026-04-14🔬 physics

Symplectic Constraints in Quantum Reaction Dynamics: Squeezed-State Suppression and Candidate Width Scales

This paper investigates quantum reaction dynamics at an index-1 saddle using a Weyl-symbol formulation of quantum normal forms, revealing that extreme squeezing of transverse bath modes induces a geometric suppression of transmission by depleting effective reactive energy, thereby establishing a concrete link between squeezed-state covariance geometry and quantum reactivity consistent with classical symplectic width concepts.

Stephen Wiggins2026-04-14⚛️ quant-ph

Comparing and Contrasting Vibrational Wavepacket Dynamics and Impulsive Stimulating Raman Scattering Descriptions of Pump-Probe Spectroscopy: A Theoretical Study

This theoretical study compares wavepacket interference and impulsive stimulated Raman scattering (ISRS) descriptions of pump-probe spectroscopy, demonstrating that accurate modeling of excited-state absorption requires accounting for non-adjacent vibrational coherences and highlighting the dominant role of the coherent anti-Stokes pathway under specific spectral conditions.

Subho Mitra, Arijit K. De2026-04-14🔬 physics

opt-DDAP: Optimisable density-derived atomic point charges via automatic differentiation

This paper introduces opt-DDAP, a reformulated density-derived atomic point charge method that leverages automatic differentiation to optimize Gaussian basis parameters and reciprocal-space cutoffs, thereby overcoming the numerical instability and reliance on fixed heuristics of the original approach to produce robust charges for long-range electrostatic modeling.

Mohith H., Sudarshan Vijay2026-04-14🔬 cond-mat.mtrl-sci