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Ignacio Gustin

Publications and source records attributed to Ignacio Gustin.

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Optimizing ground state preparation protocols with autoresearch

Artificial intelligent language-model based coding agents have significantly changed the way we interact with computers in our day-to-day, as it is common to use them to create, improve, and run programming scripts only using natural language. Agent code updates can be better guided when such programs can be executed and scored automatically rather than judged by human preference. In quantum computing and classical quantum simulation settings, ground-state preparation has a parallel structure: candidate protocols can be ranked by estimated energies and other proxies indicating proper quantum-state convergence. In this work, we study how autoresearch, a code optimization strategy based on coding agents, can be used to optimize hyperparameter choices of different ground-state preparation and sampling protocols, including the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE), density matrix renormalization group (DMRG), and auxiliary-field quantum Monte Carlo (AFQMC). We validate the viability and capacity of this method on simple spin models and molecular Hamiltonians. Across all three settings, the agent mutates simple baselines into complex protocols with improved energy proxies while operating under constrained space-time computational budgets. We conclude with discussions of other quantum routines that support executable scalar scoring, enabling evolutionary coding agents to automate a substantial portion of the protocol-tuning work that would otherwise be required manually.

quant-ph

El Agente Forjador: Task-Driven Agent Generation for Quantum Simulation

AI for science promises to accelerate the discovery process. The advent of large language models (LLMs) and agentic workflows enables the expediting of a growing range of scientific tasks. However, most of the current generation of agentic systems depend on static, hand-curated toolsets that hinder adaptation to new domains and evolving libraries. We present El Agente Forjador, a multi-agent framework in which universal coding agents autonomously forge, validate, and reuse computational tools through a four-stage workflow of tool analysis, tool generation, task execution, and iterative solution evaluation. Evaluated across 24 tasks spanning quantum chemistry and quantum dynamics on five coding agent setups, we compare three operating modes: zero-shot generation of tools per task, reuse of a curriculum-built toolset, and direct problem-solving with the coding agents as the baseline. We find that our tool generation and reuse framework consistently improves accuracy over the baseline. We also show that reusing a toolset built by a stronger coding agent can reduce API cost and substantially raises the solution quality for weaker coding agents. Case studies further demonstrate that tools forged for different domains can be combined to solve hybrid tasks. Taken together, these results show that LLM-based agents can use their scientific knowledge and coding capabilities to autonomously build reusable scientific tools, pointing toward a paradigm in which agent capabilities are defined by the tasks they are designed to solve rather than by explicitly engineered implementations.

cs.AI

El Agente Estructural: An Artificially Intelligent Molecular Editor

We present El Agente Estructural, a multimodal, natural-language-driven geometry-generation and manipulation agent for autonomous chemistry and molecular modelling. Unlike molecular generation or editing via generative models, Estructural mimics how human experts directly manipulate molecular systems in three dimensions by integrating a comprehensive set of domain-informed tools and vision-language models. This design enables precise control over atomic or functional group replacements, atomic connectivity, and stereochemistry without the need to rebuild extensive core molecular frameworks. Through a series of representative case studies, we demonstrate that Estructural enables chemically meaningful geometry manipulation across a wide range of real-world scenarios. These include site-selective functionalization, ligand binding, ligand exchange, stereochemically controlled structure construction, isomer interconversion, fragment-level structural analysis, image-guided generation of structures from schematic reaction mechanisms, and mechanism-driven geometry generation and modification. These examples illustrate how multimodal reasoning, when combined with specialized geometry-aware tools, supports interactive and context-aware molecular modelling beyond structure generation. Looking forward, the integration of Estructural into El Agente Quntur, an autonomous multi-agent quantum chemistry platform, enhances its capabilities by adding sophisticated tools for the generation and editing of three-dimensional structures.

physics.chem-ph

El Agente Quntur: A research collaborator agent for quantum chemistry

Quantum chemistry is a foundational enabling tool for the fields of chemistry, materials science, computational biology and others. Despite of its power, the practical application of quantum chemistry simulations remains in the hands of qualified experts due to methodological complexity, software heterogeneity, and the need for informed interpretation of results. To bridge the accessibility gap for these tools and expand their reach to chemists with broader backgrounds, we introduce El Agente Quntur, a hierarchical, multi-agent AI system designed to operate not merely as an automation tool but as a research collaborator for computational quantum chemistry. Quntur was designed following three main strategies: i) elimination of hard-coded procedural policies in favour of reasoning-driven decisions, ii) construction of general and composable actions that facilitate generalization and efficiency, and iii) implementation of guided deep research to integrate abstract quantum-chemical reasoning across subdisciplines and a detailed understanding of the software's internal logic and syntax. Although instantiated in ORCA, these design principles are applicable to research agents more generally and easily expandable to additional quantum chemistry packages and beyond. Quntur supports the full range of calculations available in ORCA 6.0 and reasons over software documentation and scientific literature to plan, execute, adapt, and analyze in silico chemistry experiments following best practices. We discuss the advances and current bottlenecks in agentic systems operating at the research level in computational chemistry, and outline a roadmap toward a fully autonomous end-to-end computational chemistry research agent.

physics.chem-ph

El Agente Cuantico: Automating quantum simulations

Quantum simulation is central to understanding and designing quantum systems across physics and chemistry. Yet it has barriers to access from both computational complexity and computational perspectives, due to the exponential growth of Hilbert space and the complexity of modern software tools. Here we introduce{\cinzel El Agente Cu\'antico}, a multi-agent AI system that automates quantum-simulation workflows by translating natural-language scientific intent into executed and validated computations across heterogeneous quantum-software frameworks. By reasoning directly over library documentation and APIs, our agentic system dynamically assembles end-to-end simulations spanning state preparation, closed- and open-system dynamics, tensor-network methods, quantum control, quantum error correction, and quantum resource estimation. The developed system unifies traditionally distinct simulation paradigms behind a single natural-language interface. Beyond reducing technical barriers, this approach opens a path toward scalable, adaptive, and increasingly autonomous quantum simulation, enabling faster exploration of physical models, rapid hypothesis testing, and closer integration between theory, simulation, and emerging quantum hardware.

quant-ph

General framework for quantifying dissipation pathways in open quantum systems. III. Off-diagonal system-bath couplings

This paper extends the previously reported theory of dissipation pathways [J. Chem. Phys. 160, 214111 (2024)] to incorporate off-diagonal subsystem-bath coupling, which is often required to model molecular systems where the environment directly influences transitions and couplings between subsystem states. We systematically derive master equations for both population transfer and dissipation into individual bath components, for which we also rigorously prove energy conservation and detailed balance. The approach is based on second-order perturbation theory with respect to the subsystem-bath couplings, whose form is not limited to any specific model. The accuracy of the developed method is tested by applying it to diverse model Hamiltonians involving linearly coupled harmonic oscillator baths and comparing the outcomes against the hierarchical equations of motion (HEOM) method. Overall, our method accurately quantifies the contributions of specific bath components to the overall dissipation while significantly reducing the computational cost compared to numerically exact methods such as HEOM, thus offering a path to examine how vibronic interactions steer non-adiabatic processes in realistic chemical systems.

physics.chem-ph

Dissipation Pathways in a Photosynthetic Complex

Determining how energy flows within and between molecules is crucial for understanding chemical reactions, material properties, and even vital processes such as photosynthesis. While the general principles of energy transfer are well established, elucidating the specific molecular pathways by which energy is funneled remains challenging as it requires tracking energy flow in complex molecular environments. Here, we demonstrate how photon excitation energy is partially dissipated in the light-harvesting Fenna-Matthews-Olson (FMO) complex, mediating the excitation energy transfer from light-harvesting chlorosomes to the photosynthetic reaction center in green sulfur bacteria. Specifically, we isolate the contribution of the protein and specific vibrational modes of the pigment molecules to the energy dynamics. For this, we introduce an efficient computational implementation of a recently proposed theory of dissipation pathways for open quantum systems. Using it and a state-of-the-art FMO model with highly structured and chromophore-specific spectral densities, we demonstrate that energy dissipation is dominated by low-frequency modes ($<$ 800 cm$^{-1}$) as their energy range is near-resonance with the energy gaps between electronic states of the pigments. We identify the most important mode for dissipation to be in-plane breathing modes ($\sim$200 cm$^{-1}$) of the bacteriochlorophylls in the complex. Conversely, far-detuned intramolecular vibrations with higher frequencies ($>$ 800 cm$^{-1}$) play no role in dissipation. Interestingly, the FMO complex first needs to borrow energy from the environment to release excess photonic energy, making the energy dissipation dynamics non-monotonic. Beyond their fundamental value, these insights can guide the development of artificial light-harvesting devices and, more broadly, engineer environments for chemical and quantum control tasks.

cond-mat.other

Decoherence dynamics in molecular qubits: Exponential, Gaussian and beyond

In this work, we examine how the structure of system-bath interactions can determine commonly encountered temporal decoherence patterns, such as Gaussian and exponential decay, in molecular and other qubits coupled to a thermal bosonic bath. The analysis, based on a pure dephasing picture that admits analytical treatment, shows that decoherence, in general, is neither purely Gaussian nor exponential but rather the exponential of oscillatory functions, with periods determined by the bath's frequencies. For initially unentangled qubit-bath states Gaussian decay is always present at early times. It becomes increasingly dominant with increasing temperature, qubit-bath interaction strength, and bath correlation time. Initial system-bath entanglement that arises due to displacement in the position of the bath states preserves the Gaussian decay. By contrast, strict exponential decay arises only in very specific models that we isolate. Still, it becomes dominant for times longer than the bath correlation time or for early times when there is initial entanglement due to momentum displacement of the bath states. For molecular electronic decoherence, the long-time exponential regime plays a limited role as it emerges after most coherence is lost. Thus, the Gaussian decay provides a more suitable (albeit imperfect) model of such decoherence. Further, we discuss the connection between electronic decoherence dynamics and electronic spectroscopic lineshape theory, where Gaussian spectral peaks correspond to Gaussian coherence decay and Lorentzian peaks correspond to exponential coherence decay. We find that Gaussian spectral peaks, usually associated with inhomogeneous broadening, can emerge from the entangling unitary system-bath dynamics even when there is no inhomogeneity in the initial conditions.

physics.chem-ph

Mapping Electronic Decoherence Pathways in Molecules

Establishing the fundamental chemical principles that govern molecular electronic quantum decoherence has remained an outstanding challenge. Fundamental questions such as how solvent and intramolecular vibrations or chemical functionalization contribute to the decoherence remain unanswered and are beyond the reach of state-of-the-art theoretical and experimental approaches. Here we address this challenge by developing a strategy to isolate electronic decoherence pathways for molecular chromophores immersed in condensed phase environments that enables elucidating how electronic quantum coherence is lost. For this, we first identify resonance Raman spectroscopy as a general experimental method to reconstruct molecular spectral densities with full chemical complexity at room temperature, in solvent, and for fluorescent and non-fluorescent molecules. We then show how to quantitatively capture the decoherence dynamics from the spectral density and identify decoherence pathways by decomposing the overall coherence loss into contributions due to individual molecular vibrations and solvent modes. We illustrate the utility of the strategy by analyzing the electronic decoherence pathways of the DNA base thymine in water. Its electronic coherences decay in ~ 30 fs. The early-time decoherence is determined by intramolecular vibrations while the overall decay by solvent. Chemical substitution of thymine modulates the decoherence with hydrogen-bond interactions of the thymine ring with water leading to the fastest decoherence. Increasing temperature leads to faster decoherence as it enhances the importance of solvent contributions but leaves the early-time decoherence dynamics intact. The developed strategy opens key opportunities to establish the connection between molecular structure and quantum decoherence as needed to develop chemical strategies to rationally modulate it.

physics.chem-ph