Can Theoretical Physics Research Benefit from Language Agents?

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Lu, Sirui, Jin, Zhijing, Zhang, Terry Jingchen, Kos, Pavel, Cirac, J. Ignacio, Schölkopf, Bernhard
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Lu, Sirui
Jin, Zhijing
Zhang, Terry Jingchen
Kos, Pavel
Cirac, J. Ignacio
Schölkopf, Bernhard
author_facet Lu, Sirui
Jin, Zhijing
Zhang, Terry Jingchen
Kos, Pavel
Cirac, J. Ignacio
Schölkopf, Bernhard
contents Large Language Models (LLMs) are rapidly advancing across diverse domains, yet their application in theoretical physics remains inadequate. While current models show competence in mathematical reasoning and code generation, we identify critical gaps in physical intuition, constraint satisfaction, and reliable reasoning that cannot be addressed through prompting alone. Physics demands approximation judgment, symmetry exploitation, and physical grounding that require AI agents specifically trained on physics reasoning patterns and equipped with physics-aware verification tools. We argue that LLM would require such domain-specialized training and tooling to be useful in real-world for physics research. We envision physics-specialized AI agents that seamlessly handle multimodal data, propose physically consistent hypotheses, and autonomously verify theoretical results. Realizing this vision requires developing physics-specific training datasets, reward signals that capture physical reasoning quality, and verification frameworks encoding fundamental principles. We call for collaborative efforts between physics and AI communities to build the specialized infrastructure necessary for AI-driven scientific discovery.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_06214
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Can Theoretical Physics Research Benefit from Language Agents?
Lu, Sirui
Jin, Zhijing
Zhang, Terry Jingchen
Kos, Pavel
Cirac, J. Ignacio
Schölkopf, Bernhard
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Mathematical Physics
Quantum Physics
Large Language Models (LLMs) are rapidly advancing across diverse domains, yet their application in theoretical physics remains inadequate. While current models show competence in mathematical reasoning and code generation, we identify critical gaps in physical intuition, constraint satisfaction, and reliable reasoning that cannot be addressed through prompting alone. Physics demands approximation judgment, symmetry exploitation, and physical grounding that require AI agents specifically trained on physics reasoning patterns and equipped with physics-aware verification tools. We argue that LLM would require such domain-specialized training and tooling to be useful in real-world for physics research. We envision physics-specialized AI agents that seamlessly handle multimodal data, propose physically consistent hypotheses, and autonomously verify theoretical results. Realizing this vision requires developing physics-specific training datasets, reward signals that capture physical reasoning quality, and verification frameworks encoding fundamental principles. We call for collaborative efforts between physics and AI communities to build the specialized infrastructure necessary for AI-driven scientific discovery.
title Can Theoretical Physics Research Benefit from Language Agents?
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Mathematical Physics
Quantum Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.06214