_version_ 1866908878800683008
author Guo, Haoyu
Tikhanovskaya, Maria
Raccuglia, Paul
Vlaskin, Alexey
Co, Chris
Liebling, Daniel J.
Ellsworth, Scott
Abraham, Matthew
Dorfman, Elizabeth
Armitage, N. P.
Feng, Chunhan
Georges, Antoine
Gingras, Olivier
Kiese, Dominik
Kivelson, Steven A.
Oganesyan, Vadim
Ramshaw, B. J.
Sachdev, Subir
Senthil, T.
Tranquada, J. M.
Brenner, Michael P.
Venugopalan, Subhashini
Kim, Eun-Ah
author_facet Guo, Haoyu
Tikhanovskaya, Maria
Raccuglia, Paul
Vlaskin, Alexey
Co, Chris
Liebling, Daniel J.
Ellsworth, Scott
Abraham, Matthew
Dorfman, Elizabeth
Armitage, N. P.
Feng, Chunhan
Georges, Antoine
Gingras, Olivier
Kiese, Dominik
Kivelson, Steven A.
Oganesyan, Vadim
Ramshaw, B. J.
Sachdev, Subir
Senthil, T.
Tranquada, J. M.
Brenner, Michael P.
Venugopalan, Subhashini
Kim, Eun-Ah
contents Large Language Models (LLMs) show great promise as a powerful tool for scientific literature exploration. However, their effectiveness in providing scientifically accurate and comprehensive answers to complex questions within specialized domains remains an active area of research. Using the field of high-temperature cuprates as an exemplar, we evaluate the ability of LLM systems to understand the literature at the level of an expert. We construct an expert-curated database of 1,726 scientific papers that covers the history of the field, and a set of 67 expert-formulated questions that probe deep understanding of the literature. We then evaluate six different LLM-based systems for answering these questions, including both commercially available closed models and a custom retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) system capable of retrieving images alongside text. Experts then evaluate the answers of these systems against a rubric that assesses balanced perspectives, factual comprehensiveness, succinctness, and evidentiary support. Among the six systems two using RAG on curated literature outperformed existing closed models across key metrics, particularly in providing comprehensive and well-supported answers. We discuss promising aspects of LLM performances as well as critical short-comings of all the models. The set of expert-formulated questions and the rubric will be valuable for assessing expert level performance of LLM based reasoning systems.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_03782
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Expert Evaluation of LLM World Models: A High-$T_c$ Superconductivity Case Study
Guo, Haoyu
Tikhanovskaya, Maria
Raccuglia, Paul
Vlaskin, Alexey
Co, Chris
Liebling, Daniel J.
Ellsworth, Scott
Abraham, Matthew
Dorfman, Elizabeth
Armitage, N. P.
Feng, Chunhan
Georges, Antoine
Gingras, Olivier
Kiese, Dominik
Kivelson, Steven A.
Oganesyan, Vadim
Ramshaw, B. J.
Sachdev, Subir
Senthil, T.
Tranquada, J. M.
Brenner, Michael P.
Venugopalan, Subhashini
Kim, Eun-Ah
Superconductivity
Strongly Correlated Electrons
Artificial Intelligence
Large Language Models (LLMs) show great promise as a powerful tool for scientific literature exploration. However, their effectiveness in providing scientifically accurate and comprehensive answers to complex questions within specialized domains remains an active area of research. Using the field of high-temperature cuprates as an exemplar, we evaluate the ability of LLM systems to understand the literature at the level of an expert. We construct an expert-curated database of 1,726 scientific papers that covers the history of the field, and a set of 67 expert-formulated questions that probe deep understanding of the literature. We then evaluate six different LLM-based systems for answering these questions, including both commercially available closed models and a custom retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) system capable of retrieving images alongside text. Experts then evaluate the answers of these systems against a rubric that assesses balanced perspectives, factual comprehensiveness, succinctness, and evidentiary support. Among the six systems two using RAG on curated literature outperformed existing closed models across key metrics, particularly in providing comprehensive and well-supported answers. We discuss promising aspects of LLM performances as well as critical short-comings of all the models. The set of expert-formulated questions and the rubric will be valuable for assessing expert level performance of LLM based reasoning systems.
title Expert Evaluation of LLM World Models: A High-$T_c$ Superconductivity Case Study
topic Superconductivity
Strongly Correlated Electrons
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.03782