AI for Science

The quantum spin Hall effect (QSHE) has attracted widespread attention due to its dissipationless transport, which is protected by non-trivial topological invariants and helical edge states. Because even weak magnetic disorder can destroy the stability of topological quantum states, current research on the QSHE has primarily focused on non-magnetic materials. In this work, we extend the research scope of the QSHE to altermagnets. We establish the relevant symmetry constraints and identify all magnetic point groups that can realize the altermagnetic QSHE. Symmetry analysis reveals that pronounced spin-valley locking or spin-valley-layer locking universally exists in these systems. The concerted interaction between band inversion and spin-valley locking collectively gives rise to the helical edge states. Using first-principles calculations and theoretical models, we demonstrate that monolayer Nb2SeTeO exhibits an altermagnetic QSHE characterized by spin-valley locking, while bilayer Hf3Se3Te2 manifests an altermagnetic QSHE featuring spin-valley-layer locking. This work clarifies the intrinsic symmetry correlation between altermagnetism and quantum spin Hall topological phases, providing a brand-new theoretical perspective and research platform for exploring magnetic topological systems and developing next-generation spintronic devices

Interlayer interactions in layered materials are often assumed to transfer from the bilayer to the bulk, but this assumption can fail when chemically active out-of-plane orbitals participate in bonding. We combine diffusion quantum Monte Carlo (DMC) and density functional theory (DFT) to determine how interlayer coupling evolves in arsenene multilayers. DMC shows that bulk gray arsenic is compact, whereas the corresponding few-layer structures remain at substantially larger interlayer separations despite sharing the same nominal A$_{1}$B$_{-1}$ adjacent-layer registry. Registry alone therefore does not determine the bonding regime; thickness and coordination reshape the interlayer interaction. Among the tested functionals, SCAN+rVV10 most closely reproduces DMC equilibrium separations and stacking energetics. Using the DMC-benchmarked SCAN+rVV10 calculations, we predict a thickness-driven stacking sequence from A$_{1}$A$_{1}$ to A$_{1}$B$_{1}$ and finally bulk-like A$_{1}$B$_{-1}$. The structural crossover coincides with a stacking-dependent DFT band-gap collapse driven by enhanced interlayer As p$_{z}$ hybridization.

Recently, layered corrected kagome metal CsCr3Sb5 have garnered significant attention attributed to its flat bands near the Fermi level (EF) and altermagnetic ground state [ Yi Liu et al., Nature 632, 1032 (2024)]. However, the van Hove singularities (vHSs) in bulk CsCr3Sb5 are far away from the EF, while an effective modulation of VHS toward the EF is essential for exploring intriguing electron transport properties. In this work, using first-principles calculations, we investigate electronic structures of two-dimensional (2D) Cr3Sb5 and CsCr3Sb5 monolayers which may be mechanically exfoliated from bulk materials. Notably, it is revealed that both flat bands and vHSs simultaneously reside in close proximity to the EF in Cr3Sb5 monolayer, signifying enhanced electronic correlations. Importantly, a tensile strain further shifts the incipient flat bands and vHSs of two monolayers simultaneously to the vicinity of the EF, suggesting strain tunable electronic correlations and concomitant quantum effects. Furthermore, altermagnetic ground state is also revealed due to retained mirror symmetry between two sublattices in these two monolayers. Thus, this work advances understanding and modulations of electronic properties of 2D CsCr3Sb5 monolayers, strengthening their great potential for exploring unconventional quantum phenomena and altermagnetism.

We theoretically investigate the optical spin-injection response in different stoichiometric configurations of graphane and fluorographene using density functional theory. Our goal is to determine which configuration yields the strongest degree of spin polarization. The results show that the fluorographene zigzag configuration yields the best degree of spin polarization response (${\cal DSP}^{\mathrm{z}}$), with 98\% spin polarized electrons at the band edge and over a wide range of excitation photon energies. In contrast, other graphane and fluorographene configurations achieve a ${\cal DSP}^{\mathrm{z}}$ of roughly 83--100\%, but only within a limited photon-excitation energy range. In structures with low spin-orbit coupling, the degree of spin polarization is close to 100\% over a wide range of photon energies. For higher spin-orbit coupling, this strong response appears, but only in a narrow photon energy region. Additionally, under the band-resolved decomposition scheme, the contributions of different band-to-band transitions to the ${\cal DSP}^{\mathrm{z}}$ spectrum are identified by summing only the selected valence and conduction bands. Our findings show that almost the entire ${\cal DSP}^{\mathrm{z}}$ spectrum of the fluorographene zigzag configuration comes from transitions that involve only the top valence band, which is a mixture of C--p and F--p states.

Predicting detailed atomistic structures of self-assembling systems remains a challenge for all-atom molecular dynamics simulations. Replica exchange with solute tempering (REST) has been used to study those systems by accelerating all monomers in a global and uniform manner. While such a global approach can in principle predict any morphology of the system, it has computational drawbacks such as inefficient replica traversal due to order-disorder transitions and the growing number of replicas with system size. To address these issues, here we propose an alternative, stepwise construction approach to modeling supramolecular polymers under the assumption of one-dimensional polymerization. Specifically, we generate polymer structures by adding new monomers one by one to the system and applying REST to the new monomers to find their optimal binding positions based on an energy-based scoring function. The monomer addition and enhanced sampling are repeated sequentially until a polymer of desired length is obtained. We test the above procedure using a model supramolecular polymer in explicit solvent, and show that it can generate a polymer structure with characteristic H-bonding patterns at reduced computational costs, while also improving the efficiency of replica traversal significantly. We thus expect that the sequential REST will be useful for modeling supramolecular polymers, particularly for cases where global REST simulations are too demanding computationally.

Rydberg atom simulators, in both analog and digital modes, have attracted significant recent interest due to their versatile geometric reconfigurability. In this work, leveraging this feature, we propose two complementary approaches, one for each mode, to characterize emergent fermions in critical quantum many-body systems. In the analog mode, we assemble the Rydberg atoms in a "developable" (namely, preserving local couplings) Möbius band geometry to realize antiperiodic boundary conditions, where fermionic states reside. Spectroscopic measurement in this sector then reveals universal energy ratios of the bosonic and fermionic states. In the digital mode, we carry out a fermionic version of Kibble-Zurek ramping with a quantum circuit, directly addressing the fermionic scaling form. Reconfigurability allows an exponential speed-up of this task, with an $O(\log L\log\log L)$ circuit-depth overhead. Our work establishes the Rydberg atom simulator as a uniquely powerful platform to attack the notoriously difficult issue of experimentally probing emergent fermions that are nonlocally defined in a bosonic system.

Quantum quenches drive edge states far from equilibrium, yet whether the memory of a topological initial state survives in a non-integrable, interacting system has remained largely unexplored. We study this question in the bond-alternating XXZ chain -- an interacting Su--Schrieffer--Heeger model hosting symmetry-protected topological edge modes with markedly enhanced boundary magnetization -- and analyze quenches across all combinations of single-particle and many-body initial and final Hamiltonians. The results organize by a single distinction as we rigorously establish in this work: whether the post-quench Hamiltonian is free or genuinely interacting. For a free post-quench Hamiltonian, the dynamics is solved exactly by a correlation-matrix approach; the boundary-mode return amplitude decays as $t^{-3/2}$, and initial interactions enter only through a dressed one-body density matrix. For a genuinely interacting post-quench Hamiltonian, finite-time stability bounds prove that away from local resonances the first-dimer magnetization remains stable on time windows growing as arbitrarily large powers of the inverse inter-dimer coupling. Matrix product state simulations across all four protocols show that interactions in the final Hamiltonian markedly extend finite-time boundary memory -- with local suppression near the isotropic $SU(2)$ point -- revealing a many-body protection mechanism in a non-integrable system where scrambling would otherwise wash out initial-state memory fast.

We present the exceptional phenomenon of complete absence of Anderson localization, and perfect transmission of particles, in a completely disordered diamond-dot chain. We analytically show a proof for the condition to observe this exceptional phenomenon, based on a transparent window emerging from a geometrical condition. We support our theoretical prediction by numerical simulations and direct experimental observation of the transmission probabilities of the light in a femtosecond laser-written diamond-dot photonic lattices. We additionally show that for a $π$ effective magnetic flux, extreme localization of the light in the same system may occur, independently on the specific geometry. Our results open up an excellent platform for controlling the transmission of energy from ballistic to zero transmission, in a completely disordered lattice system..

Foliated topological orders in three dimensions are layered systems in which anyons are free to move within a layer but cannot hop between them. A simple model with such a phase is a stack of decoupled two-dimensional electron gases in a strong magnetic field, each in the same fractional quantum Hall state. By focusing on the case of filling $ν=1/3$ of the lowest Landau level in each layer, we show that (i) the limit of decoupled Laughlin states is stable upon introducing interlayer interactions and (ii) the system can enter a spontaneously layer-trimerized foliated non-Abelian Fibonacci phase. We support our claims by numerical exact diagonalization of up to 10 layers as well as perturbative analytical calculations. Specifically, we show that the foliated Fibonacci phase exists in the 9-layer system with pseudopotential interactions within and between neighboring layers. We identify the phase via quasihole counting and by calculating the overlap with a model wave function which we derive from the associated conformal field theory. Our numerical results suggest the possibility of realizing these phases in layered van der Waals crystals in strong magnetic fields, as well as in multilayer heterostructures.

Tomography allows one to estimate the density matrix describing the state an ensemble of quantum systems are prepared in (for example, polarization tomography determines the polarization state of a beam of identically prepared photons). In general, it is not possible to uniquely decompose the density matrix into its pure state components. Agarwal et al. proposed a protocol which, for a mixture composed of any two pure states of a qubit (with arbitrary probabilities), allows an observer to infer not only the density matrix but the identity of those specific pure states and their weights - the additional requirement being that the qubits arrive in pairs, where both qubits in each pair are in the same state. We experimentally demonstrate this learning-from-pairs concept using photons in the polarization degree of freedom. We use tomography to measure a sequence of single photons and make use of their time-of-arrival information to 'pair up' the photons after the measurement. From here we are able to infer the photons' polarization states and their respective probabilities, and we demonstrate this for various different choices of polarization states and ratios. Finally, we investigate our ability to discriminate between two equal mixtures of distinct pairs of orthogonal polarization states. We find that on the order of approx. 10e4 photons is typically enough to achieve tomography fidelities of approximately 0.9999. This is sufficient to discriminate between two different preparations of the same mixed state, differing by angles of less than 5 degrees between the pure states used in the two preparations.

We investigate the propagation profile of positive solutions to \begin{equation*} u_t-du_{xx}=f(t,u) \mbox{ for } t>0,\ x\in(g(t),h(t)), \end{equation*} where $f(t,u)$ is monostable in $u$ and $T$-periodic in $t$, and the free boundaries $x=g(t), \ x=h(t)$ are determined by the Stefan condition $g'(t)=-μu_x(t, g(t)),\ h'(t)=-μu_x(t,h(t))$, coupled with $u(t, g(t))=u(t, h(t))=0$. For a special nonlinearity satisfying the strong KPP condition, the long-time behavior and asymptotic spreading speed of this problem were considered by Du, Guo and Peng \cite{DGP}. In this paper, by employing new techniques, we extend the results of \cite{DGP} to general monostable nonlinearities beyond the KPP framework and at the same time we obtain more precise description of the propagation profile: we prove the existence and uniqueness of a semi-wave and show that the spreading solution converges to this semi-wave as time goes to infinity.

For nearly a century, the transition state has been thought to lack an exact quantum counterpart: recrossing-free, one-way flux seems to require simultaneous knowledge of position and momentum. We show that this obstruction is illusory. The exact quantum flow contains a transition-state geometry: stable and unstable manifolds meeting in a unique bounded quantum transition-state trajectory that anchors a dividing surface carrying one-way quantum probability flux. The geometric framework of classical reaction dynamics survives in exact quantum mechanics, in a fundamentally quantum form.

Virtual accelerators and digital twins are increasingly essential tools for accelerator operations, controls development and verification, and model-based optimization. However, current implementations are often tightly coupled to specific simulation codes, facilities, and applications, resulting in fragmented, ad hoc solutions that are difficult to reuse or extend. To address this, we expand the LUME Python package to include standardized implementation and deployment of virtual accelerators and digital twins across heterogeneous simulation backends and control system interfaces. At the core of this change is the introduction of LUMEModel abstraction, which defines a fixed, simulator-agnostic API and a variable system that encodes metadata such as units and data types/validation. This design enables standardized interaction with physics-based simulators, surrogate models, and differentiable simulations, while supporting both Python-native workflows and IOC-based operation via EPICS using the lume-pva package. Facility- and simulator-specific details are encapsulated through extensible transformer layers, allowing consistent control-system semantics to be mapped onto diverse simulation engines. We describe the LUMEModel architecture, variable system, and package ecosystem, and present representative use cases including model interchangeability, staged and chained simulators, and continuous integration testing. This work will make implementing and using virtual accelerators easier and more flexible.

Rare $α$-particle-induced charge clusters appear in LSST images as compact, PSF-like sources with a median FWHM of $0.\!\!^{\prime\prime}95$ and median ellipticity consistent with zero, closely resembling unresolved astrophysical point sources. These events are detected in both dark and science exposures at a rate of approximately $10^{-12}\ \mathrm{pixel}^{-1}\ \mathrm{s}^{-1}$. Their collected charge and morphology are consistent with energy deposition from $\sim$5 MeV $α$-particles in silicon CCDs, and their spatial distribution across the focal plane suggests a localized material origin, plausibly associated with trace radioactive contamination in the cryostat aluminum. Despite their deceptive appearance, we demonstrate that a simple broadness statistic based on fourth-order moments cleanly separates these events from stellar PSFs, enabling efficient rejection in coadded images and real-time alert streams. Such charge clusters do not impose an intrinsic bright-end contamination floor for Rubin transient searches, as genuine fast astrophysical events would exhibit characteristically different morphological signatures.

An atomic Josephson junction realized with dipolar bosons in a double-well potential can be described by an extended Bose-Hubbard model in which dipolar interactions generate an effective on-site interaction and nearest-neighbor pair tunneling. Using mean-field theory and exact diagonalization, we investigate how this correlated process affects zero-temperature equilibrium and dynamical properties of the system. In equilibrium, we show that pair tunneling induces ground-state parity modulations and significantly reshapes the phase diagram, producing qualitative changes in the quantum phase transitions toward NOON and phase-NOON states, as well as quantitative shifts of the critical points. Out of equilibrium, we demonstrate that it modifies the conditions for macroscopic quantum self-trapping, and assess its impact by comparing mean-field and fully quantum evolution, including the emergence of dynamical quantum phase transitions.

We introduce a matrix product operator (MPO) encoding of the Magnus expansion and the Dyson series for one-dimensional quantum lattice models with time-dependent Hamiltonians. The MPO construction can be made accurate up to arbitrary order in the time step, it can be applied to both finite and infinite systems, and it can handle long-range interactions. The resulting MPO can be combined with state-of-the-art time evolution algorithms based on matrix product states, allowing for drastic improvements in simulating evolution under time-dependent Hamiltonians. Our MPO construction can also be used for the optimization of quantum circuits in the context of quantum simulation of time-dependent Hamiltonians.

We demonstrate how the transport properties of molecular polaritons in optical cavities can be extracted from a microscopic modeling of pump-probe spectroscopy. Our approach combines a mean-field treatment of the light-matter Hamiltonian with a perturbative expansion of both light and matter components, along with spatial coarse-graining. This approach extends semiclassical cavity spectroscopy to multimode light-matter interactions, providing full access to spatially resolved transient spectra. By simulating a microscopy experiment with counter-propagating pump and probe pulses, we compute the differential transmission and show how molecular dephasing and persistent dark exciton populations drive sub-group-velocity transport of the root-mean-square displacement. We analyze transport across the polariton dispersion, showing how velocity renormalization correlates with excitonic weight, consistent with experimental observations, and further its dependence on the rate of molecular dephasing. Our results highlight the need to consider measured spectroscopic observables when characterizing transport in polaritonic systems.

A strange metal is an exotic state of correlated quantum matter; intensive efforts are ongoing to decipher its nature. Here we explore whether the quantum Fisher information (QFI), a concept from quantum metrology, can provide new insight. We use inelastic neutron scattering and quantum Monte Carlo simulations to study a Kondo destruction quantum critical point, where strange metallicity is associated with fluctuations beyond a Landau order parameter. We find that the QFI probed away from magnetic Bragg peaks, where the effect of magnetic ordering is minimized, increases strongly and without a characteristic scale as the strange metal forms with decreasing temperature, evidencing its unusual entanglement properties. Our work opens a new direction for studies across strange metal platforms.

The Majoron is a hypothetical (pseudo) Nambu-Goldstone boson arising from the spontaneous breaking of a global lepton number symmetry, and is known as a candidate for dark matter in our Universe. In this paper, we investigate the possibility of probing the Majoron dark matter with a linear optical cavity used in the interferometric gravitational wave detectors. We consider a scenario in which the Majoron dark matter couples to photons through a QED anomaly, leading to an oscillatory photon birefringence induced by the coherent dark matter background. The anomaly coefficient is fixed by requiring the model to simultaneously reproduce the electroweak Higgs scale and a typical right-handed Majorana neutrino mass scale, and the resulting dark matter-photon coupling naturally falls within the sensitivity range of optical interferometers. By incorporating additional optics to extract the birefringence signal, we find that ground-based laser interferometers such as Advanced LIGO, KAGRA, as well as future detectors, can probe a region of the parameter space of Majoron dark matter.

Radiation reaction cooling plays an important role in describing the extreme plasma conditions found in the magnetospheres of astrophysical compact objects. Strong electromagnetic fields, characteristic of these environments, can trigger the development of anisotropic ring-shaped plasma distributions with inverted Landau populations in momentum space. In this work, we present the first systematic investigation of this mechanism in realistic astrophysical configurations, by accounting for how non-uniform electromagnetic field geometries and general-relativistic effects modify the phase-space dynamics of radiatively cooled plasmas. We demonstrate analytically that drift velocities favour the formation of spiral-shaped momentum distributions that still display inverted Landau populations, and estimate the minimum and maximum plasma injection distances required for inverted momentum distributions to be able to power the emission of coherent radiation through kinetic instabilities. From numerical simulations, we conclude that curved spacetime increases the gradient of the distribution function responsible for the development of kinetic instabilities, and prolongs the persistence of the inverted momentum structure relative to flat spacetime, confirming that realistic astrophysical conditions preserve and enhance the conditions necessary for synchrotron-powered emission of coherent radiation to occur.

There has been recent interest in the relaxational modes of small-scale fully connected systems of aligning self-propelled particles (Spera et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 132}: 078301 (2024)). We revisit the classical connection between Fokker-Planck and Schrödinger equations to address this by means of exact diagonalization, allowing for rigorous analytical insight into the full spectrum. This allows us to extract exact results which we compare to the existing result from linearized statistical field theory. We derive asymptotically correct analytical results that improve upon the prior approximations. We show that this methodology can fruitfully be extended to the case of non-reciprocal interactions which gives rise to a non-Hermitian Schrödinger problem akin to those in open quantum mechanics. While the non-reciprocity can be chosen such as not to alter the stationary distribution, it fundamentally changes the nature of the steady state which we quantify via the entropy production. We discuss the case of low particle numbers as well as the emergence of mean-field dynamics at large numbers.

Exceptional knots and links represent a remarkable class of non-Hermitian metals in which exceptional degeneracies form knotted or linked manifolds in momentum space. Here, we report a universal construction framework for realizing exceptional knots and links with arbitrary braiding topology in 3D minimal two-band non-Hermitian systems. Our approach combines braid theory with semiholomorphic polynomials to establish a direct correspondence between braid words and non-Hermitian Bloch Hamiltonians. This framework enables the realization of a broad variety of exceptional configurations, including torus knots, lemniscate knots, nonfibred knots, hyperbolic knots, and multi-component links, within explicit tight-binding Hamiltonians. Furthermore, we demonstrate controllable topological transitions in which exceptional knots can be continuously untied through redistribution and reconnection of exceptional points, accompanied by transient exceptional chains and changes in spectral complex energy braiding. Our results establish a universal route toward programmable non-Hermitian knot topology and provide a versatile platform for exploring knotted band degeneracies and their associated physical phenomena across photonic, acoustic, mechanical, and cold-atom systems.

Gene regulatory networks govern cellular fate decisions through multistable dynamics. The genetic toggle switch is a canonical model of such behaviour; yet, the impact of cell division on its dynamics remains poorly understood. We derive analytical separatrices for a simplified Boolean toggle switch with and without division. We show that division can redirect trajectories with identical initial conditions to opposing stable states, and we define a region of disagreement where fate decisions are predicted incorrectly if division is neglected. Our results imply that division can fundamentally reshape fate boundaries in multistable regulatory networks.

We extend the theory of root clusters from perfect fields to general fields which are not necessarily perfect. We introduce the following notions for field extensions over any given base field and study their interesting properties: root cluster size, multicluster size and their generalizations root capacity, multiroot capacity; ascending index, ascending normal index and their generalizations intersection indicium, intersection normal indicium; compositum indicium and compositum normal indicium. We establish our results on the Inverse problems for these generalized notions over Hilbertian fields which generalizes our earlier results which were over number fields. In particular, we show over a given Hilbertian field, the existence of a polynomial for given degree, cluster size and multicluster size and existence of an extension for given root capacity and multiroot capacity with respect to that polynomial.

We show that for any $A\subseteq \mathbb{F}_q^n$ lacking non-trivial solutions to a translation-invariant linear equation of genus one, meaning that no nonempty proper subset of the coefficients sums to $0$, there is a set $B\subseteq \mathbb{F}_q^m$ in some higher dimension which also lacks non-trivial solutions, such that \[|B|^{1/m}>|A|^{1/n}.\] In particular, this implies that no fixed cap set in $\mathbb{F}_3^n$ gives an asymptotically optimal lower bound by direct products alone.

Learning Bayesian network (BN) structure from sparse discrete data is hard: when each instance records only a few variables, most variable pairs lack the joint observations needed for reliable scoring, and data-only methods recover little structure. However, imperfect domain knowledge, expressible as a weighted directed knowledge graph (KG), is often available. We propose KG-SoftMAP, which encodes such a KG as a finite-strength, confidence-weighted edge prior and maximizes a MAP objective combining the BDeu score with a logit-form prior; the KG may be expert-curated or LLM-extracted. On synthetic benchmarks with known DAGs, KG-SoftMAP reaches Directed-F1 (DF1) $0.19$--$0.32$ at observation rate $ρ=0.05$ and DF1 $0.44$--$0.97$ at $ρ\geq0.2$, while every data-only learner tested stays near zero under the same sparse masks. Recovery tracks KG quality: controlled corruption degrades it smoothly, a zero-signal KG yields DF1 $0.00$, and a blindly LLM-extracted KG with imperfect precision and recall still drives substantial recovery. On three real sparse educational datasets, the learned BN acts as a concept-level posterior model: on SAF it matches logistic regression (LR) within $0.03$ F1_FAIL while providing an inspectable concept graph, calibrated Fail probabilities, and tractable posterior queries from partial observations.

Recently, Starr used asymptotic methods to disprove a conjecture by Heim--Neuhauser and Abdesselam about the log-concavity of the D'Arcais polynomials, without giving an explicit counterexample. We refine the asymptotics, to give the necessary estimates on convolutions of $σ_{-1}$, and identify the first counterexample at $λ= 65\,214\,507\,758\,400$. We also consider the asymptotic density of such counterexamples.

A finite group is said to be quartic-free if its order is not divisible by $p^4$ of any prime $p$. A finite group is called an $A$-group if all of its Sylow subgroups are abelian. Objective of this paper is to provide explicit structure of a quartic-free $A$-group. Further in the process of providing the explicit structure we also determine the derived length of a solvable quartic-free $A$-group.

We introduce the degree filtration on the discrete cubical chain complex of a graph, defined in terms of the maximal injective dimension of the facets of singular $n$-cubes, and study the degree spectral sequence which arises from this filtration. This spectral sequence interpolates between the discrete cubical homology of a graph $H_n(G)$ and the injective homology $H_n^{inj}(G)$, a variant of the discrete cubical homology based on injective singular cubes. Building on the work of Babson et al. we introduce the combinatorial condition of quasimonophobicity on graphs, and show quasimonophobicity implies both the vanishing of the degree spectral sequence in certain bidegrees, and implies $H_n^{inj}(G)$ is isomorphic to the homology of the CW complex obtained by ``filling in'' subcubes of the graph. These results are applied to compute $H_2(G_n^{sph})$ for the Greene sphere graphs $G^{sph}_n$.

Mapping the spatial distribution of species is essential for conservation policy and invasive species management. Species distribution models (SDMs) are the primary tools for this task, serving two purposes: achieving robust predictive performance while providing ecological insights into the driving factors of distribution. However, the increasing complexity of deep learning SDMs has made extracting these insights more challenging. To reconcile these objectives, we propose the first implementation of concept-based Explainable AI (XAI) for SDMs. We leverage the Robust TCAV (Testing with Concept Activation Vectors) methodology to quantify the influence of landscape concepts on model predictions. To enable this, we provide a new open-access landscape concept dataset derived from high-resolution multispectral and LiDAR drone imagery. It includes 653 patches across 15 distinct landscape concepts and 1,450 random reference patches, designed to suit a wide range of species. We demonstrate this approach through a case study of two aquatic insects, Plecoptera and Trichoptera, using two Convolutional Neural Networks and one Vision Transformer. Results show that concept-based XAI helps validate SDMs against expert knowledge while uncovering novel associations that generate new ecological hypotheses. Robust TCAV also provides landscape-level information, useful for policy-making and land management. Code and datasets are publicly available.