AutoMOOSE: An Agentic AI for Autonomous Phase-Field Simulation

Multiphysics simulation frameworks such as MOOSE provide rigorous engines for phase-field materials modeling, yet adoption is constrained by the expertise required to construct valid input files, coordinate parameter sweeps, diagnose failures, and extract quantitative results. We introduce AutoMOOSE, an open-source agentic framework that orchestrates the full simulation lifecycle from a single natural-language prompt. AutoMOOSE deploys a five-agent pipeline in which the Input Writer coordinates six sub-agents and the Reviewer autonomously corrects runtime failures without user intervention. A modular plugin architecture enables new phase-field formulations without modifying the core framework, and a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server exposes the workflow as ten structured tools for interoperability with any MCP-compatible client. Validated on a four-temperature copper grain growth benchmark, AutoMOOSE generates MOOSE input files with 6 of 12 structural blocks matching a human expert reference exactly and 4 functionally equivalent, executes all runs in parallel with a 1.8x speedup, and performs an end-to-end physical consistency check spanning intent, finite-element execution, and Arrhenius kinetics with no human verification. Grain coarsening kinetics are recovered with R^2 = 0.90-0.95 at T >= 600 K; the recovered activation energy Q_fit = 0.296 eV is consistent with a human-written reference (Q_fit = 0.267 eV) under identical parameters. Three runtime failure classes were diagnosed and resolved autonomously within a single correction cycle, and every run produces a provenance record satisfying FAIR data principles. These results show that the gap between knowing the physics and executing a validated simulation campaign can be bridged by a lightweight multi-agent orchestration layer, providing a pathway toward AI-driven materials discovery and self-driving laboratories.

Machine learning for interpreting coherent X-ray speckle patterns

Speckle patterns produced by coherent X-ray have a close relationship with the internal structure of materials but quantitative inversion of the relationship to determine structure from images is challenging. Here, we investigate the link between coherent X-ray speckle patterns and sample structures using a model 2D disk system and explore the ability of machine learning to learn aspects of the relationship. Specifically, we train a deep neural network to classify the coherent X-ray speckle pattern images according to the disk number density in the corresponding structure. It is demonstrated that the classification system is accurate for both non-disperse and disperse size distributions.