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Physics and quantum, formalized end to end

All 23 IPhO 2026 theory subproblems machine-checked in Lean 4, 36 of 36 on a blind quantum-algorithms benchmark, and 92.5% end to end on quantum information theory.

Ongoing

The Kimi-K3 run below is still going. Everything else here is complete.

Formal mathematics is where an agent loop can be checked without argument. Physics and quantum information are the interesting extension of that, because the statements have to be formalized before they can be proved — and the formalization is where a run can go wrong in a way that a compiler will happily accept.

IPhO 2026: 23 of 23

All 23 theory subproblems (T1–T3) of the 2026 International Physics Olympiad were completed: 23/23 passed both semantic review and proof review, every Lean 4 file is sorry-free, and the full lake build passed.

The change that produced it was a new proof-to-formalization routing. On the same 22-target comparison, it took the run from 20/22 to 22/22 while cutting summed wall time by 62.1%. One additional theory target brought the final run to 23 of 23.

A separate 28-target run with a Kimi-K3 worker has solved 23 targets through proof review, with 24 of 28 passing formalization review. The remaining five are in retry or redraft, or have not yet reached proof dispatch.

The dataset

QAlg: 36 of 36

A blind run — given only the public TeX statements and the benchmark's base library, with no access to reference solutions — produced compiling, semantically accepted, Lean-kernel-checked, sorry-free proofs for all 36 quantum-algorithm tasks. The full lake build passed.

QIT: 92.5% end to end

On the 40-task blind Quantum Information Theory benchmark: 38 of 40 semantic review passes and 37 of 40 end-to-end proof review passes, for 92.5%. Conditional on semantic acceptance, the proof rate is 97.4% — that is, once the statement is right, the proof almost always follows. The full lake build passed.

Why "sorry-free" is reported separately from "correct"

sorry is Lean's placeholder for a step nobody has proved. A sorry-free result means every theorem has an actual proof term checked by the Lean kernel, rather than an unproved claim sitting behind a placeholder.

It does not by itself guarantee that the theorem faithfully matches the original problem. That is a separate question, and it is why semantic review and proof review are counted and reported as two numbers rather than folded into one. A perfectly checked proof of the wrong statement is the exact failure this pair of gates exists to catch.

HOA