Volume 134, Issue 2

17 January 2025

Browse Issues:

On the Cover

A Coulomb crystal clock (center) enables clock comparison (edges) with accuracy below threshold for the redefinition of the second. Selected for an Editors’ Suggestion.

From the article:

${}^{115}{In}^{+} − {}^{172}{Yb}^{+}$ Coulomb Crystal Clock with $2.5 \times 10^{- 18}$ Systematic Uncertainty
H. N. Hausser, J. Keller, T. Nordmann, N. M. Bhatt, J. Kiethe, H. Liu, I. M. Richter, M. von Boehn, J. Rahm, S. Weyers, E. Benkler, B. Lipphardt, S. Dörscher, K. Stahl, J. Klose, C. Lisdat, M. Filzinger, N. Huntemann, E. Peik, and T. E. Mehlstäubler
Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 023201 (2025)

HIGHLIGHTED ARTICLES

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Stepping into the Sea of Instability: The New Sub- $μ s$ Superheavy Nucleus ${}^{252}{Rf}$

J. Khuyagbaatar, P. Mosat, J. Ballof, R. A. Cantemir, Ch. E. Düllmann, K. Hermainski, F. P. Heßberger, E. Jäger, B. Kindler, J. Krier, N. Kurz, S. Löchner, B. Lommel, B. Schausten, Y. Wei, P. Wieczorek, and A. Yakushev

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 022501 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025

The discovery of an isotope, rutherfordium-252, whose ground state forestalls fission for just 60 nanoseconds, could help theorists understand the cosmic synthesis of superheavy elements.

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

${}^{115}{In}^{+} − {}^{172}{Yb}^{+}$ Coulomb Crystal Clock with $2.5 \times 10^{- 18}$ Systematic Uncertainty

H. N. Hausser, J. Keller, T. Nordmann, N. M. Bhatt, J. Kiethe, H. Liu, I. M. Richter, M. von Boehn, J. Rahm, S. Weyers, E. Benkler, B. Lipphardt, S. Dörscher, K. Stahl, J. Klose, C. Lisdat, M. Filzinger, N. Huntemann, E. Peik, and T. E. Mehlstäubler

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 023201 (2025) - Published 16 January, 2025

Researchers have built an optical clock using an array of trapped ions—an architecture that can be scaled up to boost the clock’s precision.

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Smooth Exact Gradient Descent Learning in Spiking Neural Networks

Christian Klos and Raoul-Martin Memmesheimer

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 027301 (2025) - Published 13 January, 2025

By incorporating electrical pulses with shapes similar to those of the spikes from biological neurons, researchers improved the ability to train energy-efficient types of neural networks.

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Critical Avalanches in Excitation-Inhibition Balanced Networks Reconcile Response Reliability with Sensitivity for Optimal Neural Representation

Zhuda Yang, Junhao Liang, and Changsong Zhou

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 028401 (2025) - Published 15 January, 2025

A new model reveals that bursts of neural activity known as critical avalanches underlie the brain’s ability to respond consistently to stimuli.

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

Unified Flow Rule of Undeveloped and Fully Developed Dense Granular Flows down Rough Inclines

Yanbin Wu, Thomas Pähtz, Zixiao Guo, Lu Jing, Zhao Duan, and Zhiguo He

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 028201 (2025) - Published 17 January, 2025

Measurements of grains flowing down an inclined plane have uncovered general principles that may help researchers model rockslides and other granular flows.

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Hybridized Soliton Lasing in Coupled Semiconductor Lasers

Theodore P. Letsou, Dmitry Kazakov, Pawan Ratra, Lorenzo L. Columbo, Massimo Brambilla, Franco Prati, Cristina Rimoldi, Sandro Dal Cin, Nikola Opačak, Henry O. Everitt, Marco Piccardo, Benedikt Schwarz, and Federico Capasso

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 023802 (2025) - Published 13 January, 2025

An experiment demonstrates that a chip-scale coupled laser system consisting of a pair of coupled semiconductor ring lasers can exhibit complex optical states impossible to achieve in a single waveguide laser.

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Optical Imaging of Laser-Driven Fast Electron Weibel-like Filamentation in Overcritical Density Plasma

N. P. Dover, O. Tresca, N. Cook, O. C. Ettlinger, R. J. Kingham, C. Maharjan, M. N. Polyanskiy, P. Shkolnikov, I. Pogorelsky, and Z. Najmudin

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 025102 (2025) - Published 17 January, 2025

A parametric study of fast electrons penetrating into an overcritical density plasma finds an experimental threshold for the development of the Weibel-like beam-driven filamentation instability and reveals the importance of observed strong collisionless background heating.

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Planar Hall Effect in Quasi-Two-Dimensional Materials

Koushik Ghorai, Sunit Das, Harsh Varshney, and Amit Agarwal

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026301 (2025) - Published 13 January, 2025

Stacked bilayer graphene can demonstrate a 2D planar Hall effect due to factors related to Berry curvature, orbital magnetic moments, and broken symmetries.

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Orbital Diffusion, Polarization, and Swapping in Centrosymmetric Metals

Xiaobai Ning, A. Pezo, Kyoung-Whan Kim, Weisheng Zhao, Kyung-Jin Lee, and Aurélien Manchon

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026303 (2025) - Published 16 January, 2025

A theory of charge, spin, and orbital diffusion applied to multiband materials and heterostructures suggests that the diffusivity of orbital angular momentum in metals is typically much lower than that of spin or charge.

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Symmetry Breaking in the Superionic Phase of Silver Iodide

Amir Hajibabaei, William J. Baldwin, Gábor Csányi, and Stephen J. Cox

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026306 (2025) - Published 17 January, 2025

Simulations of superionic silver iodide show the importance of probing long time scales for this kind of material and reveal a new intermediate phase primarily characterized by a broken cation distribution that gives a mechanism for its observed memory effect.

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Flat and Tunable Moiré Phonons in Twisted Transition-Metal Dichalcogenides

Alejandro Ramos-Alonso, Benjamin Remez, Daniel Bennett, Rafael M. Fernandes, and Héctor Ochoa

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026501 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025

An out-of-plane electric field can tune the phonon dispersion of twisted van der Waals multilayers.

LETTERS

Quantum Information, Science, and Technology

Limits to Velocity of Signal Propagation in Many-Body Systems: A Quantum Information Perspective

Piotr Wysocki and Jan Chwedeńczuk

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 020201 (2025) - Published 17 January, 2025

Role of Quantum Coherence in Kinetic Uncertainty Relations

Kacper Prech, Patrick P. Potts, and Gabriel T. Landi

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 020401 (2025) - Published 13 January, 2025

Thermal Area Law in Long-Range Interacting Systems

Donghoon Kim, Tomotaka Kuwahara, and Keiji Saito

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 020402 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025

Protect Measurement-Induced Phase Transition from Noise

Dongheng Qian and Jing Wang

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 020403 (2025) - Published 16 January, 2025

Semiclassical Limit of Resonance States in Chaotic Scattering

Roland Ketzmerick, Florian Lorenz, and Jan Robert Schmidt

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 020404 (2025) - Published 17 January, 2025

Non-Markovian Feedback for Optimized Quantum Error Correction

Matteo Puviani, Sangkha Borah, Remmy Zen, Jan Olle, and Florian Marquardt

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 020601 (2025) - Published 16 January, 2025

Pauli Noise Learning for Mid-Circuit Measurements

Jordan Hines and Timothy Proctor

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 020602 (2025) - Published 16 January, 2025

Long-Range $Z Z$ Interaction via Resonator-Induced Phase in Superconducting Qubits

Xiang Deng, Wen Zheng, Xudong Liao, Haoyu Zhou, Yangyang Ge, Jie Zhao, Dong Lan, Xinsheng Tan, Yu Zhang, Shaoxiong Li, and Yang Yu

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 020801 (2025) - Published 16 January, 2025

Fundamental Limit on the Power of Entanglement Assistance in Quantum Communication

Lasse H. Wolff, Paula Belzig, Matthias Christandl, Bergfinnur Durhuus, and Marco Tomamichel

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 020802 (2025) - Published 17 January, 2025

Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Gravitation

Inference of the Mass Composition of Cosmic Rays with Energies from $10^{18.5}$ to $10^{20} eV$ Using the Pierre Auger Observatory and Deep Learning

A. Abdul Halim et al. (Pierre Auger Collaboration)

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 021001 (2025) - Published 13 January, 2025

Particles and Fields

Quantized Axial Charge of Staggered Fermions and the Chiral Anomaly

Arkya Chatterjee, Salvatore D. Pace, and Shu-Heng Shao

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 021601 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025

Distinguishing Dirac from Majorana Heavy Neutrino at Future Lepton Colliders

Qing-Hong Cao, Kun Cheng, and Yandong Liu

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 021801 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025

First Direct Search for Light Dark Matter Using the NEON Experiment at a Nuclear Reactor

J. J. Choi, C. Ha, E. J. Jeon, J. Y. Kim, K. W. Kim, S. H. Kim, S. K. Kim, Y. D. Kim, Y. J. Ko, B. C. Koh, S. H. Lee, I. S. Lee, H. Lee, H. S. Lee, J. S. Lee, Y. M. Oh, and B. J. Park (NEON Collaboration)

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 021802 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025

Observation of $Λ_{c}^{+} \to Λ a_{0} (980)^{+}$ and Evidence for $Σ (1380)^{+}$ in $Λ_{c}^{+} \to Λ π^{+} η$

M. Ablikim et al. (BESIII Collaboration)

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 021901 (2025) - Published 17 January, 2025

Nuclear Physics

Deciphering Hypertriton and Antihypertriton Spins from Their Global Polarizations in Heavy-Ion Collisions

Kai-Jia Sun, Dai-Neng Liu, Yun-Peng Zheng, Jin-Hui Chen, Che Ming Ko, and Yu-Gang Ma

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 022301 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025

Disentangling Centrality Bias and Final-State Effects in the Production of High- $p_{T}$ Neutral Pions Using Direct Photon in $d + Au$ Collisions at $\sqrt{s_{N N}} = 200 GeV$

N. J. Abdulameer et al. (PHENIX Collaboration)

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 022302 (2025) - Published 15 January, 2025

Probing Strangeness Hadronization with Event-by-Event Production of Multistrange Hadrons

S. Acharya et al. (ALICE Collaboration)

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 022303 (2025) - Published 17 January, 2025

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Stepping into the Sea of Instability: The New Sub- $μ s$ Superheavy Nucleus ${}^{252}{Rf}$

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 022501 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025

The discovery of an isotope, rutherfordium-252, whose ground state forestalls fission for just 60 nanoseconds, could help theorists understand the cosmic synthesis of superheavy elements.

First Identification of Excited States in ${}^{78}{Zr}$ and Implications for Isospin Nonconserving Forces in Nuclei

G. L. Zimba et al.

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 022502 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025

Gamma Decay of the ${}^{154}{Sm}$ Isovector Giant Dipole Resonance: Smekal-Raman Scattering as a Novel Probe of Nuclear Ground-State Deformation

J. Kleemann, N. Pietralla, U. Friman-Gayer, J. Isaak, O. Papst, K. Prifti, V. Werner, A. D. Ayangeakaa, T. Beck, G. Colò, M. L. Cortés, S. W. Finch, M. Fulghieri, D. Gribble, K. E. Ide, X. K.-H. James, R. V. F. Janssens, S. R. Johnson, P. Koseoglou, Krishichayan, D. Savran, and W. Tornow

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 022503 (2025) - Published 16 January, 2025

Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

${}^{115}{In}^{+} − {}^{172}{Yb}^{+}$ Coulomb Crystal Clock with $2.5 \times 10^{- 18}$ Systematic Uncertainty

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 023201 (2025) - Published 16 January, 2025

Researchers have built an optical clock using an array of trapped ions—an architecture that can be scaled up to boost the clock’s precision.

Observation of Relaxation Stages in a Nonequilibrium Closed Quantum System: Decaying Turbulence in a Trapped Superfluid

M. A. Moreno-Armijos, A. R. Fritsch, A. D. García-Orozco, S. Sab, G. Telles, Y. Zhu, L. Madeira, S. Nazarenko, V. I. Yukalov, and V. S. Bagnato

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 023401 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025

Coherence of an Electronic Two-Level System under Continuous Charge Sensing by a Quantum Dot Detector

Subhomoy Haldar, Morten Munk, Harald Havir, Waqar Khan, Sebastian Lehmann, Claes Thelander, Kimberly A. Dick, Peter Samuelsson, Patrick P. Potts, and Ville F. Maisi

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 023601 (2025) - Published 15 January, 2025

Quantum State Transfer via a Multimode Resonator

Yang He and Yu-Xiang Zhang

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 023602 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025

Diagnosis for Band Topology under Crystal Symmetries Based on Bulk Measurements

Shiyin Jia, Shiqi Li, Junzheng Hu, Renwen Huang, Jing Li, Biye Xie, Peng Zhan, and Zhenlin Wang

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 023801 (2025) - Published 13 January, 2025

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Hybridized Soliton Lasing in Coupled Semiconductor Lasers

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 023802 (2025) - Published 13 January, 2025

Metasurface Polarization Optics: Phase Manipulation for Arbitrary Polarization Conversion Condition

Siqi Li, Chen Chen, Guoxi Wang, Suyang Ge, Jiaqi Zhao, Xianshun Ming, Wei Zhao, Tao Li, and Wenfu Zhang

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 023803 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025

Enabling All-to-Circular Polarization Up-Conversion by Nonlinear Chiral Metasurfaces with Rotational Symmetry

Dmitrii Gromyko, Jun Siang Loh, Jiangang Feng, Cheng-Wei Qiu, and Lin Wu

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 023804 (2025) - Published 16 January, 2025

Plasma and Solar Physics, Accelerators and Beams

All-Optical Blast-Wave Control of Laser Wakefield Acceleration in a Near-Critical Plasma

I. Tsymbalov, D. Gorlova, K. Ivanov, E. Starodubtseva, R. Volkov, I. Tsygvintsev, Yu. Kochetkov, Ph. Korneev, A. Polonski, and A. Savel’ev

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 025101 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Optical Imaging of Laser-Driven Fast Electron Weibel-like Filamentation in Overcritical Density Plasma

N. P. Dover, O. Tresca, N. Cook, O. C. Ettlinger, R. J. Kingham, C. Maharjan, M. N. Polyanskiy, P. Shkolnikov, I. Pogorelsky, and Z. Najmudin

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 025102 (2025) - Published 17 January, 2025

Excitation of Alfvénic Modes via Electromagnetic Turbulence in Wendelstein 7-X

Jörg Riemann, Sara Vaz Mendes, Kian Rahbarnia, Ralf Kleiber, Christoph Slaby, Axel Könies, Matthias Borchardt, Alexey Mishchenko, Henning Thomsen, Charlotte Büschel, Adrian von Stechow, the Wendelstein 7-X Team, Jan-Peter Bähner, Søren Kjer Hansen, and Eric Edlund

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 025103 (2025) - Published 17 January, 2025

Condensed Matter and Materials

Nonlinear Superconducting Magnetoelectric Effect

Jin-Xin Hu, Oles Matsyshyn, and Justin C. W. Song

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026001 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025

Superconducting Meron Phase in Locally Noncentrosymmetric Superconductors

Akihiro Minamide and Youichi Yanase

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026002 (2025) - Published 16 January, 2025

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Planar Hall Effect in Quasi-Two-Dimensional Materials

Koushik Ghorai, Sunit Das, Harsh Varshney, and Amit Agarwal

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026301 (2025) - Published 13 January, 2025

Stacked bilayer graphene can demonstrate a 2D planar Hall effect due to factors related to Berry curvature, orbital magnetic moments, and broken symmetries.

Temperature Dependence of Electron Viscosity in Superballistic GaAs Point Contacts

Daniil I. Sarypov, Dmitriy A. Pokhabov, Arthur G. Pogosov, Evgeny Yu. Zhdanov, Andrey A. Shevyrin, Askhat K. Bakarov, and Alexander A. Shklyaev

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026302 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Orbital Diffusion, Polarization, and Swapping in Centrosymmetric Metals

Xiaobai Ning, A. Pezo, Kyoung-Whan Kim, Weisheng Zhao, Kyung-Jin Lee, and Aurélien Manchon

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026303 (2025) - Published 16 January, 2025

Quantum Nonlinear Acoustic Hall Effect and Inverse Acoustic Faraday Effect in Dirac Insulators

Ying Su, Alexander V. Balatsky, and Shi-Zeng Lin

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026304 (2025) - Published 16 January, 2025

Giant Third-Order Nonlinearity Induced by the Quantum Metric Quadrupole in Few-Layer ${WTe}_{2}$

Xing-Yu Liu, An-Qi Wang, Dong Li, Tong-Yang Zhao, Xin Liao, and Zhi-Min Liao

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026305 (2025) - Published 16 January, 2025

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Symmetry Breaking in the Superionic Phase of Silver Iodide

Amir Hajibabaei, William J. Baldwin, Gábor Csányi, and Stephen J. Cox

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026306 (2025) - Published 17 January, 2025

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Flat and Tunable Moiré Phonons in Twisted Transition-Metal Dichalcogenides

Alejandro Ramos-Alonso, Benjamin Remez, Daniel Bennett, Rafael M. Fernandes, and Héctor Ochoa

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026501 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025

An out-of-plane electric field can tune the phonon dispersion of twisted van der Waals multilayers.

Fermionic Isometric Tensor Network States in Two Dimensions

Zhehao Dai, Yantao Wu, Taige Wang, and Michael P. Zaletel

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026502 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025

Magnon Spin Transport through Atomic Ferrimagnetic Domain Walls

Zhaozhuo Zeng and Peng Yan

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026701 (2025) - Published 15 January, 2025

Anomalous Spin and Orbital Hall Phenomena in Antiferromagnetic Systems

J. E. Abrão, E. Santos, J. L. Costa, J. G. S. Santos, J. B. S. Mendes, and A. Azevedo

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026702 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025

Ultrafast Optical Control of Rashba Interactions in a TMDC Heterostructure

Henry Mittenzwey, Abhijeet M. Kumar, Raghav Dhingra, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, Cornelius Gahl, Kirill I. Bolotin, Malte Selig, and Andreas Knorr

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026901 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025

Strategy for Direct Detection of Chiral Phonons with Phase-Structured Free Electrons

Marc R. Bourgeois, Andrew W. Rossi, and David J. Masiello

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026902 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025

Multiple Carrier Generation at an Exceptionally Low Energy Threshold

Riyanka Karmakar, Pravrati Taank, Debjit Ghoshal, Pushpendra Yadav, Dipendranath Mandal, Megha Shrivastava, Amit Agarwal, Matthew C. Beard, Elisa M. Miller, and K. V. Adarsh

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026903 (2025) - Published 17 January, 2025

Twist-Angle-Dependent Valley Polarization of Intralayer Moiré Excitons in van der Waals Superlattices

Renqi Wang, Kai Chang, Wenhui Duan, Yong Xu, and Peizhe Tang

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026904 (2025) - Published 17 January, 2025

Observation of Nonreciprocal Diffraction of Surface Acoustic Wave

Y. Nii, K. Yamamoto, M. Kanno, S. Maekawa, and Y. Onose

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 027001 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025

Statistical Physics; Classical, Nonlinear, and Complex Systems

Minimal Model for Carnot Efficiency at Maximum Power

Shiling Liang (梁师翎), Yu-Han Ma, Daniel Maria Busiello, and Paolo De Los Rios

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 027101 (2025) - Published 13 January, 2025

Asymmetric Simple Exclusion Process on the Percolation Cluster: Waiting Time Distribution in Side Branches

Chandrashekar Iyer, Mustansir Barma, Hunnervir Singh, and Deepak Dhar

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 027102 (2025) - Published 13 January, 2025

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Smooth Exact Gradient Descent Learning in Spiking Neural Networks

Christian Klos and Raoul-Martin Memmesheimer

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 027301 (2025) - Published 13 January, 2025

By incorporating electrical pulses with shapes similar to those of the spikes from biological neurons, researchers improved the ability to train energy-efficient types of neural networks.

Polymers, Chemical Physics, Soft Matter, and Biological Physics

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

Unified Flow Rule of Undeveloped and Fully Developed Dense Granular Flows down Rough Inclines

Yanbin Wu, Thomas Pähtz, Zixiao Guo, Lu Jing, Zhao Duan, and Zhiguo He

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 028201 (2025) - Published 17 January, 2025

Measurements of grains flowing down an inclined plane have uncovered general principles that may help researchers model rockslides and other granular flows.

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Critical Avalanches in Excitation-Inhibition Balanced Networks Reconcile Response Reliability with Sensitivity for Optimal Neural Representation

Zhuda Yang, Junhao Liang, and Changsong Zhou

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 028401 (2025) - Published 15 January, 2025

A new model reveals that bursts of neural activity known as critical avalanches underlie the brain’s ability to respond consistently to stimuli.