Volume 134, Issue 22

6 June 2025

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On the Cover

Two calculated Rydberg electron distributions for trilobite molecules. Selected for a Synopsis in Physics Magazine and for an Editors’ Suggestion.

From the article:

High Precision Spectroscopy of Trilobite Rydberg Molecules
Markus Exner, Rohan Srikumar, Richard Blättner, Matthew T. Eiles, Peter Schmelcher, and Herwig Ott
Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 223401 (2025)

HIGHLIGHTED ARTICLES

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Ionization Energy of Metastable ${}^{3}{He}$ (2 ${}^{3}{S_{1}}$ ) and the Alpha- and Helion-Particle Charge-Radius Difference from Precision Spectroscopy of the $n p$ Rydberg Series

Gloria Clausen and Frédéric Merkt

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 223001 (2025) - Published 2 June, 2025

New physics may explain discrepant values for the ionization energy of a metastable state of helium.

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

High Precision Spectroscopy of Trilobite Rydberg Molecules

Markus Exner, Rohan Srikumar, Richard Blättner, Matthew T. Eiles, Peter Schmelcher, and Herwig Ott

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 223401 (2025) - Published 4 June, 2025

High-precision spectroscopy of weakly bound rubidium dimers pushes a theoretical model to its limits.

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Chern-Protected Flatband Edge State in Metaphotonics

Jianfeng Chen, Yidong Zheng, Shuihua Yang, Andrea Alù, Zhi-Yuan Li, and Cheng-Wei Qiu

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 223806 (2025) - Published 5 June, 2025

A two-dimensional photonic metamaterial combines useful features of two quantum materials.

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Quantification of Electronic Asymmetry: Chirality and Axiality in Solids

Tatsuya Miki, Hiroaki Ikeda, Michi-To Suzuki, and Shintaro Hoshino

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 226401 (2025) - Published 4 June, 2025

A new framework for studying chiral materials puts the emphasis on electron chirality rather than on the asymmetry of the atomic structure.

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Radiative Stabilization of the Indenyl Cation: Recurrent Fluorescence in a Closed-Shell Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon

James N. Bull, Arun Subramani, Chang Liu, Samuel J. P. Marlton, Eleanor K. Ashworth, Henrik Cederquist, Henning Zettergren, and Mark H. Stockett

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 228002 (2025) - Published 6 June, 2025

The harsh interstellar environment ought to destroy these carbon-rich molecules; experiments reveal their secret weapon.

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Stochastic Dynamics of Incoherent Branched Flows

Josselin Garnier, Antonio Picozzi, and Theo Torres

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 223803 (2025) - Published 3 June, 2025

A stochastic formulation demonstrates that interference effects significantly modify the statistical properties of branched flows.

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Non-Markovian Effects in Quantum Rate Calculations of Hydrogen Diffusion with Electronic Friction

George Trenins and Mariana Rossi

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 226201 (2025) - Published 2 June, 2025

Including non-Markovian electronic frictional memory effects in simulations of molecular diffusion on surfaces alters rate constants and tunneling crossover temperatures and explains the convergence between the Markovian simulations and experimental observations.

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Mechanics of Poking a Cyst

Shiheng Zhao (赵世恒) and Pierre A. Haas

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 228402 (2025) - Published 5 June, 2025

The response of an elastic shell made of a nonlinear material when indented by a point source yields scaling exponents useful for modeling the mechanical properties of biological samples such as cysts.

LETTERS

Quantum Information, Science, and Technology

Decoherence of Histories: Chaotic Versus Integrable Systems

Jiaozi Wang and Philipp Strasberg

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 220401 (2025) - Published 4 June, 2025

Anomalous Discharging of Quantum Batteries: The Ergotropic Mpemba Effect

Ivan Medina, Oisín Culhane, Felix C. Binder, Gabriel T. Landi, and John Goold

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 220402 (2025) - Published 5 June, 2025

Non-Markovian Quantum Mpemba Effect

David J. Strachan, Archak Purkayastha, and Stephen R. Clark

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 220403 (2025) - Published 5 June, 2025

Inhomogeneous Quantum Quenches of Conformal Field Theory with Boundaries

Xinyu Liu, Alexander McDonald, Tokiro Numasawa, Biao Lian, and Shinsei Ryu

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 220404 (2025) - Published 5 June, 2025

Exploiting Nonlocal Correlations for Dispersion-Resilient Quantum Communications

Hao Yu, Benjamin Crockett, Nicola Montaut, Stefania Sciara, Mario Chemnitz, Sai T. Chu, Brent E. Little, David J. Moss, Zhiming Wang, José Azaña, and Roberto Morandotti

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 220801 (2025) - Published 5 June, 2025

Testing the Wineland Criterion with Finite Statistics

E. S. Carrera, Y. Zhang, J-D. Bancal, and N. Sangouard

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 220802 (2025) - Published 5 June, 2025

Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Gravitation

Extended $δ N$ Formalism: Nonspatially Flat Separate-Universe Approach

Danilo Artigas, Shi Pi, and Takahiro Tanaka

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 221001 (2025) - Published 3 June, 2025

Supernovae Time Profiles as a Probe of New Physics at Neutrino Telescopes

Carlos A. Argüelles, Vedran Brdar, Jeffrey Lazar, and Ying-Ying Li

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 221002 (2025) - Published 4 June, 2025

Partial Rate Matrix for Dark Matter Scattering

Benjamin Lillard

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 221003 (2025) - Published 4 June, 2025

Black Hole Supercolliders

Andrew Mummery and Joseph Silk

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 221401 (2025) - Published 3 June, 2025

Particles and Fields

Channel Capacity of a Relativistic String

Adam R. Brown

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 221601 (2025) - Published 5 June, 2025

Establishing $C P$ Violation in $b$ -Baryon Decays

Jia-Jie Han, Ji-Xin Yu, Ya Li, Hsiang-nan Li, Jian-Peng Wang, Zhen-Jun Xiao, and Fu-Sheng Yu

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 221801 (2025) - Published 4 June, 2025

Precise Extraction of $α_{em} (m_{Z}^{2})$ at the Tera- $Z$ Stage of a Future Circular Collider

Marc Riembau

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 221802 (2025) - Published 5 June, 2025

Next-to-Next-to-Leading-Order QCD Prediction for the Pion Form Factor

Yao Ji, Bo-Xuan Shi, Jian Wang, Ye-Fan Wang, Yu-Ming Wang, and Hui-Xin Yu

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 221901 (2025) - Published 5 June, 2025

Nuclear Physics

Extracting Neutron-Neutron Interaction Strength and Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Neutron Emission from the Two-Particle Correlation Function

Dawei Si et al.

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 222301 (2025) - Published 5 June, 2025

Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Ionization Energy of Metastable ${}^{3}{He}$ (2 ${}^{3}{S_{1}}$ ) and the Alpha- and Helion-Particle Charge-Radius Difference from Precision Spectroscopy of the $n p$ Rydberg Series

Gloria Clausen and Frédéric Merkt

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 223001 (2025) - Published 2 June, 2025

New physics may explain discrepant values for the ionization energy of a metastable state of helium.

Limits on Anomalous Spin-Spin Interactions Using Noble-Gas Nuclear Magnetic Resonance

Haowen Su, Shiju Hu, Yang Ding, Yuanhong Wang, Min Jiang, and Xinhua Peng

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 223201 (2025) - Published 2 June, 2025

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

High Precision Spectroscopy of Trilobite Rydberg Molecules

Markus Exner, Rohan Srikumar, Richard Blättner, Matthew T. Eiles, Peter Schmelcher, and Herwig Ott

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 223401 (2025) - Published 4 June, 2025

High-precision spectroscopy of weakly bound rubidium dimers pushes a theoretical model to its limits.

Observation of Brownian Motion of a Bose-Einstein Condensate

Xiao-Qiong Wang, Rui-Lang Zeng, Zi-Yao Zhang, Chushun Tian, Shizhong Zhang, Andreas Hemmerich, and Zhi-Fang Xu

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 223402 (2025) - Published 5 June, 2025

Spin and Density Modes in a Binary Fluid of Light

Clara Piekarski, Nicolas Cherroret, Tangui Aladjidi, and Quentin Glorieux

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 223403 (2025) - Published 6 June, 2025

Torus Bifurcation of a Dissipative Time Crystal

Jayson G. Cosme, Phatthamon Kongkhambut, Anton Bölian, Richelle Jade L. Tuquero, Jim Skulte, Ludwig Mathey, Andreas Hemmerich, and Hans Keßler

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 223601 (2025) - Published 4 June, 2025

On-Chip Quantum Interference between Independent Lithium Niobate-on-Insulator Photon-Pair Sources

Robert J. Chapman, Tristan Kuttner, Jost Kellner, Alessandra Sabatti, Andreas Maeder, Giovanni Finco, Fabian Kaufmann, and Rachel Grange

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 223602 (2025) - Published 5 June, 2025

Transient Symmetry Breaking in a Pumped Crystal via the Electric-Field-Dependent Stark Effect

Liang Li, Wei He, Shiqi Liang, Pengfei Lan, and Peixiang Lu

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 223801 (2025) - Published 4 June, 2025

Dissipative Topological Dynamics in Optical Waveguides: Sensitivity versus Robustness

Zhiyuan Lin, Jian Li, Wange Song, Shanhe Su, Jiacheng Sun, Shengjie Wu, Chunyu Huang, Shining Zhu, and Tao Li

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 223802 (2025) - Published 4 June, 2025

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Stochastic Dynamics of Incoherent Branched Flows

Josselin Garnier, Antonio Picozzi, and Theo Torres

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 223803 (2025) - Published 3 June, 2025

A stochastic formulation demonstrates that interference effects significantly modify the statistical properties of branched flows.

Rewritable Binary Recording of the Photon Spin State in Chiral Liquid Crystals

Nicolas Bruni, Charles Loussert, Mushegh Rafayelyan, Tetiana Orlova, Delphine Coursault, and Etienne Brasselet

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 223804 (2025) - Published 5 June, 2025

Fluctuation Statistics of Nonlinear Optical Microcanonical Systems

Do Hyeok Jeon, Georgios G. Pyrialakos, Mahmoud A. Selim, Abraham M. Berman Bradley, Mercedeh Khajavikhan, and Demetrios N. Christodoulides

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 223805 (2025) - Published 5 June, 2025

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Chern-Protected Flatband Edge State in Metaphotonics

Jianfeng Chen, Yidong Zheng, Shuihua Yang, Andrea Alù, Zhi-Yuan Li, and Cheng-Wei Qiu

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 223806 (2025) - Published 5 June, 2025

A two-dimensional photonic metamaterial combines useful features of two quantum materials.

Physics of Fluids, Earth & Planetary Science, and Climate

Transient Fluted Films behind Falling Water Columns

Abhijit K. Kushwaha, Matthew B. Jones, Jesse Belden, Nathan Speirs, and Tadd T. Truscott

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 224001 (2025) - Published 3 June, 2025

Condensed Matter and Materials

Anomalous Doppler Effect in Superfluid and Supersolid Atomic Gases

Tomasz Zawiślak, Marija Šindik, Sandro Stringari, and Alessio Recati

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 226001 (2025) - Published 3 June, 2025

Role of Nematic Fluctuations on Superconductivity in ${FeSe}_{0.47} {Te}_{0.53}$ Revealed by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance under Pressure

Qing-Ping Ding, Juan Schmidt, Jose A. Moreno, Sergey L. Bud’ko, Paul C. Canfield, and Yuji Furukawa

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 226002 (2025) - Published 6 June, 2025

Postavalanche Relaxation Sheds Light on Twinning Mechanisms

Haile Gebrehiwet Seyoum, Emil Bronstein, Eilon Faran, and Doron Shilo

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 226101 (2025) - Published 4 June, 2025

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Non-Markovian Effects in Quantum Rate Calculations of Hydrogen Diffusion with Electronic Friction

George Trenins and Mariana Rossi

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 226201 (2025) - Published 2 June, 2025

Coupled Electron-Phonon Hydrodynamics in Two-Dimensional Semiconductors

Yujie Quan and Bolin Liao

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 226301 (2025) - Published 3 June, 2025

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Quantification of Electronic Asymmetry: Chirality and Axiality in Solids

Tatsuya Miki, Hiroaki Ikeda, Michi-To Suzuki, and Shintaro Hoshino

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 226401 (2025) - Published 4 June, 2025

A new framework for studying chiral materials puts the emphasis on electron chirality rather than on the asymmetry of the atomic structure.

Distinguishing Thermal Fluctuations from Polaron Formation in Halide Perovskites

Bai-Qing Zhao, Jue-Yi Qi, Xun Xu, Xuan-Yan Chen, Chuan-Nan Li, Jinshan Li, Chris G. Van de Walle, and Xie Zhang

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 226402 (2025) - Published 5 June, 2025

Dynamical Freezing in Exactly Solvable Models of Driven Chaotic Quantum Dots

Haoyu Guo, Rohit Mukherjee, and Debanjan Chowdhury

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 226501 (2025) - Published 4 June, 2025

Intrinsic Axion Statistical Topological Insulator

Xi Chen, Fa-Jie Wang, Zhen Bi, and Zhi-Da Song

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 226601 (2025) - Published 4 June, 2025

Exceptional Magic Angles in Non-Hermitian Twisted Bilayer Graphene

Juan Pablo Esparza and Vladimir Juričić

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 226602 (2025) - Published 4 June, 2025

Topological Domain-Wall Pump with $Z_{2}$ Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking

Yoshihito Kuno and Yasuhiro Hatsugai

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 226603 (2025) - Published 5 June, 2025

Origin of the Hidden Energy Scale and the $f$ Ratio in Geometrically Frustrated Magnets

Phillip Popp, Arthur P. Ramirez, and Sergey Syzranov

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 226701 (2025) - Published 3 June, 2025

Absence of Altermagnetic Magnon Band Splitting in ${MnF}_{2}$

V. C. Morano, Z. Maesen, S. E. Nikitin, J. Lass, D. G. Mazzone, and O. Zaharko

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 226702 (2025) - Published 4 June, 2025

Multiferroic Collinear Antiferromagnets with Hidden Altermagnetic Spin Splitting

Jin Matsuda, Hikaru Watanabe, and Ryotaro Arita

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 226703 (2025) - Published 5 June, 2025

Tunable Bifurcation of Magnetic Anisotropy and Bi-Oriented Antiferromagnetic Order in Kagome Metal ${GdTi}_{3} {Bi}_{4}$

Jianfeng Guo, Shiyu Zhu, Runnong Zhou, Ruwen Wang, Yunhao Wang, Jianping Sun, Zhen Zhao, Xiaoli Dong, Jinguang Cheng, Haitao Yang, Jiang Xiao, and Hong-Jun Gao

Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 226704 (2025) - Published 5 June, 2025