Volume 135, Issue 26

31 December 2025

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On the Cover

Distance-7 surface code implemented on 97 qubits (data: red circles, ancilla: blue circles) of a superconducting quantum processor with all-microwave leakage suppression. Subsets are shown with red and orange lines. Selected for a Viewpoint in Physics Magazine and for an Editors’ Suggestion.

From the article:

Experimental Quantum Error Correction below the Surface Code Threshold via All-Microwave Leakage Suppression
Tan He et al.
Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 260601 (2025)

HIGHLIGHTED ARTICLES

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Experimental Quantum Error Correction below the Surface Code Threshold via All-Microwave Leakage Suppression

Tan He et al.

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 260601 (2025) - Published 22 December, 2025

A new strategy improves error correction in quantum computation by mitigating the effects of qubits escaping from their intended states.

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Fast Hydrogen Atom Diffraction through Monocrystalline Graphene

Pierre Guichard, Arnaud Dochain, Raphaël Marion, Pauline de Crombrugghe de Picquendaele, Nicolas Lejeune, Benoît Hackens, Paul-Antoine Hervieux, and Xavier Urbain

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 263403 (2025) - Published 23 December, 2025

A fast beam of hydrogen atoms passes through a graphene layer and produces a diffraction pattern, a development that could lead to a new probing technique of surface interactions.

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Experimental Observation of Single- and Multisite Matter-Wave Solitons in an Optical Accordion Lattice

Robbie Cruickshank, Francesco Lorenzi, Arthur La Rooij, Ethan F. Kerr, Timon Hilker, Stefan Kuhr, Luca Salasnich, and Elmar Haller

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 263404 (2025) - Published 23 December, 2025

The observation of discrete solitons in a Bose-Einstein condensate brings with it the prospect of investigating a general physical phenomenon with the tunability and precision of cold-atom techniques.

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Demonstration of Mode-Locked Frequency Comb for an X-Ray Free-Electron Laser

Wenxiang Hu, Gabriel Aeppli, Christopher Arrell, Marco Calvi, Sergio Carbajo, Andreas Dax, Yunpei Deng, Philipp Dijkstal, David Dunning, Simon Gerber, Martin Huppert, Stefan Neppl, Sven Reiche, Thomas Schietinger, Neil Thompson, Alexandre Trisorio, Carlo Vicario, Alexander Zholents, and Eduard Prat

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 265001 (2025) - Published 23 December, 2025

Mode locking—a laser technique that revolutionized optical physics—has been extended to x rays, producing stable trains of attosecond pulses with unprecedented phase coherence.

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Time-Domain Extreme-Ultraviolet Diffuse Scattering Spectroscopy of Nanoscale Surface Phonons

F. Capotondi, A. A. Maznev, F. Bencivenga, S. Bonetti, D. Engel, D. Fainozzi, D. Fausti, L. Foglia, C. Gutt, N. Jaouen, D. Ksenzov, C. Masciovecchio, Keith A. Nelson, I. Nikolov, M. Pancaldi, E. Pedersoli, B. Pfau, L. Raimondi, F. Romanelli, R. Totani, and M. Trigo

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 266101 (2025) - Published 24 December, 2025

Imaging using extreme ultraviolet scattering shows that optical pulses can generate surface excitations with spectra that were previously difficult to achieve.

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Quantum Advantage in Identifying the Parity of Permutations with Certainty

A. Diebra, S. Llorens, D. González-Lociga, A. Rico, J. Calsamiglia, M. Hillery, and E. Bagan

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 260603 (2025) - Published 23 December, 2025

Simple and genuine quantum advantage in perfect parity identification without oracles is achieved.

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Transverse Polarization Gradient Entangling Gates for Trapped-Ion Quantum Computation

Jin-Ming Cui, Yan Chen, Yi-Fan Zhou, Quan Long, En-Teng An, Ran He, Yun-Feng Huang, Chuan-Feng Li, and Guang-Can Guo

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 260604 (2025) - Published 24 December, 2025

A method leveraging the optical Magnus effect offers an alternative to conventional entanglement schemes for the generation of quantum logic gates.

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Zero-Dead-Time Strontium Lattice Clock with a Stability at $10^{- 19}$ Level

Xiao-Yong Liu, Peng Liu, Jie Li, Yu-Chen Zhang, Yuan-Bo Wang, Zhi-Peng Jia, Xiang Zhang, Xian-Qing Zhu, De-Quan Kong, Wen-Lan Song, Guo-Zhen Niu, Yu-Meng Yang, Pei-Jun Feng, Xiang-Pei Liu, Xing-Yang Cui, Ping Xu, Xiao Jiang, Juan Yin, Sheng-Kai Liao, Cheng-Zhi Peng, Han-Ning Dai, Yu-Ao Chen, and Jian-Wei Pan

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 263402 (2025) - Published 23 December, 2025

A zero-dead-time optical lattice clock achieves unprecedented stability of 1 part in $10^{19}$ .

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Intrinsic Heavy Wigner Crystal Forged by Transferred $4 f$ Electrons

Zhongjie Wang, Rui Song, Yupeng Jiang, Qidong Sun, Meng Zhao, Lifeng Yin, Jian Shen, and Chunlei Gao

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 266502 (2025) - Published 23 December, 2025

A new type of Wigner crystal made of charge-transfer 4 $f$ electrons has been observed.

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Observation and Control of Potential-Dependent Surface-State Formation at a Semiconductor-Electrolyte Interface via Optical Anisotropy

Marco Flieg, Margot Guidat, and Matthias M. May

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 268001 (2025) - Published 22 December, 2025

Surface states at the InP semiconductor-electrolyte interface can be switched on or off with applied potential, and detection of this phenomenon is allowed by optical anisotropy.

LETTERS

Quantum Information, Science, and Technology

Adversarial Quantum Channel Discrimination

Kun Fang, Hamza Fawzi, and Omar Fawzi

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 260201 (2025) - Published 23 December, 2025

Universal, Unambiguous Concentration and Distillation of Bell pairs

Orsolya Kálmán, Aurél Gábris, Igor Jex, and Tamás Kiss

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 260202 (2025) - Published 24 December, 2025

Many-Body Non-Hermitian Skin Effect with Exact Steady States in the Dissipative Quantum Link Model

Yu-Min Hu, Zijian Wang, Biao Lian, and Zhong Wang

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 260401 (2025) - Published 26 December, 2025

Mixed State Deep Thermalization

Xie-Hang Yu, Wen Wei Ho, and Pavel Kos

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 260402 (2025) - Published 29 December, 2025

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Experimental Quantum Error Correction below the Surface Code Threshold via All-Microwave Leakage Suppression

Tan He et al.

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 260601 (2025) - Published 22 December, 2025

A new strategy improves error correction in quantum computation by mitigating the effects of qubits escaping from their intended states.

Quantum Circuits for Matrix-Product Unitaries

Georgios Styliaris, Rahul Trivedi, and J. Ignacio Cirac

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 260602 (2025) - Published 22 December, 2025

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Quantum Advantage in Identifying the Parity of Permutations with Certainty

A. Diebra, S. Llorens, D. González-Lociga, A. Rico, J. Calsamiglia, M. Hillery, and E. Bagan

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 260603 (2025) - Published 23 December, 2025

Simple and genuine quantum advantage in perfect parity identification without oracles is achieved.

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Transverse Polarization Gradient Entangling Gates for Trapped-Ion Quantum Computation

Jin-Ming Cui, Yan Chen, Yi-Fan Zhou, Quan Long, En-Teng An, Ran He, Yun-Feng Huang, Chuan-Feng Li, and Guang-Can Guo

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 260604 (2025) - Published 24 December, 2025

A method leveraging the optical Magnus effect offers an alternative to conventional entanglement schemes for the generation of quantum logic gates.

Disentangling Magic States with Classically Simulable Quantum Circuits

Gerald E. Fux, Benjamin Béri, Rosario Fazio, and Emanuele Tirrito

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 260605 (2025) - Published 24 December, 2025

Making Existing Quantum Position Verification Protocols Secure Against Arbitrary Transmission Loss

Rene Allerstorfer, Andreas Bluhm, Harry Buhrman, Matthias Christandl, Llorenç Escolà-Farràs, Florian Speelman, and Philip Verduyn Lunel

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 260801 (2025) - Published 22 December, 2025

Secure Quantum Ranging

Yunkai Wang, Graeme Smith, and Alex May

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 260802 (2025) - Published 22 December, 2025

Nonlocal Switch and Transistor between Single Photons

Ren Liao, Ze-Rui Song, Gen-Sheng Ye, Jian-Hao Yu, Yue Chang, and Lin Li

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 260803 (2025) - Published 22 December, 2025

Stable and High-Precision 3D Positioning via Tunable Composite-Dimensional Hong-Ou-Mandel Interference

Yongqiang Li, Hongfeng Liu, Dawei Lu, and Changliang Ren

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 260804 (2025) - Published 22 December, 2025

Distributed Quantum Multiparameter Estimation with Optimal Local Measurements

Luca Pezzè and Augusto Smerzi

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 260805 (2025) - Published 26 December, 2025

Quantum cnot Gate with Actively Synchronized Photon Pairs

Haim Nakav, Tanim Firdoshi, Omri Davidson, Bankim Chandra Das, and Ofer Firstenberg

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 260806 (2025) - Published 26 December, 2025

Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Gravitation

Demonstration That Differential Length Changes of Optical Cavities Are a Sensitive Probe for Ultralight Dark Matter

Tejas Deshpande, Andra Ionescu, Nicholas Miller, Zhiyuan Wang, Gerald Gabrielse, Andrew A. Geraci, and Tim Kovachy

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 261001 (2025) - Published 22 December, 2025

Isotropy of Hubble Expansion in the Early and Late Universe

Alan Junzhe Zhou, Scott Dodelson, and Daniel Scolnic

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 261002 (2025) - Published 29 December, 2025

Covariant Dynamics from Static Spherically Symmetric Geometries

Cong Zhang and Zhoujian Cao

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 261401 (2025) - Published 26 December, 2025

Light Black Holes from Light

Don N. Page

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 261402 (2025) - Published 26 December, 2025

Particles and Fields

Holographic Absolutely Maximally Entangled States in Black Hole Interiors

Takanori Anegawa and Kotaro Tamaoka

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 261601 (2025) - Published 29 December, 2025

Carrollian-Holographic Derivation of Gravitational Flux-Balance Laws

Adrien Fiorucci, Simon Pekar, P. Marios Petropoulos, and Matthieu Vilatte

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 261602 (2025) - Published 31 December, 2025

Results from the T2K Experiment on Neutrino Mixing Including a New Far Detector $μ$ -like Sample

K. Abe et al. (T2K Collaboration)

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 261801 (2025) - Published 29 December, 2025

First Observation of the Charmless Baryonic Decay $B^{+} \to \bar{Λ} p \bar{p} p$

R. Aaij et al. (LHCb Collaboration)

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 261901 (2025) - Published 22 December, 2025

Energy Independence of the Collins Asymmetry in $p^{↑} p$ Collisions

B. E. Aboona et al. (STAR Collaboration)

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 261902 (2025) - Published 26 December, 2025

First Global Extraction of Generalized Parton Distributions from Experiment and Lattice Data with Next-to-Leading-Order Accuracy

Yuxun Guo, Fatma P. Aslan, Xiangdong Ji, and M. Gabriel Santiago

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 261903 (2025) - Published 30 December, 2025

Nuclear Physics

Observation of Coherent $ϕ (1020)$ Meson Photoproduction in Ultraperipheral PbPb Collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 5.36 TeV$

V. Chekhovsky et al. (CMS Collaboration)

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 262301 (2025) - Published 22 December, 2025

Search for Majorana Neutrinos with the Complete KamLAND-Zen Dataset

S. Abe et al. (KamLAND-Zen Collaboration)

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 262501 (2025) - Published 29 December, 2025

Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics

Strong-Field Photoelectron Interferometry with Near-Single-Cycle Yb Lasers

Mahmudul Hasan, Phi-Hung Tran, Jingsong Gao, Van-Hung Hoang, Ming-Shian Tsai, Ming-Chang Chen, Uwe Thumm, Charles Lewis Cocke, Chii-Dong Lin, Anh-Thu Le, and Meng Han

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 263001 (2025) - Published 31 December, 2025

Ballistic Particle Transport and Drude Weight in Gases

Frank Göhmann, Andreas Klümper, and Karol K. Kozlowski

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 263401 (2025) - Published 22 December, 2025

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Zero-Dead-Time Strontium Lattice Clock with a Stability at $10^{- 19}$ Level

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 263402 (2025) - Published 23 December, 2025

A zero-dead-time optical lattice clock achieves unprecedented stability of 1 part in $10^{19}$ .

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Fast Hydrogen Atom Diffraction through Monocrystalline Graphene

Pierre Guichard, Arnaud Dochain, Raphaël Marion, Pauline de Crombrugghe de Picquendaele, Nicolas Lejeune, Benoît Hackens, Paul-Antoine Hervieux, and Xavier Urbain

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 263403 (2025) - Published 23 December, 2025

A fast beam of hydrogen atoms passes through a graphene layer and produces a diffraction pattern, a development that could lead to a new probing technique of surface interactions.

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Experimental Observation of Single- and Multisite Matter-Wave Solitons in an Optical Accordion Lattice

Robbie Cruickshank, Francesco Lorenzi, Arthur La Rooij, Ethan F. Kerr, Timon Hilker, Stefan Kuhr, Luca Salasnich, and Elmar Haller

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 263404 (2025) - Published 23 December, 2025

Casimir-Lifshitz Theory for Cavity Modification of Ground-State Energy

Oleg V. Kotov, Johannes Feist, Francisco J. García-Vidal, and Timur O. Shegai

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 263601 (2025) - Published 24 December, 2025

Experimental Measurement of the Reappearance of Rabi Rotations in Semiconductor Quantum Dots

Lukas Hanschke, Thomas K. Bracht, Eva Schöll, David Bauch, Eva Berger, Patricia Kallert, Melina Peter, Ailton J. Garcia, Jr., Saimon F. Covre da Silva, Santanu Manna, Armando Rastelli, Stefan Schumacher, Doris E. Reiter, and Klaus D. Jöns

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 263602 (2025) - Published 26 December, 2025

Heteronuclear and Homonuclear Vector Solitons in Lasers

Yueqing Du, Zhenzhu Zhang, Heze Zhang, Jia Xue, Chao Zeng, Yudong Cui, Dong Mao, Boris A. Malomed, and Jianlin Zhao

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 263801 (2025) - Published 22 December, 2025

Transverse Non-Hermitian Drift Induced by the Quantum Metric of Exceptional Rings

Zhaoyang Zhang, Ismaël Septembre, Zhenzhi Liu, Pavel Kokhanchik, Shun Liang, Fu Liu, Changbiao Li, Hongxing Wang, Maochang Liu, Yanpeng Zhang, Min Xiao, Guillaume Malpuech, and Dmitry Solnyshkov

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 263802 (2025) - Published 30 December, 2025

Plasma and Solar Physics, Accelerators and Beams

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Demonstration of Mode-Locked Frequency Comb for an X-Ray Free-Electron Laser

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 265001 (2025) - Published 23 December, 2025

Mode locking—a laser technique that revolutionized optical physics—has been extended to x rays, producing stable trains of attosecond pulses with unprecedented phase coherence.

Microturbulence Suppression by Alfvén Eigenmodes in the DIII-D Tokamak

X. D. Du, W. W. Heidbrink, Z. Yan, P. H. Diamond, G. R. McKee, L. Schmitz, M. A. Van Zeeland, H. Q. Wang, M. E. Austin, L. Liu, K. J. Callahan, and N. Shi

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 265101 (2025) - Published 22 December, 2025

Global Kinetic Simulations of Monster Shocks and Their Emission

Dominic Bernardi, Yajie Yuan, and Alexander Y. Chen

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 265201 (2025) - Published 22 December, 2025

Condensed Matter and Materials

Gate-Tunable Spectrum and Charge Dispersion Mitigation in a Graphene Superconducting Qubit

Nicolas Aparicio, Simon Messelot, Edgar Bonet-Orozco, Eric Eyraud, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, Johann Coraux, and Julien Renard

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 266001 (2025) - Published 22 December, 2025

Spin-Depairing-Induced Exceptional Fermionic Superfluidity

Soma Takemori, Kazuki Yamamoto, and Akihisa Koga

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 266002 (2025) - Published 23 December, 2025

Double Supersolid Phase in a Bosonic $t − J − V$ Model with Rydberg Atoms

Kuangjie Chen, Yang Qi, Zheng Yan, and Xiaopeng Li

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 266003 (2025) - Published 22 December, 2025

Superfluid Stiffness Bounds in Time-Reversal Symmetric Superconductors

Yongxin Zeng and Andrew J. Millis

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 266004 (2025) - Published 29 December, 2025

Chiral Superconductivity from Spin Polarized Chern Band in Twisted ${MoTe}_{2}$

Cheng Xu, Nianlong Zou, Nikolai Peshcherenko, Ammar Jahin, Tingxin Li, Shi-Zeng Lin, and Yang Zhang

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 266005 (2025) - Published 30 December, 2025

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Time-Domain Extreme-Ultraviolet Diffuse Scattering Spectroscopy of Nanoscale Surface Phonons

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 266101 (2025) - Published 24 December, 2025

Imaging using extreme ultraviolet scattering shows that optical pulses can generate surface excitations with spectra that were previously difficult to achieve.

Unconventional Superconductivity Mediated by Exciton Density Wave Fluctuations

Ajesh Kumar, Adarsh S. Patri, and T. Senthil

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 266501 (2025) - Published 22 December, 2025

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Intrinsic Heavy Wigner Crystal Forged by Transferred $4 f$ Electrons

Zhongjie Wang, Rui Song, Yupeng Jiang, Qidong Sun, Meng Zhao, Lifeng Yin, Jian Shen, and Chunlei Gao

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 266502 (2025) - Published 23 December, 2025

A new type of Wigner crystal made of charge-transfer 4 $f$ electrons has been observed.

Itinerant to Localized Heavy Electron Magnetism in $Ce ({Ru}_{1 - x} {Rh}_{x})_{2} {Al}_{10}$ : A Direction-Dependent Phase Diagram beyond the Doniach Phase Diagram

Hitoshi Yamaoka, Hiroshi Tanida, Eike F. Schwier, Yoshiya Yamamoto, Shiv Kumar, Masashi Arita, Kenya Shimada, Fumisato Tajima, Renta Onodera, Takashi Nishioka, Hirofumi Ishii, Nozomu Hiraoka, and Jun’ichiro Mizuki

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 266503 (2025) - Published 24 December, 2025

Critical Fluctuations and Conserved Dynamics in a Strange Ferromagnetic Metal

Jin Zhan, Yongjun Zhang, Jiawen Zhang, Yu Liu, Zhiyong Nie, Yuxin Chen, Lin Jiao, Yashar Komijani, Michael Smidman, Frank Steglich, Piers Coleman, and Huiqiu Yuan

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 266504 (2025) - Published 31 December, 2025

Approaching Optimal Light Evolution at Adiabaticity Control Limit in Inverse-Designed Waveguides

Xuanyu Liu, Wange Song, Jiacheng Sun, Shengjie Wu, Yichen Zhu, Zhiyuan Lin, Chunyu Huang, Shining Zhu, and Tao Li

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 266601 (2025) - Published 22 December, 2025

Loss-Induced Bulk-Boundary Detachment in a Photonic Chern Insulator

Yan-Chen Zhou, Hua-Shan Lai, Ze-Qun Sun, Xiao-Chen Sun, Jian-Lan Xie, Cheng He, and Yan-Feng Chen

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 266602 (2025) - Published 22 December, 2025

Circular Dichroism on the Edge of Quantum Hall Systems: From Many-Body Chern Number to Anisotropy Measurements

F. Nur Ünal, A. Nardin, and N. Goldman

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 266603 (2025) - Published 24 December, 2025

Spin Inversion Enforced by Crystal Symmetry in Ferroelastic Altermagnets

Yuqiang Huang, Chenqiang Hua, Runzhang Xu, Junwei Liu, Yi Zheng, and Yunhao Lu

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 266701 (2025) - Published 22 December, 2025

Band Topology and Dynamic Multiferroicity Induced from Dynamical Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya Interactions in Centrosymmetric Lattices

Bowen Ma and Z. D. Wang

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 266702 (2025) - Published 24 December, 2025

Statistical Physics; Classical, Nonlinear, and Complex Systems

Boundary-Driven Delayed-Feedback Control of Spatiotemporal Dynamics in Excitable Media

Sebastián Echeverría-Alar and Wouter-Jan Rappel

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 267201 (2025) - Published 22 December, 2025

Polymers, Chemical Physics, Soft Matter, and Biological Physics

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Observation and Control of Potential-Dependent Surface-State Formation at a Semiconductor-Electrolyte Interface via Optical Anisotropy

Marco Flieg, Margot Guidat, and Matthias M. May

Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 268001 (2025) - Published 22 December, 2025

Surface states at the InP semiconductor-electrolyte interface can be switched on or off with applied potential, and detection of this phenomenon is allowed by optical anisotropy.