Volume 136, Issue 1

9 January 2026

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On the Cover

A cryogenic setup for producing and trapping nanodroplets via supersonic expansion of precooled helium gas includes a cryostat (top left), a multireflection trap, and a channel electron multiplier detector (bottom right). Selected for an Editors' Suggestion.

From the article:

Extending the Observation Time of Charged Helium Droplets to the Minute Timescale
Matthias Veternik, Tobias Waldhütter, Lutz Schweikhard, Paul Scheier, and Elisabeth Gruber
Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 013201 (2026)

HIGHLIGHTED ARTICLES

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Smaller Grains Are Not Stronger: Microcrystalline Metals at Ultrahigh Strain Rates

Laura Wu, Yuan Yao, Luyan Li, Qi Tang, and Mostafa Hassani

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 016104 (2026) - Published 9 January, 2026

A textbook rule for the relationship between the structure and strength of a material breaks down for high-speed deformations, like those caused by strong impacts.

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Large Spontaneous Nonreciprocal Charge Transport in a Zero-Magnetization Antiferromagnet

Kenta Sudo, Yuki Yanagi, Mitsuru Akaki, Hiroshi Tanida, and Motoi Kimata

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 016503 (2026) - Published 5 January, 2026

An antiferromagnet with a zigzag magnetic structure exhibits a diode effect that has potential applications in spintronics.

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

Temperature Dependence of $p$ -Wave Contacts in a Harmonically Trapped Fermi Gas

Kenta Nagase, Hikaru Takahashi, Soki Oshima, and Takashi Mukaiyama

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 013402 (2026) - Published 8 January, 2026

The temperature dependence of so-called $p$ -wave interactions in an ultracold atomic gas has been measured for the first time.

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Encrypted Qubits Can Be Cloned

Koji Yamaguchi and Achim Kempf

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 010801 (2026) - Published 6 January, 2026

Any number of encrypted clones of a qubit can be created, but the decryption of just one destroys the decryption key, remaining consistent with the no-cloning theorem.

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Transport Approach to Quantum State Tomography

Jeanne Bourgeois, Gianmichele Blasi, and Géraldine Haack

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 010802 (2026) - Published 7 January, 2026

Current measurement in an open quantum system contains enough information to reconstruct the full quantum state.

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Pulsar Polarization Array Limits on Ultralight Axionlike Dark Matter

Xiao Xue, Shi Dai, Hoang Nhan Luu, Tao Liu, Jing Ren, Jing Shu, Yue Zhao, Andrew Zic, N. D. Ramesh Bhat, Zu-Cheng Chen, Yi Feng, George Hobbs, Agastya Kapur, Richard N. Manchester, Rami Mandow, Saurav Mishra, Daniel J. Reardon, Christopher J. Russell, Ryan M. Shannon, Shuangqiang Wang, Lei Zhang, Songbo Zhang, and Xingjiang Zhu (PPTA Collaboration)

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 011001 (2026) - Published 7 January, 2026

By cross-correlating pulsar polarization data within the galaxy, the PPTA collaboration sets the most sensitive limits on how strongly “Fuzzy” axionlike dark matter can interact with Chern-Simons coupling.

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Precision Measurement of Neutrino Oscillation Parameters with 10 Years of Data from the NOvA Experiment

S. Abubakar et al. (The NOvA Collaboration)

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 011802 (2026) - Published 8 January, 2026

A decade of neutrino oscillation data leads to the most precise single-experiment measurement of the neutrino mass splitting between eigenstates 3 and 2.

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Extending the Observation Time of Charged Helium Droplets to the Minute Timescale

Matthias Veternik, Tobias Waldhütter, Lutz Schweikhard, Paul Scheier, and Elisabeth Gruber

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 013201 (2026) - Published 5 January, 2026

Charged, micron-sized helium droplets can be trapped for minutes in an electrostatic ion beam trap.

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Odd-Chern-Number Quantum Anomalous Hall Effect at Even Filling in Moire Rhombohedral Heptalayer Graphene

Qianling Liu, Zhiyu Wang, Xiangyan Han, Zhuoxian Li, Bohao Li, Sicheng Zhou, Lihong Hu, Zhuangzhuang Qu, Chunrui Han, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, Zheng Vitto Han, Bingbing Tong, Guangtong Liu, Li Lu, Fengcheng Wu, and Jianming Lu

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 016602 (2026) - Published 5 January, 2026

The quantum anomalous Hall effect at even filling has been observed in rhombohedral heptalayer graphene moiré superlattices – previous observations were for odd-integer filling factors.

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

From Triangular Correlated Paramagnet to Multi- $q$ Noncoplanar Spin State in Spinel ${GeFe}_{2} O_{4}$

L. Chaix, J. Robert, E. Chan, E. Ressouche, S. Petit, C. V. Colin, R. Ballou, J. Ollivier, L.-P. Regnault, E. Lhotel, V. Cathelin, S. Lenne, C. Cavenel, F. Damay, E. Suard, P. Strobel, C. Darie, S. deBrion, and V. Simonet

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 016703 (2026) - Published 7 January, 2026

The spin arrangement in the magnetic frustrated spinel GeFe $_{2}$ O $_{4}$ is stabilized in two steps, first as a triangular correlated paramagnet emerging from the pyrochlore lattice that finally orders as a rare 6- $q$ magnetic structure.

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Tracking the Photoinduced Dynamics of a Dark Excitonic State in Single-Layer ${WS}_{2}$ via Resonant Autler-Townes Splitting

Angela Montanaro, Francesco Valiera, Francesca Giusti, Francesca Fassioli, Chiara Trovatello, Giacomo Jarc, Enrico Maria Rigoni, Fang Liu, Xiaoyang Zhu, Stefano Dal Conte, Giulio Cerullo, Martin Eckstein, and Daniele Fausti

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 016902 (2026) - Published 6 January, 2026

A new three-pulse Autler-Townes technique unveils the ultrafast dynamics of a dark 2 $p$ exciton in monolayer WS $_{2}$ , revealing symmetry-dependent many-body screening previously hidden from optical probes.

LETTERS

Quantum Information, Science, and Technology

Noncommutativity as a Universal Characterization for Enhanced Quantum Metrology

Ningxin Kong, Haojie Wang, Mingsheng Tian, Yilun Xu, Geng Chen, Yu Xiang, and Qiongyi He

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 010201 (2026) - Published 6 January, 2026

Deterministic Quantum Trajectory via Imaginary Time Evolution

Shivan Mittal and Bin Yan

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 010401 (2026) - Published 6 January, 2026

Predicting Open Quantum Dynamics with Data-Informed Quantum-Classical Dynamics

Pinchen Xie, Ke Wang, Anupam Mitra, Yuanran Zhu, Xiantao Li, Wibe Albert de Jong, and Chao Yang

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 010402 (2026) - Published 9 January, 2026

Faster Randomized Dynamical Decoupling

Changhao Yi, Leeseok Kim, and Milad Marvian

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 010601 (2026) - Published 2 January, 2026

Efficient Quantum Simulation for Translationally Invariant Systems

Joris Kattemölle and Guido Burkard

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 010602 (2026) - Published 6 January, 2026

Noise-Agnostic Unbiased Quantum Error Mitigation for Logical Qubits

Haipeng Xie, Nobuyuki Yoshioka, Kento Tsubouchi, and Ying Li

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 010603 (2026) - Published 7 January, 2026

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Encrypted Qubits Can Be Cloned

Koji Yamaguchi and Achim Kempf

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 010801 (2026) - Published 6 January, 2026

Any number of encrypted clones of a qubit can be created, but the decryption of just one destroys the decryption key, remaining consistent with the no-cloning theorem.

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Transport Approach to Quantum State Tomography

Jeanne Bourgeois, Gianmichele Blasi, and Géraldine Haack

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 010802 (2026) - Published 7 January, 2026

Current measurement in an open quantum system contains enough information to reconstruct the full quantum state.

Superresolution Imaging with Entanglement-Enhanced Telescopy

Isack Padilla, Aqil Sajjad, Babak N. Saif, and Saikat Guha

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 010803 (2026) - Published 7 January, 2026

Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Gravitation

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Pulsar Polarization Array Limits on Ultralight Axionlike Dark Matter

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 011001 (2026) - Published 7 January, 2026

Gravitational-Wave Signatures of Nonviolent Nonlocality

Brian C. Seymour and Yanbei Chen

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 011401 (2026) - Published 7 January, 2026

Enhancing Gravitational-Wave Detection: A Machine Learning Pipeline Combination Approach with Robust Uncertainty Quantification

Gregory Ashton, Ann-Kristin Malz, and Nicolo Colombo

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 011402 (2026) - Published 8 January, 2026

Particles and Fields

Positive Geometry for Stringy Scalar Amplitudes

Christoph Bartsch, Karol Kampf, David Podivín, and Jonah Stalknecht

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 011601 (2026) - Published 2 January, 2026

Simultaneous Probe of the Charm and Bottom Quark Yukawa Couplings Using $t \bar{t} H$ Events

A. Hayrapetyan et al. (CMS Collaboration)

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 011801 (2026) - Published 2 January, 2026

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Precision Measurement of Neutrino Oscillation Parameters with 10 Years of Data from the NOvA Experiment

S. Abubakar et al. (The NOvA Collaboration)

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 011802 (2026) - Published 8 January, 2026

A decade of neutrino oscillation data leads to the most precise single-experiment measurement of the neutrino mass splitting between eigenstates 3 and 2.

Fermion-Selective Tests of New Physics with the Bound-Electron $g$ Factor

M. Moretti, C. H. Keitel, and Z. Harman

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 011803 (2026) - Published 9 January, 2026

Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Extending the Observation Time of Charged Helium Droplets to the Minute Timescale

Matthias Veternik, Tobias Waldhütter, Lutz Schweikhard, Paul Scheier, and Elisabeth Gruber

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 013201 (2026) - Published 5 January, 2026

Charged, micron-sized helium droplets can be trapped for minutes in an electrostatic ion beam trap.

Extensive Manipulation of Transition Rates and Substantial Population Inversion of Rotating Atoms Inside a Cavity

Yan Peng, Yuebing Zhou, Jiawei Hu, and Hongwei Yu

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 013202 (2026) - Published 6 January, 2026

X-Ray-Induced Quenching of the ${}^{229}{Th}$ Clock Isomer in ${CaF}_{2}$

Ming Guan et al.

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 013203 (2026) - Published 8 January, 2026

Time-Dependent Hole States in Multiconfigurational Time-Dependent Hartree-Fock Approaches: A Time-Domain Generalization of Extended Koopmans’ Theorem

Zhao-Han Zhang, Yang Li, Himadri Pathak, Takeshi Sato, Kenichi L. Ishikawa, and Feng He

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 013204 (2026) - Published 8 January, 2026

Optical Excitation and Stabilization of Ultracold Field-Linked Tetratomic Molecules

Bijit Mukherjee and Michał Tomza

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 013401 (2026) - Published 6 January, 2026

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

Temperature Dependence of $p$ -Wave Contacts in a Harmonically Trapped Fermi Gas

Kenta Nagase, Hikaru Takahashi, Soki Oshima, and Takashi Mukaiyama

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 013402 (2026) - Published 8 January, 2026

The temperature dependence of so-called $p$ -wave interactions in an ultracold atomic gas has been measured for the first time.

Matrix Phase-Space Representations for Gaussian Boson Sampling

Peter D. Drummond, Alexander S. Dellios, and Margaret D. Reid

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 013601 (2026) - Published 6 January, 2026

Strong Molecule-Light Entanglement with Molecular Cavity Optomechanics

Hong-Yun Yu, Ya-Feng Jiao, Jie Wang, Feng Li, Bin Yin, Qi-Rui Liu, Tian Jiang, Hui Jing, and Ke Wei

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 013602 (2026) - Published 6 January, 2026

Low-Energy Free-Electron Nonclassical Lasing

Mai Zhang, Yu Wang, Chang-Ling Zou, Lei Ying, Qiongyi He, Guang-Can Guo, and Chun-Hua Dong

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 013603 (2026) - Published 7 January, 2026

Hybrid Quantum Surface Acoustic Wave with Skyrmion Qubit for Quantum Information Processing

Yu-Yuan Chen, Zhihui Peng, and Yu-xi Liu

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 013801 (2026) - Published 6 January, 2026

Physics of Fluids, Earth & Planetary Science, and Climate

Wave-Induced Fracture of a Sea-Ice Analog

B. Auvity, L. Duchemin, A. Eddi, and S. Perrard

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 014101 (2026) - Published 6 January, 2026

Plasma and Solar Physics, Accelerators and Beams

Turbulent Multiscale Interactions between Tearing Modes, Trapped-Electron Modes, and Zonal Flows

T. Jitsuk, M. J. Pueschel, P. W. Terry, and A. Di Siena

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 015101 (2026) - Published 2 January, 2026

Effects of Geometric Curvature and Weak Magnetic Shear on the Ion-Temperature-Gradient Instability Near the Magnetic Axis in a Tokamak

Tiannan Wu and Shaojie Wang

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 015102 (2026) - Published 5 January, 2026

Condensed Matter and Materials

Quantum Vortices Leave a Macroscopic Signature in the Thermal Background

Luca Galantucci, Giorgio Krstulovic, and Carlo F. Barenghi

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 016001 (2026) - Published 2 January, 2026

Ising Superconductivity in Noncentrosymmetric Bulk ${NbSe}_{2}$

Dominik Volavka, Jozef Kačmarčík, Timon Moško, Zuzana Pribulová, Branislav Stropkai, Jozef Bednarčík, Yingzheng Gao, Owen Moulding, Marie-Aude Méasson, Christophe Marcenat, Thierry Klein, Shunsuke Sasaki, Laurent Cario, Martin Gmitra, Peter Samuely, and Tomas Samuely

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 016002 (2026) - Published 9 January, 2026

Observation of $Δ J = 0$ Rotational Excitation in Dense Hydrogens

Jie Feng, Xiao-Di Liu, Haian Xu, Pu Wang, Graeme J. Ackland, and Eugene Gregoryanz

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 016101 (2026) - Published 5 January, 2026

Formation of Voids or Stacking-Fault Tetrahedra Induced by Local Chemical Variations in Face-Centered-Cubic Complex Concentrated Alloys

Yeping Lin, Chenyang Lu, Tengfei Yang, Zhengxiong Su, Yixin Deng, Wangyu Hu, Huiqiu Deng, Guanghong Lu, and Fei Gao

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 016102 (2026) - Published 6 January, 2026

Ab Initio Superionic-Liquid Phase Diagram of ${Fe}_{1 − x} O_{x}$ under Earth’s Inner Core Conditions

Zepeng Wu, Chen Gao, Feng Zhang, Shunqing Wu, Kai-Ming Ho, Renata M. Wentzcovitch, and Yang Sun

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 016103 (2026) - Published 6 January, 2026

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Smaller Grains Are Not Stronger: Microcrystalline Metals at Ultrahigh Strain Rates

Laura Wu, Yuan Yao, Luyan Li, Qi Tang, and Mostafa Hassani

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 016104 (2026) - Published 9 January, 2026

A textbook rule for the relationship between the structure and strength of a material breaks down for high-speed deformations, like those caused by strong impacts.

Complex Phonon Behaviors Dictate Anisotropic and Nonmonotonic Thermal Transport in Ice Polymorphs

Rong Qiu, Qiyu Zeng, Bo Chen, Jinsen Han, Jiahao Chen, Qunchao Tong, Kaiguo Chen, Dongdong Kang, Xiaoxiang Yu, Han Wang, and Jiayu Dai

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 016301 (2026) - Published 5 January, 2026

Common Sublattice-Pure Van Hove Singularities in the Kagome Superconductors $A V_{3} {Sb}_{5}$ ( $A = K$ , Rb, Cs)

Yujie Lan, Yuhao Lei, Congcong Le, Brenden R. Ortiz, Nicholas C. Plumb, Milan Radovic, Xianxin Wu, Ming Shi, Stephen D. Wilson, and Yong Hu

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 016401 (2026) - Published 2 January, 2026

Quantum Chemistry for Solids Made Simple on the Clifford Torus

Amer Alrakik, Gian Luigi Bendazzoli, Stefano Evangelisti, and J. Arjan Berger

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 016402 (2026) - Published 2 January, 2026

Physical Spin Torques from Exactly Constrained Exchange-Correlation Torques

Jacques K. Desmarais, Kamel Bencheikh, Giovanni Vignale, and Stefano Pittalis

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 016403 (2026) - Published 7 January, 2026

Stripe-Nematic Phase of Composite Fermions

Chengyu Wang, S. K. Singh, C. T. Tai, A. Gupta, L. N. Pfeiffer, K. W. Baldwin, and M. Shayegan

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 016501 (2026) - Published 2 January, 2026

Orbital Inverse Faraday and Cotton-Mouton Effects in Hall Fluids

Gabriel Cardoso, Erlend Syljuåsen, and Alexander V. Balatsky

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 016502 (2026) - Published 2 January, 2026

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Large Spontaneous Nonreciprocal Charge Transport in a Zero-Magnetization Antiferromagnet

Kenta Sudo, Yuki Yanagi, Mitsuru Akaki, Hiroshi Tanida, and Motoi Kimata

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 016503 (2026) - Published 5 January, 2026

An antiferromagnet with a zigzag magnetic structure exhibits a diode effect that has potential applications in spintronics.

Spatial Correlations of Charge Density Wave Order across the Transition in $2 H − {NbSe}_{2}$

Seokjo Hong, Jaewhan Oh, Jemin Park, Woohyun Cho, Soyoung Lee, Colin Ophus, Yeongkwan Kim, Heejun Yang, SungBin Lee, and Yongsoo Yang

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 016504 (2026) - Published 6 January, 2026

Half-Quantized Chiral Edge Current in a $C = 1 / 2$ Parity Anomaly State

Deyi Zhuo, Bomin Zhang, Humian Zhou, Han Tay, Xiaoda Liu, Zhiyuan Xi, Chui-Zhen Chen, and Cui-Zu Chang

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 016601 (2026) - Published 2 January, 2026

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Tracking the Photoinduced Dynamics of a Dark Excitonic State in Single-Layer ${WS}_{2}$ via Resonant Autler-Townes Splitting

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 016902 (2026) - Published 6 January, 2026

Real-Time Out-of-Equilibrium Quantum Dynamics in Disordered Materials

Luis M. Canonico, Stephan Roche, and Aron W. Cummings

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 016903 (2026) - Published 8 January, 2026

Statistical Physics; Classical, Nonlinear, and Complex Systems

Nonclassical Nucleation Pathways in Liquid Condensation Revealed by Simulation and Theory

Yijian Wu, Thomas Philippe, Aymane Graini, and Julien Lam

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 017101 (2026) - Published 5 January, 2026

Tunneling of Elastic Waves in a Tapered Waveguide

Alexandre Yoshitaka Charau, Jérôme Laurent, and Tony Valier-Brasier

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 017202 (2026) - Published 9 January, 2026

Polymers, Chemical Physics, Soft Matter, and Biological Physics

Polymorphic Self-Poisoning in Poly(Lactic Acid): A New Phenomenon in Polymer Crystallization

Shu-Gui Yang, Xiang-bing Zeng, Feng Liu, and Goran Ungar

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 018101 (2026) - Published 6 January, 2026