Volume 136, Issue 7

20 February 2026

Browse Issues:

On the Cover

Visualization of flow field using fluorescent dye after electromagnetic forcing of a shallow layer of NaCl aqueous solution.

From the article:

Anomalous Transport of Elongated Particles in Oscillatory Vortical Flows
Shiyuan Hu, Xiuyuan Yang, Nan Luo, Jun Zhang, and Xingkun Man
Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 074001 (2026)

HIGHLIGHTED ARTICLES

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Entanglement-Enhanced Optical Ion Clock

Kai Dietze, Lennart Pelzer, Ludwig Krinner, Fabian Dawel, Johannes Kramer, Nicolas C. H. Spethmann, Timm Kielinski, Klemens Hammerer, Kilian Stahl, Joshua Klose, Sören Dörscher, Christian Lisdat, Erik Benkler, and Piet O. Schmidt

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 073601 (2026) - Published 17 February, 2026

An optical clock based on a pair of calcium ions achieves a given precision more quickly when the ions are entangled.

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Light-Dependent Switching of Circling Handedness in Microswimmer Navigation

Zhao Wang, Samuel A. Bentley, Jiawei Li, Kirsty Y. Wan, and Alan C. H. Tsang

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 078301 (2026) - Published 20 February, 2026

In response to changes in illumination, a swimming microorganism reverses the direction of its circular trajectory by tilting its flagella’s planes of motion.

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Flexible Readout and Unconditional Reset for Superconducting Multiqubit Processors with Tunable Purcell Filters

Yong-Xi Xiao, Da’er Feng, Xu-Yang Gu, Gui-Han Liang, Ming-Chuan Wang, Zhen-Yu Peng, Bing-Jie Chen, Yu Yan, Zheng-Yang Mei, Si-Lu Zhao, Yi-Zhou Bu, Cheng-Lin Deng, Kai Yang, Ye Tian, Xiaohui Song, Dongning Zheng, Yu-Xiang Zhang, Yun-Hao Shi, Zhongcheng Xiang, Kai Xu, and Heng Fan

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 070601 (2026) - Published 17 February, 2026

A high fidelity qubit-readout scheme based on Purcell filters allows fast qubit reset in superconducting multiqubit processors.

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Relativistic and Dynamical Love Numbers

Abhishek Hegade K. R., K. J. Kwon, Tejaswi Venumadhav, Hang Yu, and Nicolas Yunes

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 071401 (2026) - Published 18 February, 2026

A model expansion formalism extended to full general relativity describes the dynamical tidal response of an inspiraling neutron star given in terms of its modes of oscillation.

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

New Upper Bounds on Exotic Neutron-Spin–Electron-Spin Interactions via Neutron-Spin-Rotation Measurements in a Compensated Ferrimagnet

T. Mulkey, K. N. Lopez, C. D. Hughes, B. Hill, M. Van Meter, H. Wijeratne, J. C. Long, M. Sarsour, W. M. Snow, K. Li, R. Parajuli, S. Samiei, D. V. Baxter, M. Luxnat, Y. Zhang, C. Jiang, E. Stringfellow, J. Torres, and R. Hobbs

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 071801 (2026) - Published 18 February, 2026

Slow neutrons are used to place new constraints on electron-neutron spin-spin interactions from a hypothetical boson over more than five orders of magnitude in mass.

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Polarized Single-Photon Emission from an Anisotropic Dirac Cavity

Xin-Rui Mao, Bang Wu, Wei-Jie Ji, Shao-Lei Wang, Wang-Zhe Li, Han-Qing Liu, Haiqiao Ni, Zhichuan Niu, and Zhiliang Yuan

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 073603 (2026) - Published 18 February, 2026

A novel single-photon source made of a quantum dot embedded in a Dirac cavity provides outstanding performance metrics.

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Fast Turbulence Phase Transition in a Flux-Driven Global Edge-SOL Simulation of a Tokamak Plasma

Wladimir Zholobenko, Frank Jenko, Kaiyu Zhang, Philipp Ulbl, Konrad Eder, Andreas Stegmeir, Clemente Angioni, and Peter Manz

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 075101 (2026) - Published 19 February, 2026

A global, confinement-time-long, flux-driven turbulence simulation of the tokamak plasma edge region subject to a power ramp reproduces an abrupt turbulence transition.

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Observation of Robust Macroscale Structural Superlubricity

Minhao Han, Deli Peng, Dinglin Yang, Jin Wang, Yi Zheng, Guofeng Hu, Yifan Shao, Jiaying Li, Feng Ding, Zhiping Xu, Michael Urbakh, and Quanshui Zheng

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 076201 (2026) - Published 17 February, 2026

Robust macroscale structural superlubricity is demonstrated within a single submillimeter graphite contact.

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Quintuplet Condensation in the Skyrmionic Insulator ${Cu}_{2} {OSeO}_{3}$ at Ultrahigh Magnetic Fields

T. Nomura, I. Rousochatzakis, O. Janson, M. Gen, X.-G. Zhou, Y. Ishii, S. Seki, Y. Kohama, and Y. H. Matsuda

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 076703 (2026) - Published 19 February, 2026

Faraday rotation at ultrahigh magnetic fields uncovers magnon Bose–Einstein condensation in a chiral helimagnet

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Extremely High Excitonic $g$ Factors in 2D Crystals by Alloy-Induced Admixing of Band States

Katarzyna Olkowska-Pucko et al.

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 076901 (2026) - Published 17 February, 2026

Semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenide monolayer alloys provide a material platform with remarkable valley-tunable properties that can be manipulated on demand.

LETTERS

Quantum Information, Science, and Technology

Relaxation Control of Open Quantum Systems

Nicolò Beato and Gianluca Teza

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 070401 (2026) - Published 18 February, 2026

Initial-State Typicality in Quantum Relaxation

Ruicheng Bao

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 070402 (2026) - Published 18 February, 2026

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Flexible Readout and Unconditional Reset for Superconducting Multiqubit Processors with Tunable Purcell Filters

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 070601 (2026) - Published 17 February, 2026

A high fidelity qubit-readout scheme based on Purcell filters allows fast qubit reset in superconducting multiqubit processors.

Multiphoton Quantum Simulation of the Generalized Hopfield Memory Model

Gennaro Zanfardino, Stefano Paesani, Luca Leuzzi, Raffaele Santagati, Fabio Sciarrino, Fabrizio Illuminati, Giancarlo Ruocco, and Marco Leonetti

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 070602 (2026) - Published 18 February, 2026

Efficient Near-Optimal Decoding of the Surface Code through Ensembling

Noah Shutty, Michael Newman, and Benjamin Villalonga

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 070603 (2026) - Published 19 February, 2026

Energy Spectra of Compressed Quantum States

Daochen Wang

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 070604 (2026) - Published 20 February, 2026

Optimal Quantum Metrology under Energy Constraints

Longyun Chen and Yuxiang Yang

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 070801 (2026) - Published 18 February, 2026

Quantum Cramér-Rao Precision Limit of Noisy Continuous Sensing

Dayou Yang, Moulik Ketkar, Koenraad Audenaert, Susana F. Huelga, and Martin B. Plenio

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 070802 (2026) - Published 18 February, 2026

Perfect Wave Transfer in Continuous Quantum Systems

Per Moosavi, Matthias Christandl, Gian Michele Graf, and Spyros Sotiriadis

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 070803 (2026) - Published 20 February, 2026

Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Gravitation

New Constraints on Dark Photon Dark Matter with a Millimeter-Wave Dielectric Haloscope

Guoqing Wei, Diguang Wu, Runqi Kang, Qingning Jiang, Man Jiao, Xing Rong, and Jiangfeng Du

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 071001 (2026) - Published 19 February, 2026

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Relativistic and Dynamical Love Numbers

Abhishek Hegade K. R., K. J. Kwon, Tejaswi Venumadhav, Hang Yu, and Nicolas Yunes

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 071401 (2026) - Published 18 February, 2026

A model expansion formalism extended to full general relativity describes the dynamical tidal response of an inspiraling neutron star given in terms of its modes of oscillation.

Stochastic Inflation as an Open Quantum System

Yue-Zhou Li

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 071501 (2026) - Published 18 February, 2026

Particles and Fields

Kerr Black Hole Dynamics from an Extended Polyakov Action

N. Emil J. Bjerrum-Bohr, Gang Chen, Chenliang Su, and Tianheng Wang

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 071601 (2026) - Published 19 February, 2026

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

New Upper Bounds on Exotic Neutron-Spin–Electron-Spin Interactions via Neutron-Spin-Rotation Measurements in a Compensated Ferrimagnet

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 071801 (2026) - Published 18 February, 2026

Slow neutrons are used to place new constraints on electron-neutron spin-spin interactions from a hypothetical boson over more than five orders of magnitude in mass.

DeepQuark: A Deep-Neural-Network Approach to Multiquark Bound States

Wei-Lin Wu, Lu Meng, and Shi-Lin Zhu

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 071901 (2026) - Published 18 February, 2026

Nuclear Physics

First Observation of Multiphonon $γ$ -Vibrations in an Odd-Odd Nuclear System

E. H. Wang et al.

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 072501 (2026) - Published 18 February, 2026

Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics

Nondipole Effects on Electron Correlation Dynamics of Xe Atoms in Circularly Polarized Laser Fields

Yankun Dou, Peizeng Li, Xiaoxiao Long, Peipei Ge, Yongkai Deng, Chengyin Wu, Qihuang Gong, and Yunquan Liu

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 073201 (2026) - Published 19 February, 2026

Atomic Regional Superfluids in Two-Dimensional Moiré Time Crystals

Weijie Liang, Weiping Zhang, and Keye Zhang

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 073401 (2026) - Published 18 February, 2026

Direct Loading of BaF Molecules with a Conveyor-Belt Magneto-optical Trap

Zixuan Zeng, Shoukang Yang, Shuhua Deng, and Bo Yan

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 073402 (2026) - Published 19 February, 2026

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Entanglement-Enhanced Optical Ion Clock

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 073601 (2026) - Published 17 February, 2026

An optical clock based on a pair of calcium ions achieves a given precision more quickly when the ions are entangled.

Frustrated Rydberg Atom Arrays Meet Cavity QED: Emergence of the Superradiant Clock Phase

Ying Liang, Bao-Yun Dong, Zijian Xiong, and Xue-Feng Zhang

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 073602 (2026) - Published 18 February, 2026

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Polarized Single-Photon Emission from an Anisotropic Dirac Cavity

Xin-Rui Mao, Bang Wu, Wei-Jie Ji, Shao-Lei Wang, Wang-Zhe Li, Han-Qing Liu, Haiqiao Ni, Zhichuan Niu, and Zhiliang Yuan

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 073603 (2026) - Published 18 February, 2026

A novel single-photon source made of a quantum dot embedded in a Dirac cavity provides outstanding performance metrics.

Gyroscopically Stabilized Quantum Spin Rotors

Vanessa Wachter, Silvia Viola Kusminskiy, Gabriel Hétet, and Benjamin A. Stickler

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 073604 (2026) - Published 18 February, 2026

Intrinsic Meron Spin Textures in Generic Focused Fields

Di Liu, Han Liu, and Zheng Xi

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 073801 (2026) - Published 20 February, 2026

Physics of Fluids, Earth & Planetary Science, and Climate

Anomalous Transport of Elongated Particles in Oscillatory Vortical Flows

Shiyuan Hu, Xiuyuan Yang, Nan Luo, Jun Zhang, and Xingkun Man

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 074001 (2026) - Published 18 February, 2026

Plasma and Solar Physics, Accelerators and Beams

Field-Emission-Induced Terahertz Plasma Waves and Instabilities in Microdischarges

Jiandong Chen, Chubin Lin, Peng Zhang, John P. Verboncoeur, Lay Kee Ang, and Yangyang Fu

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 075001 (2026) - Published 18 February, 2026

Demonstration of a Novel Phase-Space Painting Method in a Coupled Lattice to Mitigate Space Charge in High-Intensity Hadron Beams

Nicholas J. Evans, Austin Hoover, Timofey Gorlov, and Vasiliy Morozov

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 075002 (2026) - Published 20 February, 2026

Transit-Time Oscillations in Nanoscale Vacuum Diode with a Pure Resistive Load

Bjartthór Steinn Alexandersson, Kristinn Torfason, Andrei Manolescu, and Ágúst Valfells

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 075003 (2026) - Published 20 February, 2026

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Fast Turbulence Phase Transition in a Flux-Driven Global Edge-SOL Simulation of a Tokamak Plasma

Wladimir Zholobenko, Frank Jenko, Kaiyu Zhang, Philipp Ulbl, Konrad Eder, Andreas Stegmeir, Clemente Angioni, and Peter Manz

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 075101 (2026) - Published 19 February, 2026

A global, confinement-time-long, flux-driven turbulence simulation of the tokamak plasma edge region subject to a power ramp reproduces an abrupt turbulence transition.

Understanding Large-Scale Dynamos in Unstratified Rotating Shear Flows

Tushar Mondal, Pallavi Bhat, Fatima Ebrahimi, and Eric G. Blackman

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 075201 (2026) - Published 18 February, 2026

Condensed Matter and Materials

Coexisting Electronic Smectic Liquid Crystal and Superconductivity in a Si Square-Net Semimetal

Christopher J. Butler, Toshiya Ikenobe, Ming-Chun Jiang, Daigorou Hirai, Takahiro Yamada, Guang-Yu Guo, Ryotaro Arita, Tetsuo Hanaguri, and Zenji Hiroi

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 076001 (2026) - Published 18 February, 2026

Questioning the Cuprate Paradigm: Absence of Superfluid Density Loss in Several Overdoped Cuprates I

J. L. Tallon, J. G. Storey, J. W. Loram, Jianlin Luo, C. Bernhard, I. Kokanović, and J. R. Cooper

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 076002 (2026) - Published 19 February, 2026

(Ir)Relevance of Disorder for Superconductivity in Cuprates

R. Caruso, X. He, A. T. Bollinger, and I. Božović

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 076003 (2026) - Published 20 February, 2026

Nanoscale Observation and Control of Quasiparticle Induced Magnetic Noise in a Superconducting Resonator

Senlei Li, Shane P. Kelly, Jingcheng Zhou, Hanyi Lu, Yaroslav Tserkovnyak, Hailong Wang, and Chunhui Rita Du

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 076004 (2026) - Published 20 February, 2026

At Extreme Strain Rates, Pure Metals Thermally Harden while Alloys Thermally Soften

Ian Dowding and Christopher A. Schuh

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 076101 (2026) - Published 17 February, 2026

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Observation of Robust Macroscale Structural Superlubricity

Minhao Han, Deli Peng, Dinglin Yang, Jin Wang, Yi Zheng, Guofeng Hu, Yifan Shao, Jiaying Li, Feng Ding, Zhiping Xu, Michael Urbakh, and Quanshui Zheng

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 076201 (2026) - Published 17 February, 2026

Robust macroscale structural superlubricity is demonstrated within a single submillimeter graphite contact.

Nonmonotonic Roughness Evolution in Film Growth on Weakly Interacting Substrates

Dmitry Lapkin, Ismael S. S. Carrasco, Catherine Cruz Luukkonen, Oleg Konovalov, Alexander Hinderhofer, Frank Schreiber, Fábio D. A. Aarão Reis, and Martin Oettel

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 076202 (2026) - Published 18 February, 2026

Interplay of Cohesive, Griffith, and Geometric Scales in the Nucleation of Friction

Songlin Shi and Jay Fineberg

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 076203 (2026) - Published 20 February, 2026

Quantum Statistics and Self-Interference in Extended Colliders

Sai Satyam Samal, Smitha Vishveshwara, Yuval Gefen, and Jukka I. Väyrynen

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 076301 (2026) - Published 18 February, 2026

Interfacial Spin-Orbit Coupling Induced Room Temperature Ferromagnetic Insulator

Yuhao Hong, Shilin Hu, Ziyue Shen, Chao Deng, Xiaodong Zhang, Lei Wang, Long Wei, Qinghua Zhang, Lingfei Wang, Liang Si, Yulin Gan, Kai Chen, and Zhaoliang Liao

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 076302 (2026) - Published 18 February, 2026

Oxygen Isotope Fingerprints of Electron-Phonon Coupling in ${SrVO}_{3}$ Films

Gyanendra Singh, Xiaochun Huang, Mathieu Mirjolet, Salvador Pané, Thomas Lippert, Christof W. Schneider, and Josep Fontcuberta

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 076501 (2026) - Published 18 February, 2026

Vacancy Induced Expansion of Spin-Liquid Regime in the $J_{1} − J_{2}$ Heisenberg Model

Soumyaranjan Dash, Anish Koley, and Sanjeev Kumar

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 076502 (2026) - Published 18 February, 2026

Bootstrapping Flatband Superconductors: Rigorous Lower Bounds on Superfluid Stiffness

Qiang Gao, Zhaoyu Han, and Eslam Khalaf

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 076503 (2026) - Published 18 February, 2026

Deep Variational Free Energy Calculation of Hydrogen Hugoniot

Zihang Li, Hao Xie, Xinyang Dong, and Lei Wang

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 076504 (2026) - Published 20 February, 2026

Conformal Operator Flows of the Deconfined Quantum Criticality from $SO (5)$ to $O (4)$

Shuai Yang, Liang-dong Hu, Chao Han, W. Zhu, and Yan Chen

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 076505 (2026) - Published 20 February, 2026

Critical Majorana Fermion at a Topological Quantum Hall Bilayer Transition

Cristian Voinea, Wei Zhu, Nicolas Regnault, and Zlatko Papić

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 076601 (2026) - Published 20 February, 2026

Pseudocriticality in Antiferromagnetic Spin Chains

Sankalp Kumar, Sumiran Pujari, and Jonathan D’Emidio

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 076701 (2026) - Published 18 February, 2026

Violation of Local Reciprocity in Charge-Orbital Interconversion

Hisanobu Kashiki, Hiroki Hayashi, Dongwook Go, Yuriy Mokrousov, and Kazuya Ando

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 076702 (2026) - Published 18 February, 2026

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Quintuplet Condensation in the Skyrmionic Insulator ${Cu}_{2} {OSeO}_{3}$ at Ultrahigh Magnetic Fields

T. Nomura, I. Rousochatzakis, O. Janson, M. Gen, X.-G. Zhou, Y. Ishii, S. Seki, Y. Kohama, and Y. H. Matsuda

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 076703 (2026) - Published 19 February, 2026

Faraday rotation at ultrahigh magnetic fields uncovers magnon Bose–Einstein condensation in a chiral helimagnet

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Extremely High Excitonic $g$ Factors in 2D Crystals by Alloy-Induced Admixing of Band States

Katarzyna Olkowska-Pucko et al.

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 076901 (2026) - Published 17 February, 2026

Semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenide monolayer alloys provide a material platform with remarkable valley-tunable properties that can be manipulated on demand.

Instantaneous Optical Selection Rule for Independent Control of Valley Currents

Wanzhu He, Xiaosong Zhu, Liang Li, Di Wu, Xiaotong Zhu, Pengfei Lan, and Peixiang Lu

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 076902 (2026) - Published 19 February, 2026

Theory of Stimulated and Spontaneous Axion Scattering

M. Smith, Kartiek Agarwal, and Ivar Martin

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 076903 (2026) - Published 20 February, 2026

Statistical Physics; Classical, Nonlinear, and Complex Systems

Inferring Entropy Production in Many-Body Systems Using Nonequilibrium Maximum Entropy

Miguel Aguilera, Sosuke Ito, and Artemy Kolchinsky

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 077101 (2026) - Published 18 February, 2026

Unsupervised Learning for Anticipating Critical Transitions

Shirin Panahi, Ling-Wei Kong, Bryan Glaz, Mulugeta Haile, and Ying-Cheng Lai

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 077301 (2026) - Published 18 February, 2026

Polymers, Chemical Physics, Soft Matter, and Biological Physics

FEATURED IN PHYSICS

EDITORS' SUGGESTION

Light-Dependent Switching of Circling Handedness in Microswimmer Navigation

Zhao Wang, Samuel A. Bentley, Jiawei Li, Kirsty Y. Wan, and Alan C. H. Tsang

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 078301 (2026) - Published 20 February, 2026

In response to changes in illumination, a swimming microorganism reverses the direction of its circular trajectory by tilting its flagella’s planes of motion.