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Physical Review Letters
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On the Cover
Typical snapshot from molecular dynamics simulations of the formation of a one-micron-long S-shaped carbon nanotube structure (serpentine) on a stepped graphite substrate. [L. D. Machado, S. B. Legoas, J. S. Soares, N. Shadmi, A. Jorio, E. Joselevich, and D. S. Galvão, Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 105502 (2013) ] Read Article | More Covers
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Introducing Mobile Subscriptions for APS Journals March 12, 2013 Readers can now conveniently access APS journals from home, on mobile devices, or while traveling by linking their institution’s subscriptions to their personal APS Journal Account. To link the subscriptions, simply click on the new Go Mobile! button that appears on article pages when accessing the journals from your institution.
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Physics: Dissipative Stopwatches March 11, 2013
Contact with the environment usually destroys the delicate operations of a quantum computer, but engineered dissipative processes may allow for a more robust preparation and processing of quantum states. [Viewpoint on Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 110501 (2013)] Read Article | More viewpoints |
An Invitation from Physics March 11, 2013 Headed to the 2013 APS March meeting in Baltimore? Join us Wednesday March 20th for beer, pizza, and what is certain to be an excellent talk by Nobel laureate Bill Phillips. Read More | More News/Announcements
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Physics: The Beat that Tells of Spin-Ice Monopoles March 11, 2013
The excitation spectrum of artificial spin ices can be used to identify defects that behave as magnetic monopoles. [Synopsis on Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 117205 (2013)] Read Article | More Synopses |
Physics: Lubricant for Liquids March 8, 2013
Tiny “ball bearings” could drastically reduce the friction between two liquids sliding past one another. [Focus on Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 104504 (2013)] Read Article | More Focus |
APS seeks new leading Editor of Physical Review Letters February 13, 2013 The American Physical Society is conducting an international search for the leading Editor of Physical Review Letters (PRL).
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APS Announces 142 New Outstanding Referees for 2013 February 6, 2013 The editors of the APS journals have selected 142 new Outstanding Referees for 2013, out of more than 60,000 currently active referees. Initiated in 2008, the highly selective Outstanding Referee program recognizes scientists who have been exceptionally helpful in assessing manuscripts for publication in the APS journals. Selections are based on two decades of records on the number, quality, and timeliness of referee reports. The 2013 honorees come from 27 different countries, with large contingents from the US, Germany, UK, Canada, and France. The decisions were difficult and there are many excellent referees who have yet to be recognized. By means of the program, APS expresses appreciation to all referees, whose efforts in peer review not only keep the standards of the journals at a high level, but in many cases also help authors to improve the quality and readability of their articles—even those that are not published by APS. For more information and a listing of all Outstanding Referees, please visit publish.aps.org/OutstandingReferees. More News/Announcements
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APS Partners with ORCID For Launch October 16, 2012 Today ORCID opened its registry allowing researchers in all fields and from around the world to distinguish themselves by registering for their own unique identifier. APS has been a long-time supporter of ORCID and, as one of the official Launch Partners, we have updated our author profile application so that authors may register their ORCID within our database of authors and referees. Widespread adoption of ORCID identifiers will improve the scholarly record and help researchers receive proper credit for all of their contributions. To get started, simply visit the APS Author Profile application. More News/Announcements
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2012 Nobel Prize in Physics: Quantum Mechanics of Photons and Atoms October 9, 2012 The APS congratulates Serge Haroche and David WIneland for their 2012 Nobel Prize in Physics. They and their collaborators have made significant advances in the realization of quantum phenomena with many beautiful experiments. Their ability to manipulate atoms and photons to demonstrate fundamental aspects of quantum physics has been documented in many journal articles. We are very pleased that much of this seminal work has been published in the APS journals Physical Review Letters, Physical Review A, and Reviews of Modern Physics. To honor these laureates and their collaborators, we have made freely available five of their many APS publications that demonstrate some of the key insights of their pioneering work. Read More | More News/Announcements
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Ponytails and coffee spills lead to a pair of 2012 Ig Nobel Awards September 25, 2012 Congratulations to the winners of the 2012 Ig Nobel Prizes in Physics and Fluid Dynamics. Raymond E. Goldstein, Patrick B. Warren, and Robin C. Ball received a share of the Physics prize for their work on the shape and motion of human hair when bundled in a ponytail, Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 078101 (2012). For additional information, see Ponytail Physics for a brief synopsis published in Physics. Rebecca Thompson, APS's Head of Public Outreach, wrote on the Physics Central blog about her attempt to duplicate the ponytail research. H.C. Mayer and R. Krechetnikov took home the Fluid Dynamics prize for their study on the dynamics of sloshing coffee, Phys. Rev. E 85, 046117 (2012), which was highlighted in Physics, Science of Slosh, back in April 2012. We also note that our very own prognosticator, Brian Jacobsmeyer, predicted both winners back in July (physicsbuzz.physicscentral.com/2012/07/who-will-win-ig-nobel-prize.html).
Listen to this Physics Central podcast for more highlights and in-depth interviews with the winners. More News/Announcements
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New Saved Search Feature for APS Journals July 12, 2012 The American Physical Society is pleased to announce the availability of a new "Saved Search" feature on our journal platform. With Saved Searches, you can receive daily updates based on any search criteria available in our search engine. Use them to track specific keywords, the publications of your colleagues at your institution, new publications that cite your work (if your name is unique enough), and much more. You may choose to receive your updates via email or RSS feeds. To save a search, first log in using your APS Journal account, do a search, and then simply save it on the search results page. More News/Announcements
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To promote reading across fields, the editors of Physical Review Letters offer "Suggestions" each week of papers that they hope will lead readers to explore other areas of physics. Please see our Announcement PRL 98, 010001 (2007).
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Rhombic Preordering on a Square Substrate
T. Neuhaus, M. Marechal, M. Schmiedeberg, and H. Löwen
A competition of incommensurate symmetries occurs whenever a system is forced to conform to an ordering that is different from the intrinsically preferred structure of the system itself. As a model system of such a competition, we study the rivalry between the triangular ordering of hard disks and t... [Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 118301 (2013)] Published Tue Mar 12, 2013
Evidence for Dimer Crystal Melting in the Frustrated Spin-Ladder System BiCu2PO6
K.-Y. Choi, J. W. Hwang, P. Lemmens, D. Wulferding, G. J. Shu, and F. C. Chou
In the spin ladder compound BiCu2PO6, there exists a decisive dynamics of spin excitations that we classify and characterize using inelastic light scattering. We observe an interladder singlet bound mode at 24 cm-1 and two intraladder bound states at 62 and 108 cm-1 in the leg (bb) and the rung (c... [Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 117204 (2013)] Published Tue Mar 12, 2013
Experimental Evidence for s-Wave Pairing Symmetry in Superconducting CuxBi2Se3 Single Crystals Using a Scanning Tunneling Microscope
Niv Levy, Tong Zhang, Jeonghoon Ha, Fred Sharifi, A. Alec Talin, Young Kuk, and Joseph A. Stroscio
Topological superconductors represent a newly predicted phase of matter that is topologically distinct from conventional superconducting condensates of Cooper pairs. As a manifestation of their topological character, topological superconductors support solid-state realizations of Majorana fermions a... [Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 117001 (2013)] Published Tue Mar 12, 2013
Unconventional Superfluid in a Two-Dimensional Fermi gas with Anisotropic Spin-Orbit Coupling and Zeeman fields
Fan Wu, Guang-Can Guo, Wei Zhang, and Wei Yi
We study the phase diagram of a two-dimensional ultracold Fermi gas with the synthetic spin-orbit coupling (SOC) that has recently been realized at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Because of the coexistence of anisotropic SOC and effective Zeeman fields in the NIST scheme,... [Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 110401 (2013)] Published Tue Mar 12, 2013
Multilayered Plasmonic Covers for Comblike Scattering Response and Optical Tagging
Francesco Monticone, Christos Argyropoulos, and Andrea Alù
We discuss the potential of multilayered plasmonic particles to tailor the optical scattering response. The interplay of plasmons localized in thin stacked shells realizes peculiar degenerate cloaking and resonant states occurring at arbitrarily close frequencies. These concepts are applied to reali... [Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 113901 (2013)] Published Tue Mar 12, 2013
Topological and Dynamical Complexity of Random Neural Networks
Gilles Wainrib and Jonathan Touboul
Random neural networks are dynamical descriptions of randomly interconnected neural units. These show a phase transition to chaos as a disorder parameter is increased. The microscopic mechanisms underlying this phase transition are unknown and, similar to spin glasses, shall be fundamentally related... [Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 118101 (2013)] Published Mon Mar 11, 2013
Precisely Timing Dissipative Quantum Information Processing
M. J. Kastoryano, M. M. Wolf, and J. Eisert
Dissipative engineering constitutes a framework within which quantum information processing protocols are powered by system-environment interaction rather than by unitary dynamics alone. This framework embraces noise as a resource and, consequently, offers a number of advantages compared to one base... [Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 110501 (2013)] Published Mon Mar 11, 2013
Spectral Analysis of Topological Defects in an Artificial Spin-Ice Lattice
Sebastian Gliga, Attila Kákay, Riccardo Hertel, and Olle G. Heinonen
Arrays of suitably patterned and arranged magnetic elements may display artificial spin-ice structures with topological defects in the magnetization, such as Dirac monopoles and Dirac strings. It is known that these defects strongly influence the quasistatic and equilibrium behavior of the spin-ice ... [Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 117205 (2013)] Published Mon Mar 11, 2013
Giant Slip at Liquid-Liquid Interfaces Using Hydrophobic Ball Bearings
Quentin Ehlinger, Laurent Joly, and Olivier Pierre-Louis
Liquid-gas-liquid interfaces stabilized by hydrophobic beads behave as ball bearings under shear and exhibit a giant slip. Using a scaling analysis and molecular dynamics simulations we predict that, when the contact angle θ between the beads and the liquid is large, the slip length diverges as Rρ-1... [Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 104504 (2013)] Published Fri Mar 8, 2013
Electric Spaser in the Extreme Quantum Limit
Dabing Li and Mark I. Stockman
We consider theoretically the spaser that is excited electrically via a nanowire with ballistic quantum conductance. We show that, in the extreme quantum regime, i.e., for a single conductance-quantum nanowire, the spaser with a core made of common plasmonic metals, such as silver and gold, is funda... [Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 106803 (2013)] Published Thu Mar 7, 2013
Ultrarelativistic Black Hole Formation
William E. East and Frans Pretorius
We study the head-on collision of fluid particles well within the kinetic energy dominated regime (γ=8 to 12) by numerically solving the Einstein-hydrodynamic equations. We find that the threshold for black hole formation is lower (by a factor of a few) than simple hoop conjecture estimates, and, mo... [Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 101101 (2013)] Published Thu Mar 7, 2013
Majorana Qubit Rotations in Microwave Cavities
Thomas L. Schmidt, Andreas Nunnenkamp, and Christoph Bruder
Majorana bound states have been proposed as building blocks for qubits on which certain operations can be performed in a topologically protected way using braiding. However, the set of these protected operations is not sufficient to realize universal quantum computing. We show that the electric fiel... [Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 107006 (2013)] Published Wed Mar 6, 2013
Exact Scale-Invariant Background of Gravitational Waves from Cosmic Defects
Daniel G. Figueroa, Mark Hindmarsh, and Jon Urrestilla
We demonstrate that any scaling source in the radiation era produces a background of gravitational waves with an exact scale-invariant power spectrum. Cosmic defects, created after a phase transition in the early universe, are such a scaling source. We emphasize that the result is independent of the... [Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 101302 (2013)] Published Wed Mar 6, 2013
Photothermal Single Particle Rutherford Scattering Microscopy
Markus Selmke and Frank Cichos
We demonstrate that the quantum-mechanical description of Rutherford scattering has a photonic counterpart in a new form of single particle photothermal microscopy. Using a split detector we provide experimental evidence that photons are deflected by a photothermal potential that is created by a loc... [Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 103901 (2013)] Published Wed Mar 6, 2013
Effect of Nanoconfinement on Polymer Dynamics: Surface Layers and Interphases
M. Krutyeva, A. Wischnewski, M. Monkenbusch, L. Willner, J. Maiz, C. Mijangos, A. Arbe, J. Colmenero, A. Radulescu, O. Holderer, M. Ohl, and D. Richter
We present neutron spin echo experiments that address the much debated topic of dynamic phenomena in polymer melts that are induced by interacting with a confining surface. We find an anchored surface layer that internally is highly mobile and not glassy as heavily promoted in the literature. The po... [Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 108303 (2013)] Published Tue Mar 5, 2013
Lift and Down-Gradient Shear-Induced Diffusion in Red Blood Cell Suspensions
Xavier Grandchamp, Gwennou Coupier, Aparna Srivastav, Christophe Minetti, and Thomas Podgorski
The distribution of red blood cells (RBCs) in a confined channel flow is inhomogeneous and shows a marked depletion near the walls due to a competition between migration away from the walls and shear-induced diffusion resulting from interactions between particles. We investigated the lift of RBCs in... [Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 108101 (2013)] Published Tue Mar 5, 2013
Observation of D0-D̅ 0 Oscillations
R. Aaij et al. (LHCb Collaboration)
We report a measurement of the time-dependent ratio of D0→K+π- to D0→K-π+ decay rates in D*+-tagged events using 1.0 fb-1 of integrated luminosity recorded by the LHCb experiment. We measure the mixing parameters x′2=(-0.9±1.3)×10-4, y′=(7.2±2.4)×10-3, and the ratio of doubly-Cabibbo-suppressed to ... [Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 101802 (2013)] Published Tue Mar 5, 2013
Storage and Control of Optical Photons Using Rydberg Polaritons
D. Maxwell, D. J. Szwer, D. Paredes-Barato, H. Busche, J. D. Pritchard, A. Gauguet, K. J. Weatherill, M. P. A. Jones, and C. S. Adams
We use a microwave field to control the quantum state of optical photons stored in a cold atomic cloud. The photons are stored in highly excited collective states (Rydberg polaritons) enabling both fast qubit rotations and control of photon-photon interactions. Through the collective read-out of the... [Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 103001 (2013)] Published Mon Mar 4, 2013
Catch and Release of Microwave Photon States
Yi Yin, Yu Chen, Daniel Sank, P. J. J. O’Malley, T. C. White, R. Barends, J. Kelly, Erik Lucero, Matteo Mariantoni, A. Megrant, C. Neill, A. Vainsencher, J. Wenner, Alexander N. Korotkov, A. N. Cleland, and John M. Martinis
We demonstrate a superconducting resonator with variable coupling to a measurement transmission line. The resonator coupling can be adjusted through zero to a photon emission rate 1000 times the intrinsic resonator decay rate. We demonstrate the catch and release of photons in the resonator, as well... [Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 107001 (2013)] Published Mon Mar 4, 2013
Sensitive Test for Ion-Cyclotron Resonant Heating in the Solar Wind
Justin C. Kasper, Bennett A. Maruca, Michael L. Stevens, and Arnaud Zaslavsky
Plasma carrying a spectrum of counterpropagating field-aligned ion-cyclotron waves can strongly and preferentially heat ions through a stochastic Fermi mechanism. Such a process has been proposed to explain the extreme temperatures, temperature anisotropies, and speeds of ions in the solar corona an... [Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 091102 (2013)] Published Thu Feb 28, 2013
Enhancement of Second-Harmonic Generation from Metal Nanoparticles by Passive Elements
Robert Czaplicki, Hannu Husu, Roope Siikanen, Jouni Mäkitalo, Martti Kauranen, Janne Laukkanen, Joonas Lehtolahti, and Markku Kuittinen
We prepare arrays of gold nanoparticles that include both noncentrosymmetric particles with a second-order nonlinear optical response (active particles) and centrosymmetric particles with no second-order response (passive particles). The plasmon resonances of the active and passive particles are at ... [Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 093902 (2013)] Published Thu Feb 28, 2013
Molecular Dynamics Simulations of Polymer Welding: Strength from Interfacial Entanglements
Ting Ge, Flint Pierce, Dvora Perahia, Gary S. Grest, and Mark O. Robbins
Large-scale simulations of thermal welding of polymers are performed to investigate the rise of mechanical strength at the polymer-polymer interface with the welding time tw. The welding process is at the core of integrating polymeric elements into devices as well as in the thermal induced healing o... [Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 098301 (2013)] Published Thu Feb 28, 2013
Simulating Quantum Fields with Cavity QED
Sean Barrett, Klemens Hammerer, Sarah Harrison, Tracy E. Northup, and Tobias J. Osborne
As the realization of a fully operational quantum computer remains distant, quantum simulation, whereby one quantum system is
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