A new Collection by the Physical Review journals celebrates the 50th anniversary of the discovery of asymptotic freedom in quantum chromodynamics (QCD)—the theoretical basis for the strong force of nature that binds quarks and gluons into hadrons.

The American Physical Society (APS) is pleased to announce that it will begin sponsoring Astrobites, a daily astrophysical literature journal written by graduate students in astronomy. This mutually beneficial collaboration aims to enhance the dissemination of research, educational resources, and career insights in the field of astronomy and astrophysics.

Reversible to irreversible (R-IR) transitions have been found in a wide variety of both soft and hard matter periodically driven collectively interacting systems that, after a certain number of driving cycles, organize into either a reversible state where the particle trajectories repeat during every or every few cycles or into a chaotic motion state. An overview of R-IR transitions including recent advances in the field is followed by a discussion of how the general framework of R-IR transitions could be applied to a much broader class of nonequilibrium systems in which periodic driving occurs, including not only soft and hard condensed matter systems, but also astrophysics, biological systems, and social systems.

Integrated linear optical networks encoded in frequency bins are realized in a dispersion-engineered nonlinear optical waveguide. The network is scalable and will serve as basis for quantum information technologies thanks to high fidelities, free reconfigurability, and full connectivity.

For quantum state preparation, a nonunitary operator that decays unwanted states contained in an initial state is probabilistically realized on a quantum computer. Combining quantum amplitude amplification with multistep probabilistic algorithms is proposed, leading to quadratic speedup and quantum advantages in quantum state preparation.

In semimagic nuclei, a broken pair of nucleons generate a characteristic regular pattern in energy and transition rates for protons and neutrons residing in the same orbital of the open shell. Lifetime measurement in ${}_{45}^{95}$Rh nucleus shows a deviation from this pattern in the $g$${}_{9/2}$ orbital of the open proton shell.

The claim that no quantum work measurement satisfies standard physical principles has raised compatibility concerns between quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, and the classical limit. A revised framework is presented for addressing the classical limit, and it is shown that work defined as a quantum observable aligns quantum work statistics with thermodynamic principles.

Higher-order Casimir-Polder interactions between highly excited Rydberg atoms and macroscopic surfaces are studied, providing calculations of a term that evolves with the inverse fifth power of the atom-surface distance. The effects of this higher-order term in Casimir-Polder thin-cell spectroscopy are also investigated.

Zooplankton reduce their vulnerability to predation by evading high-strain areas. A robust strategy for how such microswimmers can navigate by sensing hydromechanical signals to steer clear of high-strain regions in turbulent environments has been identified.

Understanding collisional thermalization among ultracold molecules is essential to achieving quantum degenerate gases with evaporative cooling. A theoretical technique for efficiently handling thermalization calculations with nonuniversal dipolar scattering is demonstrated, providing a widely applicable tool for exploring optimal evaporation protocols.

At thermal equilibrium, generalized susceptibilities encoding the static physical response of Hermitian many-electron systems are shown to possess inherent non-Hermitian matrix symmetries, leading to the generic occurrence of exceptional points. In strongly correlated electron systems, such exceptional points are found to necessarily promote electronic charge instabilities that occur in the proximity of a Mott transition to a topologically robust phenomenon.

For strongly compressible shock-dominated turbulence, a heuristic theoretical framework, which shows that the statistics of pair dispersion of Lagrangian tracer particles is different from its counterpart for incompressible-fluid turbulence, is developed. The trapping of Lagrangian particles in shocks is responsible for this difference, as is shown by extensive direct numerical simulations of the randomly forced two-dimensional Burgers equation, which models shock-dominated turbulence.

The physics of superfluidity of spin-1 Bose gas shares many similarities with that of multicomponent superconductivity, and it has been suspected that a strongly ferromagnetic Bose gas (such as ${}^7$Li) may realize the elusive high-order symmetry-breaking state proposed in superconductors. It is theoretically shown that the dilute Bose gas doesn’t exhibit such states, but the strong ferromagnetism does drive a joint first-order superfluid transition, contrary to a second-order one in the mean-field prediction.

The complexity of human languages is explored through the lens of fractal geometry and large language models, uncovering a multifractal structure. A universal correlation dimension of approximately 6.5 is identified in literary texts written in four languages, a phenomenon that appears to stem from the presence of long memory in these texts.

Subterahertz transmittance of two-dimensional systems reveals the complexity of optical Shubnikov–de Haas oscillations featuring “universal” nodes at overtones of the cyclotron resonance as well as “tunable” nodes at positions sensitive to all parameters of the structure.

A prototypical two-state gene-expression model is investigated, where the activation process has a fat-tailed (nonexponential) waiting time distribution, resulting in nonstationary dynamics and emerging nonergodicity.

In the helical twisted trilayer graphene with equal twist angles, a hexagonal mosaic pattern spanning the moiré-of-moiré length scale and featuring alternating $\pm$1 Chern numbers in each block is revealed.

How do mitochondria align at almost regular intervals in nerve axons? The mechanism is deciphered as the mitochondria employing the noise depending on the ATP, similar to the thermodynamic force.

The supercurrent noise in the equilibrium state induced by thermal fluctuations of the phase-coherent Andreev bound states in a mesoscopic superconductor-normal ring is directly observed and the fluctuation-dissipation relation in such a system is experimentally confirmed.

Not all quantum chaos scrambles quantum information: While the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model does, typical chaotic spin chains do not.

The first-principles calculation of a quasiparticle band structure on actual quantum computers is demonstrated. This is achieved by hybrid quantum-classical algorithms in conjunction with qubit-reduction and error-mitigation techniques.

The full quantum geometric tensor (QGT) is experimentally obtained for a plasmonic lattice. The quantum metric and the Berry curvature, related to the real and imaginary parts of the QGT, respectively, are found to be nonzero along the diagonals of the Brillouin zone, even for a trivial square lattice. While the quantum metric emerges from the interplay of polarization and the mode structure, the origin of the Berry curvature is purely non-Hermitian due to the system losses.

The phenomenon of epidemic criticality in temporal networks is remarkably complex due to the competition between the network correlation effect (the persistence of links in the network) and the dynamic correlation effect (the tendency of infected nodes to group together).

The onset of athermal jamming is argued to be a critical phenomenon describable by a mean-field theory in physical dimensions. By elucidating the scaling behavior of jammed systems subjected to active forces and thermal fluctuations in the vicinity of the jamming onset, it’s shown that the physics of active jamming remains mean-field-like in contrast with active systems in which anomalous scaling behavior is the norm.

A direct construction for the projected entangled pair states representation of states that admit descriptions in terms of exponentially localized Wannier functions is proposed. The construction involves first obtaining a tree tensor network construction for subregions, then stacking the tree tensor networks, and finally compressing local tensors successively.

In a size-disperse granular shear flow, particles too small to be trapped in the absence of shear percolate more slowly with increasing shear rate because of their increased velocity fluctuations, while small particles large enough to be trapped at zero shear are mobilized with increasing shear rate but eventually reach a maximum percolation speed and then slow down because of velocity fluctuations

The behavior of an impurity in a trapped Bose gas at finite temperature is studied. It is observed that the impurity is expelled to the edge of the bath at low temperatures, while it remains at the center of the trap as temperature increases.

Work fluctuations of a qubit undergoing dynamics governed by a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian are investigated, demonstrating the validity of the Jarzynski equality even in parameter regimes corresponding to purely imaginary energy eigenvalues. The role of parity-time symmetry in determining the applicability of the second law of thermodynamics to non-Hermitian systems is highlighted, contributing to the understanding of nonequilibrium quantum thermodynamics in open systems.

Atomic Bloch oscillations in an optical lattice transfer momentum from photons to atoms and can be used within atom interferometers to enhance their force sensing capabilities. The quantum phase accrued during such momentum transfer is measured for up to 100 photons and found to be consistent with fully coherent evolution.

Oscillations of localized states of Bose-Einstein condensates in tilted quasiperiodic optical lattices are described. The dynamics is driven by quasiresonances assisted by simultaneous tunneling of atoms in coordinate and energy spaces. The selection rule determining resonant states is established.

Based on a generalized nonlinear paraconductivity framework with microscopically derived Ginzburg-Landau coefficients, nonreciprocal charge transport is theoretically established as a key indicator of helical superconductivity.

Based on discrete-element numerical simulations of wet granular samples, this article examines why effective stress approaches have failed to describe the mechanics of unsaturated granular media. Profound differences in the fabric of dry and wet materials show the relevance of contact and force networks in the search for a generalized effective stress principle.

A light-pulse-driven transition from a charge-density wave to a Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid is demonstrated, focusing on characteristic effects in the Edwards fermion-boson model.

A novel approach using the interplay between loss and localization to achieve incoherent perfect absorption is proposed. By engineering the losses of a flat-band lattice, a robust incoherent perfect absorption that is immune to disorder and defects is demonstrated.

Raman optical activity provides direct spectroscopic evidence for the existence of a highly unconventional field-induced phase in the proximate Kitaev material $\alpha$-RuCl${}_3$. This phase is characterized by the presence of fully chiral magnetic excitations.

APS has selected 156 Outstanding Referees for 2024 who have demonstrated exceptional work in the assessment of manuscripts published in the Physical Review journals. A full list of the Outstanding Referees is available online.

Three journals are excited to announce a new article type, “Perspectives,” to provide forward-looking views of cutting-edge science that has recently emerged or is enjoying renewed activity.