When in dense suspensions, active phoretic disks with physicochemical hydrodynamic interactions remain caged and perform local vibrations, mirroring the weak turbulence of bending waves in vibrating elastic plates.

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 128301] Published Tue Sep 15, 2026

We solve the orientation recovery of a tumbling protein in the gas phase from single-event measurements of the spatial positions of its ions after an x-ray laser-induced explosion. We simulate diffracted x-ray signal and ion dynamics under experimental conditions and compare our method to convention…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 128401] Published Mon Sep 14, 2026

Chiral molecules have attracted significant multidisciplinary interest and extensive research owing to their remarkable ability to achieve charge-to-spin conversion, known as the chiral-induced spin selectivity (CISS). A recent experiment has revealed that chiral molecules also exhibit an unexpected…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 118001] Published Fri Sep 11, 2026

Thin polymer films are archetypal nonequilibrium systems in which chain conformations are frozen by rapid preparation. The resulting molecular recoiling stress drives the system toward equilibrium and relaxes with time and temperature. We show that the activation energy governing this relaxation dep…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 118102] Published Thu Sep 10, 2026

We investigate the evolution of topological defects in polar fluids driven by discrete inversion symmetry breaking across the nematic-to-ferroelectric nematic phase transition. Using photopatterned surface alignment to prescribe well-defined initial defect configurations in the nematic phase, we tra…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 118101] Published Wed Sep 09, 2026

A hallmark in natural systems, self-organization often stems from very simple interaction rules between individual agents. While single-species self-propelled particle systems are well understood, the behavior of binary mixtures with general alignment interactions remains largely unexplored with a f…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 118303] Published Wed Sep 09, 2026

Mean-field theories of the glass transition predict a phase transition to a dynamically arrested state, yet no such transition is observed in experiments or simulations of finite-dimensional systems. We resolve this long-standing discrepancy by incorporating critical dynamical fluctuations into a mi…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 118201] Published Tue Sep 08, 2026

Two intermingled species of active matter can exhibit coherent rotation or disorderly scrambling depending on their mutual interactions.

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 118301] Published Tue Sep 08, 2026

Two intermingled species of active matter can exhibit coherent rotation or disorderly scrambling depending on their mutual interactions.

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 118302] Published Tue Sep 08, 2026

In dense colloidal suspensions composed of particles sensitive to Brownian motion, a gravitational Peclet number governs an intermediate angle of repose where gravity and thermal agitation strike a balance.

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 108201] Published Mon Aug 31, 2026

Understanding the mechanical response of elastomers requires establishing a direct connection between macroscopic stress and the microscopic conformational statistics of network strands. In this Letter, we develop a unified theoretical framework that quantitatively links macroscopic stress to single…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 098103] Published Thu Aug 27, 2026

Collective turns in starling flocks propagate linearly with negligible attenuation, indicating the existence of an underdamped sector in the dispersion relation. According to linear response theory, beside granting linear propagation of the phase perturbations, the real part of the frequency should …

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 098301] Published Thu Aug 27, 2026

Theoretical descriptions of the stepping-stone model, a cornerstone of spatial population genetics, have long overlooked diffusive noise arising from migration dynamics. We derive a fluctuating hydrodynamic description of this model from microscopic rules, which we then use to demonstrate that diffu…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 098401] Published Wed Aug 26, 2026

Understanding how animals move as collectives requires knowledge of movement and interaction rules implemented by individuals within such groups. We report that micro glassfish Danionella cerebrum exhibit highly dynamic schooling that is explained by a stochastic model with pairwise copying of swimm…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 098403] Published Wed Aug 26, 2026

While molecular conformational changes significantly influence drop pinch-off, the governing mechanisms by which conformational evolution reshapes capillary-driven breakup remain elusive. Here, we isolate the role of conformation using charge regulation to drive conformational transitions in weak po…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 098102] Published Tue Aug 25, 2026

Many animals exhibit remarkable regenerative abilities, yet the mechanical processes that drive large-scale tissue reshaping remain challenging to characterize. Direct measurements of stress during such remodeling are difficult, while changes in morphology are readily observed. Motivated by wound he…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 098402] Published Tue Aug 25, 2026

Unlike glassy plastics, semicrystalline polymers develop higher crystallinity right at the weld line, creating a unique weld that can surprisingly push mechanical failures away from the joint.

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 098101] Published Mon Aug 24, 2026

We study the breakup dynamics of a two-dimensional strip of active chiral fluid using continuum hydrodynamics. Using slender body theory, we show that the breakup is driven by the interplay between chiral and surface tension forces, and that the minimum strip thickness decays to zero as a power law …

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 088302] Published Wed Aug 19, 2026

A simulation-based inference framework combines physics-based modeling with deep learning to recover the Bayesian posterior of a biomolecular folding model directly from single-molecule force spectroscopy data.

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 088402] Published Wed Aug 19, 2026

An in-principle exact working equation to compute electronic affinity and ionization Fukui functions is derived within the $N$-centered (Nc) ensemble extension of density functional theory (DFT). It circumvents the kernel derivative discontinuity problem of DFT for fractional electron numbers, whose c…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 088001] Published Tue Aug 18, 2026

In Hopfield-type associative memory models, memories are stored in the connectivity matrix and can be retrieved subsequently thanks to the collective dynamics of the network. In these models, the retrieval of a particular memory can be hampered by overlaps between the network state and other memorie…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 088401] Published Tue Aug 18, 2026

Living materials such as membranes, cytoskeletal assemblies, cell collectives, and tissues can often be described as active solids—materials that are energized from within, with elastic response about a well-defined reference configuration. These materials often live in complex and curved manifolds,…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 088301] Published Mon Aug 17, 2026

While crystals are defined by periodic order, the nature of amorphous solids remains elusive due to their disordered, diverse, and nonequilibrium structures. Here, we focus on jammed elastic packings and systematically tune structure from crystalline to fully disordered to unveil the universal under…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 078201] Published Fri Aug 14, 2026

In a finite-time continuous phase transition, topological defects emerge as the system undergoes spontaneous symmetry breaking. The Kibble-Zurek mechanism predicts how the defect density scales with the quench rate. During such processes, dissipation also arises as the system fails to adiabatically …

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 078101] Published Wed Aug 12, 2026

We present a framework for mechanochemical self-organization in active solids where elasticity is reciprocally coupled to Hopf oscillators. Our model reveals a rich landscape of symmetry-protected phases identified through amplitude equations and group-theoretic analysis. We uncover a universal tran…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 078401] Published Tue Aug 11, 2026

For centuries, the human distinction between consonant and dissonant dyadic sounds (“c-d perception phenomenon”) has remained an unresolved puzzle, igniting novel directions in physics research. Here, we demonstrate that nonlinear sound processing by the network of activated cochlear amplifiers reve…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 078402] Published Tue Aug 11, 2026

Nonreciprocal interactions have recently attracted growing interest in nonequilibrium physics. In particular, breaking action-reaction symmetry has been proposed as a mechanism for collective motion, yet controlled experimental realizations remain scarce. Here, we show that bidisperse colloidal susp…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 068302] Published Thu Aug 06, 2026

Stretched exponential distributions of nonequilibrium steady-state fluctuations are ubiquitous in living and nonliving systems alike, yet their microscopic origins have remained elusive. In this Letter, we track the motion of three types of vesicles across different cell types and find that their tr…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 068401] Published Tue Aug 04, 2026

The time dynamics of flagellar and ciliary beating is often neglected in theories of microswimmers, with the most common models prescribing a time-constant actuation of the surrounding fluid. By explicitly introducing a metachronal wave, coarse-grained to a sinusoidal surface slip velocity, we show …

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 068301] Published Mon Aug 03, 2026

Active polymers are ubiquitous in nature, and often kicked by persistent noises that break detailed balance. In order to capture the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of such active polymers, we propose a simple yet reliable analytical framework based on a compounding formula. Connecting polymeric dynamic…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 058101] Published Fri Jul 31, 2026

Geometric incompatibility, the inability of a material’s rest state to be realized in Euclidean space, underlies shape formation in natural and synthetic thin sheets. Classical Gauss and Mainardi-Codazzi-Peterson incompatibilities explain many patterns in nature, but they do not exhaust the mechanis…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 058201] Published Tue Jul 28, 2026

Living organisms employ diverse strategies to navigate confined environments. Inspired by translocation observations on California blackworms (Lumbriculus variegatus), we combine biological experiments and active-polymer simulations to examine how confinement and stiffness govern translocation. Acti…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 058302] Published Tue Jul 28, 2026

Organisms adapt to volatile environments by integrating sensory information with internal memory, yet their information processing is constrained by resource limitations. Such limitations can fundamentally alter optimal estimation strategies in biological systems. For example, recent experiments sug…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 058401] Published Tue Jul 28, 2026

We present experimental results of the flow of programmable robots through a bottleneck. With these agents, velocity and force can be decoupled—a unique feature allowing us to show that, in the absence of physical contact and pushing from behind, and despite the development of clogs, moving faster a…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 058301] Published Mon Jul 27, 2026

Oscillations constitute a defining feature of nonequilibrium processes of life. We analyze a minimal degradation-mediated negative feedback loop, in which the final species in a linear cascade enzymatically degrades the first component. By coupling mean-field ordinary differential equations with a p…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 048401] Published Wed Jul 22, 2026

The relationship between protein and messenger RNA (mRNA) levels is a key aspect of gene expression. Although a strong mRNA-protein correlation is widely observed, the evolutionary force driving the correlation remains poorly understood, undermining the reliability of using mRNA abundance as a proxy…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 048402] Published Wed Jul 22, 2026

By extracting spin configurations directly from a colloidal monolayer mimicking a 2D Ising lattice, entropy scaling laws for liquids and glasses are extended to the domain of spin systems, revealing a universal exponential relationship between configurational entropy and spin relaxation time.

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 048201] Published Tue Jul 21, 2026

In many developmental systems, cells differentiate into a tissue by reading out morphogen concentration fields, a process fundamentally limited by noise. How much can the precision of this process be improved by nonlocal information, e.g., via cell-cell communication? Using a Bayes-optimal framework…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 038401] Published Wed Jul 15, 2026

We report dynamic energy transport across multicomponent molecular junctions observed at the atomic level. A clear temporal sequence of energy transfer is revealed at early times following photoexcitation of Au(111) bonded with self-assembled monolayers of alkanethiols: from the gold surface layer t…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 038001] Published Mon Jul 13, 2026

We have investigated the dynamics of nonentangled and weakly entangled polyisoprene (PI) melts using neutron spin echo spectroscopy and pulsed field gradient NMR and compared the spectra with those from a highly entangled PI melt. Except for Brownian diffusion, which was observed in the long-time re…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 038101] Published Mon Jul 13, 2026

A new theoretical framework for a chiral active solid allowing local internal rotations due to active torques shows how odd elasticity emerges in structurally-disordered materials relevant to biological and synthetic systems.

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 038301] Published Mon Jul 13, 2026

Size segregation in granular flows is a well-known phenomenon: laboratory experiments consistently show that large particles migrate toward silo walls during filling, while smaller particles concentrate near the center. Paradoxically, field observations in large-scale industrial silos often report t…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 028202] Published Fri Jul 10, 2026

Controlling bond breaking is a long-standing goal in molecular physics. Infrared nanocavities are currently being developed for reaching exotic coupling regimes of cavity QED with a few molecules, but it is not well understood how chemical reactions would proceed in such systems. We study infrared l…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 028001] Published Tue Jul 07, 2026

Time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) is a standard approach for calculating optical excitations of molecules and solids, while ensemble DFT (EDFT) is a promising alternative under development. We introduce ensemble TDDFT (ETDDFT), a practical theory that combines the two, generalizing bo…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 028002] Published Tue Jul 07, 2026

Crumpled Mylar sheets exhibit logarithmic relaxation under both force and displacement-controlled conditions. We perform cyclic relaxation experiments and reveal a continuous family of force-displacement curves that evolve toward equilibrium, bounded by instantaneous and fully relaxed limits. By gen…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 028201] Published Tue Jul 07, 2026

A physically consistent formalism provides a first-principles route to electrochemical current-overpotential relations by computing finite-temperature coupled ion-electron transfer free-energy surfaces from constrained $ab$ $initio$ trajectories.

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 018001] Published Wed Jul 01, 2026

An extended version of mean-field theory accurately captures activity patterns seen in networks of biological neurons.

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 018401] Published Tue Jun 30, 2026

Proteins and nucleic acids form non-Newtonian liquids with complex rheological properties that contribute to their function in vivo. Here, we investigate the rheology of the transcription factor NANOG, a key protein to maintain embryonic stem cell pluripotency. We find that, at high concentrations, …

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 018402] Published Tue Jun 30, 2026

Designing heterogeneous, self-assembling systems is a central challenge in soft matter and biology. We present a framework that uses gradient-based optimization to invert an analytical yield calculation, tuning systems toward target equilibrium yields. We design systems ranging from simple dimers to…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 018201] Published Mon Jun 29, 2026

We show that even weak nonreciprocal alignment leads to large-scale structure formation in flocking mixtures. By combining numerical simulations of a binary Vicsek model and the analysis of coarse-grained continuum equations, we demonstrate that nonreciprocity destabilizes the ordered phase formed b…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 018301] Published Mon Jun 29, 2026

Cell shape changes are largely controlled by the actin cytoskeleton, a dynamic filament network beneath the plasma membrane. Several cell types can form extended freestanding protrusions not supported by an extracellular substrate or matrix, and regulated by proteins sensitive to the cell membrane c…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 258401] Published Thu Jun 25, 2026

A new experiment elucidates the ability of some particle–fluid mixtures to behave in ways that depend on their previous flow.

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 258201] Published Tue Jun 23, 2026

We study the overdamped dynamic spreading of a suspension of particles under a repulsive power law potential. We predict that the suspension spreads in a self-similar form, with its radius growing in time with a power independent of the dimension. We confirm this prediction experimentally using magn…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 248202] Published Thu Jun 18, 2026

Fracture typically signifies mechanical failure in engineering materials, whereas controlled cracking may actively sculpt tissues through precise biological regulation. Here, we establish a multiscale nonlinear peridynamic theory that accounts for cellular mechanosensing to decipher the spontaneous …

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 248402] Published Thu Jun 18, 2026

Trajectory mutual information is frequently used to quantify information transfer in biochemical systems. Tractable solutions of the trajectory mutual information can be obtained via the widely used linear-noise approximation (LNA) using Gaussian channel theory. This approach is expected to be accur…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 248401] Published Wed Jun 17, 2026

The tube model has long served as a cornerstone of entangled polymer dynamics and rheology. We test some of the key concepts of the tube model by investigating the equilibrium dynamics of a free chain in a fixed-topology polymer network using molecular dynamics simulation. Our results reveal signifi…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 248101] Published Tue Jun 16, 2026

We present particle-resolved simulations of dense frictional suspensions undergoing the viscous-inertial transition using pressure-imposed rheology. By varying the fluid viscosity, shear rate, and granular pressure, we demonstrate that the transition occurs at a Stokes number of $\approx 8$ (close to the val…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 248201] Published Tue Jun 16, 2026

We predict an anomalous thermally activated superradiance in molecular aggregates within polaritonic environments. In contrast to free space, the collective emission is enhanced when either the exciton-phonon coupling or the temperature increases. This counterintuitive phenomenon is captured by a mi…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 238001] Published Tue Jun 09, 2026

Fission and fusion of lipid membranes are ubiquitous shape transformations in living cells, necessary for maintaining the shape of organelles and enabling a host of transport processes between them. These topology-changing events involve curvature-elastic free energy changes proportional to the Gaus…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 238201] Published Tue Jun 09, 2026

We provide evidence that dynamical slowdown in glass-forming liquids may follow different microscopic routes under cooling and compression, pointing to a previously unrecognized discrepancy between two dynamical landmarks: the Arrhenius–to–non-Arrhenius crossover associated with cooling and the infl…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 228001] Published Wed Jun 03, 2026

Size-dependent electrostatic barriers place an upper limit on droplet merging efficiency.

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 228202] Published Wed Jun 03, 2026

Large-scale Brownian dynamics simulations of 3D semiflexible polymers show that activity modifies the classic picture of the isotropic–nematic transition which highlights a nontrivial interplay between activity, flexibility, and crowding in these systems.

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 228101] Published Tue Jun 02, 2026

We investigate how structural ordering, i.e., crystallization, affects the flow of bidisperse granular materials in a quasi-two-dimensional silo. By systematically varying the mass fraction of two particle sizes, we finely tune the degree of local order. Using high-speed imaging and kinematic modeli…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 228201] Published Tue Jun 02, 2026

We show that systematic particle rotations in a fluid composed of disk-shaped spinners can spontaneously lead to phase separation. The phenomenon arises out of a homogeneous and hydrostatic stationary state, due to a pressure feedback mechanism that increases local density fluctuations. We show how …

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 218301] Published Wed May 27, 2026

In the field of biomolecular condensates and synthetic systems, it is an open question whether liquid droplets can undergo self-sustained oscillations of formation and dissolution. To unravel the minimal physicochemical prerequisite for such droplet oscillations, we present a simple model composed o…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 218401] Published Wed May 27, 2026

Parametric instabilities are a known feature of periodically driven dynamic systems; at particular frequencies and amplitudes of the driving modulation, the system’s quasiperiodic response undergoes a frequency lock-in, leading to a periodically unstable response. Here, we demonstrate an analogous p…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 208201] Published Mon May 18, 2026

We study the behavior of catalytically active droplets in multicomponent conserved mixtures affected by noise. Working in the thin interface limit, we analytically determine the state diagram of the system, characterized by multiple dynamical regimes, and verify our findings using numerical simulati…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 198301] Published Fri May 15, 2026

Entropy production distinguishes equilibrium from nonequilibrium. Calculating the entropy production rate (EPR) is challenging in systems where some degrees of freedom cannot be observed. Here we introduce a perturbative framework to calculate the time irreversibility of an active particle with hidd…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 198302] Published Fri May 15, 2026

Biological membranes often exhibit heterogeneous protein patterns, which cells control. Strong patterns, like the polarity spot in budding yeast, can be described as surface condensates, formed by physical interactions between constituents. However, it is unclear how these interactions affect the ma…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 198401] Published Fri May 15, 2026

A new method for creating twisted structures in liquid crystals could be helpful in controlling them for possible memory-storage applications.

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 198101] Published Tue May 12, 2026

During brittle crack propagation, a smooth crack front curve frequently becomes disjoint, generating a stepped crack and a material ligament that unites the newly formed crack fronts. These universal features fundamentally alter the singular field structure and stability of propagating cracks; howev…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 198201] Published Tue May 12, 2026

According to the mean-field glass theory, the (free) energy landscape of disordered systems is hierarchical and ultrametric if they belong to the full-replica-symmetry-breaking universality class. However, examining this theoretical picture in three-dimensional systems remains challenging, where the…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 198202] Published Tue May 12, 2026

A novel cooling-induced mechanism driving phase separation in inertial active matter exhibits both similarities to and differences from phenomena observed in granular gases.

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 188301] Published Fri May 08, 2026

Using computer simulations and experiments, we demonstrate a mechanism for simultaneous size-specific control over the trajectories of isotropic colloidal particles. Magnetic microparticles of different diameters suspended above a periodic magnetic film are driven by loops traced by the orientation …

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 188201] Published Wed May 06, 2026

The long-standing Arrhenius paradox in molecular glasses is resolved by showing that activation energy decreases linearly with temperature as a consequence of density-driven variations of the barrier.

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 188202] Published Wed May 06, 2026

The transitions of hydrogen molecules embedded in a crystal depend on the surroundings—a behavior that could be used to tailor molecular quantum dynamics.

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 178002] Published Wed Apr 29, 2026

Snap through occurs in elastic structures when a stable equilibrium configuration becomes unstable, resulting in rapid motion towards a new and distinct stable state. While static analyses of snap through are well documented, the dynamics of snap through remain underexplored, particularly in structu…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 178202] Published Wed Apr 29, 2026

We develop a method for studying chemical oscillators in the presence of phase separation. Specifically, we define a dynamics at phase equilibrium by imposing timescale separation between slow reactions and fast diffusion. We show that colocalization of components can alter oscillator frequency and …

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 178001] Published Tue Apr 28, 2026

Structure most frequently constrains material behavior, resulting in the coupling between structural and dynamical properties. Using numerical simulations, we show that single-particle elasticity can cause the breakdown of this coupling, enabling liquidlike dynamics within crystalline configurations…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 178201] Published Tue Apr 28, 2026

A novel path sampling strategy combined with deep learning computes the full committor function in complex systems with high free energy barriers.

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 168001] Published Fri Apr 24, 2026

Flows of gravity-driven, shear-thickening fluids form a sharp, vertical front that advances at constant velocity independent of released volume, flow height, and slope.

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 158202] Published Thu Apr 16, 2026

We study theoretically the closure of a wound in a layer of epithelial cells in a living tissue after damage. Our analysis is informed by our recent experiments observing reepithelialization in vivo of Drosophila pupae. On time and length scales such that the evolution of the epithelial tissue near …

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 158402] Published Thu Apr 16, 2026

Polydisperse colloidal spheres serve as valuable model systems for studying single-particle dynamics in liquids, glasses, and crystals. Particle size critically influences local structure and free volume, which governs dynamics. However, accurately determining individual particle diameters from imag…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 158201] Published Mon Apr 13, 2026

Biological tissues are active materials whose nonequilibrium dynamics emerge from distinct cellular force-generating mechanisms. Using a two-dimensional active foam model, we compare the effects of traction forces and junctional tension fluctuations on confluent tissue dynamics. While these two mode…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 158401] Published Mon Apr 13, 2026

Colloidal fluids can exhibit complex phase behavior and determining phase diagrams via experiments or computer simulations can be laborious. We demonstrate that the dispersion relation $\omega (k)$, obtained from dynamical density functional theory for the uniform density system, is a highly versatile tool …

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 148203] Published Fri Apr 10, 2026

Elastic disordered interfaces driven through a heterogenpeous landscape respond via intermittent avalanches. In the overdamped limit, avalanche sizes follow a scale-free power-law distribution. Here, we investigate how inertial and dynamical terms beyond the overdamped approximation modify this beha…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 148202] Published Thu Apr 09, 2026

Dense drops of cornstarch and water usually stiffen when they strike a surface, but sometimes they flow fleetingly like a liquid.

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 148201] Published Tue Apr 07, 2026

A nonequilibrium model of active hard disks exhibits phase separation between a gas and a liquid, crystal, or glass, with interfaces displaying distinct nonequilibrium universality classes.

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 148301] Published Mon Apr 06, 2026

We explore the dynamical response of the free surface of an ultrasoft solid driven by a localized moving pressure disturbance. Experiments reveal a steady V-shaped wake analogous to a surface Mach wedge. A simple geometric argument provides a qualitative explanation consistent with observations. A t…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 138201] Published Thu Apr 02, 2026

We present an experimental and theoretical study of 2-D swarms in which collective behavior emerges from both direct local mechanical coupling between agents and from the exchange and processing of information between agents. Each agent, an air-table drone endowed with internal memory and a binary d…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 138302] Published Tue Mar 31, 2026

The study of Serratia marcescens at the air-water interface reveals interfacial bacterial turbulence as a distinct class of active turbulence in which the size of the vortices produced scales with the length of the bacteria indicating a microscopic origin.

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 138301] Published Mon Mar 30, 2026

Stochasticity is a defining feature of the pairwise forces governing interactions in biological systems—from molecular motors to cell-cell adhesion—yet its consequences on large-scale dynamics remain poorly understood. Here, we show that reciprocal but randomly fluctuating interactions between parti…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 128303] Published Fri Mar 27, 2026

Probing forces, deformations, and mechanical properties of cells are the hallmark of mechanobiology. Many techniques have been developed to this end that are largely based on deforming the cells and measuring the reaction force. In cells, an alternative approach was implemented in the mid-2010s base…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 128401] Published Thu Mar 26, 2026

Escape of many active systems over potential barriers is subject to hydrodynamic interactions, but little is known about the active hydrodynamics in such nonequilibrium escape processes. Here, we combine simulations and theoretical analysis to examine how the hydrodynamics impacts the physics contro…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 128301] Published Tue Mar 24, 2026

We show theoretically that an imposed uniaxial anisotropy leads to new universality classes for the dynamics of active particles suspended in a viscous fluid. In the homogeneous state, their concentration relaxes superdiffusively, stirred by the long-ranged flows generated by its own fluctuations, a…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 128302] Published Tue Mar 24, 2026

The formation of sintering bridges in amorphous powders affects both flow behavior and perceived material quality. When sintering is driven by surface tension, bridges emerge sequentially, favoring contacts between smaller particles first. Predicting the connectivity percolation threshold is key to …

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 118202] Published Wed Mar 18, 2026

Grain boundary (GB) premelting, the formation of liquid layers along GBs below the melting point, can significantly alter material properties. However, the phenomenon remains poorly understood due to observational challenges. We study GB premelting through both experiments using temperature-sensitiv…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 118201] Published Tue Mar 17, 2026

Large thermal fluctuations of the liquid phase obscure the weak macroscopic electric field that drives electrochemical reactions, rendering the extraction of reliable interfacial charge distributions from ab initio molecular dynamics extremely challenging. We introduce SMILE (Scalar Macro-dipole Int…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 118001] Published Mon Mar 16, 2026

We report cross-validated measurements of the isotope effect on dielectric relaxation for four isotopologues of ice and water, including the $1–{10}^5\mathrm{Hz}$ region, in which only sporadic and inconsistent measurements were previously available. In ice, the relaxation rates exhibit an activated temperature…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 118002] Published Mon Mar 16, 2026

Mutual information is a theoretically grounded metric for quantifying cellular signaling pathways. However, its measurement demands characterization of both input and output distributions, limiting practical applications. Here, we present alternative method that alleviates this requirement using dua…

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 108403] Published Thu Mar 12, 2026