For centuries, human fascination with the living world motivated the development of tools for visualizing life’s events at the spatiotemporal scales beyond our visual range. While all optical microscopes use light to probe the object of interest, fluorescence microscopes can discern between the object and background at the molecular scale. At this scale, the stochastic properties of light are fundamental to interpreting fluorescence microscopy data. Accordingly quantitative methods that enable such interpretation necessitate stochastic perspective and the use of statistical concepts. The physical-optical principles governing the formation of fluorescent images and modeling tools interpreting these images while accounting for the stochasticity of light and measurements are reviewed.

When determining the authorship list for your next paper, be generous yet disciplined.

Vivien Zapf is a condensed matter experimentalist at the National High Magnetic Field Lab at Los Alamos National Lab where she has worked since 2004. She studies magnetic materials, in particular quantum magnetism and magnetoelectric coupling and specializes in thermodynamic and magnetoelectric measurements at low and high magnetic fields.

Storage of energy in quantum devices is of practical relevance for applications in quantum technologies. The topic attracts attention also of a more foundational character due to the possibility that the charging power and work extraction can benefit from quantum coherence and collective effects. This Colloquium reviews theoretical concepts and experimental implementations of energy storage in quantum batteries drawing on work in quantum thermodynamics and quantum information science.

A branch of quantum information is concerned with transformations that are possible given certain resources: for example, quantum teleportation moves a quantum state from one place to another, aided by entanglement and classical communication. Certain other tasks are provably impossible. But, as surveyed in this review, a surprising fact is that some tasks become possible if another quantum state is present, even if this state is returned untouched at the end of the task. This “quantum catalysis” enables a large variety of interesting tasks, with applications ranging from cryptography to thermodynamics.

Neutrinos can change flavors due to their nonzero masses and mixings as well as their interactions with matter and other neutrinos. In dense astrophysical environments, such as core-collapse supernovae or neutron star mergers, the problem of neutrino flavor evolution becomes very complex. Connections to other domains such as quantum information theory have been uncovered. Understanding the neutrino flavor evolution in dense environments can shed light on the dynamics of massive star explosions and the origin of heavy elements in the Universe and is important for future observations of supernova neutrinos.

For centuries, human fascination with the living world motivated the development of tools for visualizing life’s events at the spatiotemporal scales beyond our visual range. While all optical microscopes use light to probe the object of interest, fluorescence microscopes can discern between the object and background at the molecular scale. At this scale, the stochastic properties of light are fundamental to interpreting fluorescence microscopy data. Accordingly quantitative methods that enable such interpretation necessitate stochastic perspective and the use of statistical concepts. The physical-optical principles governing the formation of fluorescent images and modeling tools interpreting these images while accounting for the stochasticity of light and measurements are reviewed.

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.

A parameterization scheme that links a drop’s size to its origin in the respiratory tract could help clinicians identify the most effective mitigation strategies for halting the spread of an infectious disease.

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Mira L. Pöhlker et al.
Rev. Mod. Phys. 95, 045001 (2023)

The 2021 Nobel Prize for Physics was shared by Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann, and Giorgio Parisi. These papers are the text of the address given in conjunction with the award.

Nobel Lecture: Multiple equilibria

Nobel Lecture: Physical modeling of Earth’s climate

Philip W. Phillips is a professor of physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a condensed matter theorist whose work focuses on transport and magnetic phenomena stemming from the breakdown of the quasiparticle concept in strongly correlated and topology quantum matter.

While the first law of thermodynamics is a well-established principle underlying all models of Earth’s climate system, applications of the second law in climate science are active areas of research. This review summarizes how the relationships between Earth’s entropy export and internal entropy production provide insights into Earth’s climate. These applications include heat-engine analogs for atmospheric convection, tropical cyclones, and large-scale atmospheric heat transport. Open issues addressed include the ongoing debate on whether the climate system maximizes entropy production.

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Lead Editor, Randall D. Kamien and new Colloquium Editor, Dietrich Belitz, discuss the role of Colloquia in Reviews of Modern Physics.