APS Editor in Chief, Randall D. Kamien, discusses the importance and impact of journal reviewers.

With the goal of broadening its coverage of astrophysics, PRD hired astrophysicist Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz as an Associate Editor and appointed three experts in astrophysics to its Editorial Board.

Black holes may be less unique than previously thought, as the expansion due to a cosmological constant can hold apart a pair of holes and allow them to mimic a single black hole.

Viewpoint on:
Óscar J. C. Dias, Gary W. Gibbons, Jorge E. Santos, and Benson Way
Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 131401 (2023)

A collective effort involving various theoretical frameworks results in the successful gravitational wave phasing of nonspinning compact binary systems on quasicircular orbits up to the 4.5 post-Newtonian order.

Luc Blanchet et al.
Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 121402 (2023)

Luc Blanchet et al.
Phys. Rev. D 108, 0640410 (2023)

It was conjectured that a particular two-dimensional gravity, Jackiw–Teitelboim (JT) gravity, is dual to a single-trace one-matrix Random Matrix Model (RMM). The authors extend this duality to JT gravity minimally coupled to a free massive scalar field and a single-trace two-matrix model. They study in detail the matching of genus zero one- and two-boundary expectation values in the matrix model to the gravitational disk correlators.

Due to non-linearities, the two body problem in tensor-scalar theory with kinetic screening is notoriously difficult to solve. In this work, the authors present an analytical solution to this problem and validate it with numerical simulations. They demonstrate that the efficiency of the screening depends on the mass ratio of the two bodies.

The self-force problem in gravity is an approach to the two-body problem in which the mass ratio is extreme enough that the smaller-mass body can be usefully treated as a test particle to the lowest order in the mass ratio. In this paper, frequency domain methods, which are particularly suited for bound orbital motion, are developed in an innovative way so that they can be applied to study hyperbolic scattering in the “toy” problem of a scalar charge. Frequency domain methods as developed here may prove to be a promising approach to the full gravitational self-force problem.

The first frequency-based limit on the neutrino’s mass sets the stage for next-generation experiments.

Synopsis on:
A. Ashtari Esfahani et al. (Project 8 Collaboration)
Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 102502 (2023)

To mark the 241st American Astronomical Society meeting, Physical Review Letters, Physical Review C, and Physical Review D highlighted several significant papers in astrophysics to illustrate the type of research these journals seek to publish.

From nature’s tiniest particles to waves that traverse the Universe—physicists remember resounding finds from the last half-century.

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