Physical Review Letters
Physical Review Letters (commonly abbreviated as ''PRL') is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the American Physical Society (APS), issued weekly. One of the shortest and most heavily cited journals in physics, it carries the tradition of reporting within four pages results important enough to alter how the field thinks, and publishes only original communications of demonstrable significance.《物理评论快报》（Physical Review Letters'，常用缩写为 PRL'''''）是美国物理学会（American Physical Society 简称 APS）主办的同行评审学术期刊，周刊发行。该刊是物理学界篇幅最短而引用量最高的刊物之一，以「四页之内报告足以改变领域认知的结果」为传统，只刊发具有明确重要性的原创快讯。
Scope
Physical Review Letters states its position explicitly in the society's official letter of recommendation to authors: it accepts only short reports of the most influential developments and transformative ideas across the full arc of fundamental, applied and interdisciplinary physics research. A manuscript therefore falls outside scope even when its conclusions are correct, if its significance amounts to adding data to what is already knownPhysical Review Letters 的取稿立场由学会的官方编者建议函明确表述：只接收那些在基础、应用与交叉物理学的全谱系内最具影响力、最具变革性的短篇报告。这意味着一篇稿件即便结论正确，若其意义仅在于补充既有数据，也不在收稿之列；反之，一篇以少量数据支撑、但打开了新问题入口的工作则会被优先接受。收文覆盖的主要方向包括： conversely, a work resting on few data but opening a new problem is favored. Its principal subject areas include:[1]
- Condensed matter and materials physics: quantum materials and topological states, strongly correlated electronic systems, superconductivity and magnetism, low-dimensional systems and interfacial phenomena.凝聚态与材料物理： 量子材料与拓扑物态、强关联电子体系、超导与磁性、低维体系与界面现象。
- Particle and nuclear physics: high-energy scattering and collider experiments, searches for physics beyond the standard model, quantum chromodynamics and lattice calculations, nuclear structure and heavy-ion reactions.粒子与核物理： 高能散射与对撞机实验、标准模型之外的粒子搜索、量子色动力学与格点计算、核结构与重离子反应。
- Atomic, molecular and optical physics: ultracold atoms and optical lattices, strong-field and attosecond physics, quantum information and quantum optics, and nonlinear and ultrafast phenomena.原子分子与光学： 超冷原子与光晶格、强场物理与阿秒科学、量子信息与量子光学、非线性与超快现象。
- Fluid and plasma physics: turbulence and complex flows, plasma physics and magnetically confined fusion, and combustion and fluid stability.流体与等离子体： 湍流与复杂流动、等离子体物理与磁约束聚变、燃烧与流体稳定性。
- Soft matter and biophysics: soft matter and quasicrystals, statistical mechanics and complex systems, and biophysics and active matter.软物质与生物物理： 软物质与准晶、统计力学与复杂系统、生物物理与活性物质。
- Interdisciplinary physics and instrumentation: quantum metrology and precision measurement, gravitational waves and experimental astrophysics, novel detection techniques, and computational and data-driven methods.交叉物理与仪器： 量子计量与精密测量、引力波与天体物理实验、新型探测技术、计算与数据驱动方法。
The journal maintains the letter-format tradition, with the current page limit set at four pages in two-column layout and authors permitted to add a separate end-matter section. The article type is the communication itself, alongside a small number of editorials and comments. The society publishes no time to first decision本刊维持字母刊的篇幅传统，现行稿件的篇幅约束以双栏四页为基准，作者可另加独立的结尾材料部分。稿件类型即为快讯一种，另设有少量编者按与评论。学会未公布首决时长；关于录用比例，官方编者建议函明确表述为只接收约五分之一的投稿，而学会本身未设公开的录用率看板。 on acceptance, the official letter of recommendation to authors states that only about one in five submissions is accepted, though the society maintains no public acceptance-rate dashboard.[1]
History
- Founding context (1958): the journal was split off as an independent title from the letters section of Physical Review in July 1958, a step taken under Samuel A. Goudsmit, then editor of the parent journal. That parent lineage begins with Physical Review, founded in 1893 at the University of Chicago by Edward L. Nichols and Ernest Merritt and taken over by the society in 1913, from which this title emerged as a section before becoming a journal of its own.创刊背景（1958年）： 本刊于 1958 年 7 月自《物理评论》的读者来信栏目分拆独立成刊，时任《物理评论》主编的萨缪尔·古兹密特主持此事。这一母刊谱系起于 1893 年由爱德华·尼科尔斯与欧内斯特·梅里特在芝加哥大学创办的《物理评论》，该刊 1913 年由学会接管，本刊则是在其内部栏目基础上另起炉灶。[2]
- Cadence: the journal appeared semi-monthly at first, shifted to a weekly schedule in January 1964 and has not changed since, carrying 52 issues a year.刊期演进： 创刊初期为半月刊，自 1964 年 1 月起改为周刊，此后未再变更，现行每年 52 个期号。[3]
- Open access policy (from 2025): the society put a new open access policy into effect on 1 April 2025. This journal charges nothing to authors on the subscription route, while authors may opt to publish under a Creative Commons licence开放获取政策（2025年起）： 学会自 2025 年 4 月 1 日起施行新的开放获取政策，本刊在订阅路线上不向作者收费，作者可选择以知识共享许可协议开放；学会另与开放获取出版商联盟达成的协议覆盖高能物理论文至 2027 年，该刊因此并未转为完全开放获取。2025 年 6 月学会推出的物理档案覆盖《物理评论》系列一百二十年的全部文献。 separately, a read-and-publish agreement with a consortium covers high-energy physics articles through 2027, so the journal has not become fully open access. A physics archive launched by the society in June 2025 covers the full 120 years of the Physical Review family.[4]
- Metric standing: the impact factor stands at 9.4 for 2025. In its official letter the society states that by five-year Google Scholar h-index and by total citations recorded in the Journal Citation Reports, the journal ranks first among physics journals指标水平： 影响因子为 2025 年的 9.4。学会在官方函件中称本刊按五年谷歌学术 h 指数与期刊引证报告的总引文计，在物理类期刊中居首位；引用分数一项，各聚合来源给出的数值互相冲突且均无法溯源到学会页面。 for CiteScore, the values given by aggregators conflict with one another and none can be traced to a society page.[1]
Editors
The journal has no editor-in-chief. Instead it is run by two co-heads: a lead editor appointed by the society who is responsible for the scientific direction and the network of external editors, and a chief editor drawn from the society's own staff who handles manuscript flow and publishing execution. This arrangement has been in place since the journal's founding and makes it one of the very few top physics titles without an editor-in-chief.本刊不设主编一职，而采用首席科学顾问与责任编辑并立的双首长制：前者由学会任命、负责期刊的科学方向与外聘编辑网络，后者为学会专职人员、负责稿件流程与出版执行。这一安排自创刊以来长期沿用，也是物理学界少数不设主编的顶级刊物。[5]
- Rafael Fernandes (lead editor since September 2025): professor of physics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, working in condensed matter theory. The society announced his appointment on 21 August 2025, effective 1 September, for an initial three-year term that may be renewed. He had joined the Illinois faculty from the University of Minnesota in 2024, a separate event two years earlier.拉斐尔·费尔南德斯（2025年9月起任首席科学顾问）： 伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校物理系教授，专攻凝聚态理论。学会于 2025 年 8 月 21 日公告其任命，自 9 月 1 日起就任，首个任期三年，可续。此前他于 2024 年自明尼苏达大学抵达厄巴纳-香槟分校，两者是不同年份的两件事。[6]
- Robert Garisto (chief editor): joined the journal in 1994 and was elected a fellow of the society in 2013, and has served for many years as chief editor, responsible for day-to-day manuscript decisions and the publishing process.罗伯特·加里斯托（责任编辑）： 1994 年加入本刊，2013 年当选为学会会士，长期承担责任编辑一职，负责日常稿件决策与出版流程。[7]
- The external editor network: the practical selection of manuscripts falls to a network of external editors distributed across countries, and this structure is the organizational basis on which the letter journal sustains its very short review cycle.外聘编辑网络： 本刊的实际选稿工作由分布在各国的外聘编辑承担，学会的这一网络是快讯刊得以维持极短审稿周期的组织基础。[8]
- Standing in physics: long recognized as the premier letter journal in physics and the flagship publication of the society, the journal has since 1958 accumulated seminal work from Nobel laureates and other distinguished researchers across every branch of physics, which places it in the role of agenda coordinator among those branches.学科地位： 本刊是物理学界公认的顶级快讯刊，也是学会的旗舰出版物；自 1958 年创刊以来，诺贝尔奖得主与其他杰出研究者在此发表的开创性工作在此累积，使它在各物理分支之间承担着议程协调者的角色。[9]