The subatomic world is a realm where matter behaves in ways that defy our everyday intuition, and this category explores the fundamental building blocks of our universe. From the intricate dance of quarks inside a proton to the strange properties of electrons, these studies reveal the deep rules that govern everything from the smallest particles to the largest stars.

At Gist.Science, we track every new preprint in this field as it appears on arXiv, ensuring you stay ahead of the curve. For each discovery, we provide both a clear, plain-language explanation of the core ideas and a detailed technical summary for those who want to dive deeper into the mathematics and methodology.

Below are the latest papers in Atom-Ph, offering fresh insights into the structure and behavior of the atomic scale.

🔬 atomic physics

Probing topological edge states in a molecular synthetic dimension

This paper demonstrates the use of ultracold RbCs molecules to encode a 1D synthetic lattice in their rotational states, successfully realizing the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model with long coherence times and full site-resolved readout to probe and verify the stability of topological edge states against various perturbations.

Adarsh P. Raghuram, Francesca M. Blondell, Jonathan M. Mortlock, Benjamin P. Maddox, Sohail Dasgupta, Holly A. J. Middle (…)2026-04-02
⚛️ quantum physics

Mitigating noise of residual electric fields for single Rydberg atoms with electron photodesorption

This paper demonstrates that electron photodesorption induced by ultraviolet light effectively mitigates residual electric field noise caused by surface-bound electrons in compact quartz vacuum cells, thereby enabling coherent single-photon Rydberg excitation of trapped atoms and enhancing the performance of quantum technologies.

Bahtiyar Mamat, Cheng Sheng, Xiaodong He, Jiayi Hou, Peng Xu, Kunpeng Wang, Jun Zhuang, Mingrui Wei, Min Liu, Jin Wang (…)2026-04-01
🔬 atomic physics

Energy Time Ptychography for one-dimensional phase retrieval

This paper introduces "Energy Time Ptychography," a novel one-dimensional phase retrieval method that utilizes multiple energetically overlapping nuclear forward scattering measurements of synchrotron X-ray pulses to simultaneously reconstruct transmission spectra and scattering phases, thereby overcoming the bandwidth limitations of traditional gamma-ray sources.

Ankita Negi, Leon Merten Lohse, Sven Velten, Ilya Sergeev, Olaf Leupold, Sakshath Sadashivaiah, Dimitrios Bessas, Aleksa (…)2026-04-01
🔬 atomic physics

Superfluid response of bosonic fluids in composite optical potentials: angular dependence and Leggett's bounds

This paper investigates the superfluid response of dilute bosonic fluids in two-dimensional composite optical potentials by establishing conditions for isotropy, deriving analytical expressions for Leggett's bounds to identify optimal measurement directions, and confirming these findings through numerical simulations.

Daniel Pérez-Cruz, Grigori E. Astrakharchik, Pietro Massignan2026-04-01
🔬 atomic physics

Quadrature amplitude modulation for electronic sideband Pound-Drever-Hall laser frequency locking

This paper presents a software-defined radio implementation using quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) on an UltraScale+ RFSoC platform to generate high-fidelity phase-modulated signals that enable continuous frequency tuning in electronic sideband Pound-Drever-Hall laser locking while compensating for I/Q impairments to achieve sub-0.3% error rates.

J. Tu, A. Restelli, K. Weber, I. B. Spielman, S. L. Rolston, J. V. Porto, S. Subhankar2026-03-31
🔬 atomic physics

Enhancement of plastic deformation in ultrasound-assisted cold spray of tungsten: a molecular dynamics study

This molecular dynamics study demonstrates that ultrasound-assisted cold spray significantly enhances the plastic deformation and interfacial bonding of tungsten through acoustic softening and transient thermal activation, offering a viable solution for the additive manufacturing of refractory metals and heterogeneous alloys.

Md Tusher Ahmed, Farid Ahmed, Jianzhi Li2026-03-31
🔬 atomic physics

Constraining axion-like dark matter with a radio-frequency atomic magnetometer

Using a broadband radio-frequency 87Rb^{87}\mathrm{Rb} atomic magnetometer, researchers conducted a search for axion-like dark matter in the mass range of 2.40×10−102.40\times10^{-10} to 2.11×10−9 eV/c22.11\times10^{-9}\,\mathrm{eV}/c^{2}, finding no significant signals but establishing improved upper limits on ALP-proton couplings and complementary constraints on ALP-neutron and ALP-electron interactions.

A. Rigoulet, S. Nanos, I. K. Kominis, D. Antypas2026-03-31