在之前EPL上拓展的工作。投稿New Journal of physics，被拒。两个审稿人都反对。主要原因是，他们认为基本框架和理论在EPL文章里都有了，所以缺乏新意。我比较服气。

问题是，我们发现并完成对文中的jump-plateau现象解释时，有关cusp的文章已经在epl审稿末期了，所以也不方便将两个文章合并。EPL最多7页，不允许扩展。

NJP还是比较快的，40天吧。

个人其实一直不喜欢这个杂志，首先排版不紧凑，不环保；其次，编辑太过于追逐热点话题（提高了影响因子，给pr提供了一个很不好的榜样）；再次，收费太高。不过，考虑到学校的文章奖励制度，我也顾不上节操了。

Dear Dr Zhang,

Re: "Sudden jumps  and  plateaus in the quench dynamics of a Bloch state" by Zhang, Jiang min; Yang, Hua-Tong

Article reference: NJP-105432

Your Paper, submitted to New Journal of Physics, has now been refereed and the referee report(s) can be found below and/or attached to this message.

We regret to inform you that the referee(s) have recommended that your article should not be published in the journal, for the reasons given in the reports. Your manuscript has therefore been withdrawn from consideration.

We would like to thank you for your interest in New Journal of Physics.

Yours sincerely

Ben Sheard

On behalf of the IOP peer-review team:

Ben Sheard - Editor

Jessica Thorn and Claire Fullarton - Associate Editors

Joanna Bewley and Max Paulus - Editorial Assistants

njp@iop.org

Professor Barry Sanders - Editor-in-Chief

Dr Elena Belsole - Executive Editor

IOP Publishing

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www.iopscience.org/njp

REFEREE REPORT(S):

Referee: 1

COMMENTS TO THE AUTHOR(S)

The manuscript by Zhang et al theoretically studies the quench dynamics of a Bloch state by suddenly introducing a defect in an otherwise uniform 1D optical lattice under periodic boundary condition. The authors are motivated by finding simple quantum systems showing non-analytic time evolution which may alter significantly, say, the physics of quantum thermalization. In their case, cusps (and plateaus) in the momentum distribution (spatial distribution) manifest periodically as a result of single particle dynamics.

The manuscript is an apparent extension of Ref. 20, which is published recently in EPL. To be honest, I found that all relevant modeling and theory are already presented in Ref. 20. The manuscript adds additional calculations on spatial density distribution, showing complementary plateau-jump behavior accompanying the cusps in the momentum space. The authors argue that density distribution is a better measure of singular behavior in the time evolution. However, from Fig.1 c-d (right two panels), there doesn't seem to be one to one correspondence between cusps and plateau jumps. I think time-evolution of the momentum state provides an even more direct observable if there is indeed cusps in the survival and reflection probability. The authors also gave additional discussions regarding experimental realization in photonic systems. Nonetheless, without further discussions, it is not clear to me how the defect can be quenched in the referenced photonic systems. I am also curious to see more discussions on how one could realize time and spatially resolved detection as required to observe the density jumps.

In summary, the manuscript indeed contains original and new discussions. However, for the readers of NJP, I think the manuscript do not provide sufficiently more or better physics motivation than its predecessor, Ref. 20.

Referee: 2

COMMENTS TO THE AUTHOR(S)

The authors discuss the same model as in their arxiv:1601.03569 and on top of those results they compute a new quantity which would be experimentally easier to measure, the local density. They find that the local density shows plateaus whose presence is related to the cusps found in their previous work.

Indeed the new quantity now studied is more reasonable to see in experiments, however in experiments there are two main issues: the finite size of the system (which would make the jumps less abrupt) and the presence of losses (which could be interesting to study).

I do not find that the paper brings enough novelty. It could have been useful if a deeper insight into this quench dynamics would have brought new understanding of dynamical phase transitions or equilibration or lack of. But there is nothing like that. The advance in this paper is not significant enough.    

Overall the paper is really not well written but it is understandable. I would recommend though more effort in the writing for future works.

I cannot recommend publication in NJP.

COMMENTS FROM EDITORIAL BOARD:

Comments to the Author:

The paper has been reviewed by two of our referees. According to their reports, the paper does not meet the NJP standards of publication

Letter reference: DSR01