Writing 109: Summer Bridge

In-text citations will appear as numbers in brackets -- so the first source cited will be [1], the second source will be [2], and so on. Here is an example from a recent article published in Physical Review Letters:

"Einstein and Hopf electromagnetic friction on single particles [1], zero point Van der Waals interactions on pairs of particles [2], and Casimir forces between bodies at different temperatures [3,4] produced by thermal radiation [2,5–7] are among the mechanical effects induced by these fields."

Cited from: M. I. Marqués, S. Edelstein, P. A. Serena, B. C. L. De Larrinzar, and A. Garcia-Martín, Magneto-Optical Particles in Isotropic Spinning Fields Mimic Magnetic Monopoles, Phys. Rev. Lett. 133, 046901 (2024).

In general, scholarly articles cited in Physics Review Letters style should be formatted as follows:

F. Lastname, Title of article, Title of Journal Issue Number, First Page Number (Year of Publication).

Your references list should appear at the end of your poster or paper, and should include all of your sources in the order you cited them, with the citation number to the left of each citation. For example:

[1] T. H. Boyer, Derivation of the blackbody radiation spectrum without quantum assumptions, Phys. Rev. 182, 1374 (1969).
[2] T. H. Boyer, Retarded Van der Waals forces at all distances derived from classical electrodynamics with classical electro-magnetic zero-point radiation, Phys. Rev. A 7, 1832 (1973).
[3] R. Messina and M. Antezza, Casimir-Lifshitz force out of thermal equilibrium and heat transfer between arbitrary bodies, Europhys. Lett. 95, 61002 (2011).

Instructions for citing sources other than scholarly articles are available here. You'll notice that Physics Review Letters does not have instructions for citing some source types, such as "popular" magazine/news articles, so you may have to get a little creative! Ask your librarians for help, and remember that the most important rules for creating successful citations are:

1. Be consistent in your formatting
2. Provide enough information that a reader could easily find the sources you used