\documentclass[a4paper]{letter}

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\signature{
  \vspace{-6\medskipamount}
  \smallskip
  Jaron Kent-Dobias \& Jorge Kurchan
}

\address{
  Laboratoire de Physique\\
  Ecole Normale Sup\'erieure\\
  24 rue Lhomond\\ 
  75005 Paris
}

\begin{document}
\begin{letter}{
  Agnese I.~Curatolo, Ph.D.\\
  Physical Review Letters\\
  1 Research Road\\
  Ridge, NY 11961
}

\opening{Dear Dr.~Curatolo,}

We wish to appeal the decision concerning our manuscript,
and expect to take this to the highest level possible in Physical Review.
Our motivation is scientific, but also one of principle: {\em there should
not be an implicit bias in favor of partial or purely numerical solutions,
and against the actual closure of
a long standing problem, on the basis that the latter is harder to read.}

Neither of the referees criticize the content of the manuscript. They both
find the article somewhat technical,
but it should be born in mind that:
\begin{enumerate}
  \item PRL has been publishing articles on precisely this problem in the
    last 30 years.\footfullcite{Fyodorov_2004_Complexity, Bray_2007_Statistics, Fyodorov_2012_Critical, Wainrib_2013_Topological}
  \item These works were often limited by the fact that general landscapes (for
    which an annealed solution is not exact) were inaccessible. It is perhaps
    true that the final solution of an open problem may often be more technical
    than the previous ones.
\end{enumerate}

The other criticisms are:

Referee A remarks that a full connection with dynamics
is not presented in our paper. This is true, and such a connection does not
exist at present. We sincerely hope to
find it, and if we succeed we firmly believe the resulting  article will also be
worthy of PRL.

Referee B states that
\begin{enumerate}
  \item  ``the topic has been studied extensively in  the last thirty years and
    more'' as a shortcoming, but fails to realize that the solution to the full
    problem has been open, in spite of all these efforts.
  \item The meaning of the related remark: ``the only novelty with respect to
    previous work is that the results are obtained at zero temperature''
    completely escapes us. Firstly because temperature is not an issue here --
    it suffices to replace energy by TAP free-energy to introduce it, with
    essentially no change. Again, the novelty of the article is that generic
    models, most notably  the Sherrington Kirkpatrick which motivated the first
    (pioneering but failed) attempt 42 years ago, are now finally accessible.
  \item ``instead the analysis of the static landscape, to which the present
    paper is a variation, failed to deliver answers to these questions up to
    now.''
  One could say that development of higher fidelity $q$-bits has failed to
  deliver the factorization  of large integers up to now, but this is hardly a
  barrier to publishing substantial progress about their development.
\end{enumerate}

Again, PRL has devoted a sustained attention to these problems. The referee
goes on to remark that what is truly important ``involves dynamics and
activated processes.'' But one of the reasons that they  have not been fully
understood, as the referee claims correctly, is that these take place
between states whose geometrical arrangement were not known (except for the
pure $p$-spin case, or in general, equilibrium), and our work is, we believe, a
true breakthrough in this direction.

\closing{Sincerely,}

\vspace{1em}

\end{letter}

\end{document}
