Listing authors sequentially with affiliations without 'and' operator

Question

I'm having problems listing authors in a way that doesn't cause a strange 'and' operator to appear between names, as well as names to appear on completely different lines. Sometimes it goes away and sometimes it appears, sometimes between authors 1 and 2 while sometimes between authors 1 and 3, depending on how much text I insert into the main body of the document. Here's an example ('and' operator between authors 2 and 3):

I would like to format the author list to be listed sequentially: Name1, Name2, Name3 with all the respective University names, department names, and addresses included directly below the one-liner of author names. Pretty classic stuff.

Since I'm using twocolumn, the closest related issue I could find to this is: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3041809/latex-multiple-authors-in-a-two-column-article

I could not solve my issues with that SO link. Can someone please offer assistance to make things right in the code used to generate the output above:

\documentclass[twocolumn, prl]{revtex4}

\makeindex

%--------------------------------------------------------
\begin{document}

\title{My title}

\author{Name1}
\email{[email protected]}
\affiliation{University name \\ Department name\\ Address}

\author{Name2}
\email{[email protected]}
\affiliation{University name\\ Department name \\ Address}

\author{Name3}
\email{[email protected]}
\affiliation{University name\\ Department name \\ Address}


\begin{abstract}
  The abstract starts here.  Filling space now: etc etc etc...
\end{abstract}


\maketitle

\section{Introduction}

My introduction starts here...

\end{document}

Answer 1

\documentclass[twocolumn, prl]{revtex4}

%\makeindex

%--------------------------------------------------------
\begin{document}

\title{My title}

\author
{Name 1,$^{1}$ Name 2,$^{2}$ Name 3$^{1\ast}$\\
\normalsize{$^{1}$Department Name, University Name,}\\
\normalsize{..................................................... Some potentially very long address .....................................................}\\
\normalsize{$^{2}$Department Name, University Name, Some short address}\\
\normalsize{$^\ast$To whom correspondence should be addressed: [email protected].}
}


\begin{abstract}
  The abstract starts here.  Filling space now: etc etc etc...
\end{abstract}

\maketitle


\section{Introduction}

My introduction starts here...

\end{document}