1. These aren't just papers that were published in 2020. They are papers that were added to my library in 2020. Some are a little older — some are a lot older. All are interesting or exciting to me in some way.
Hey #optics and #photonics twitter
It's time again for the 2nd annual #top10photonics thread, where I compile my own #top10 best photonics papers list of the year!
See here for last year's thread:
https://t.co/6h82mPAn3w
A thread 👇
Hey #optics and #photonics twitter
— Orad Reshef (@Orad) December 29, 2019
It's the time of year where we are inundated in end-of-year top10 lists... but how many of those lists are made for _US_ and our community?
So I decided to compile my own #top10 best photonics papers list for 2019
A #top10photonics thread \U0001f447
1. These aren't just papers that were published in 2020. They are papers that were added to my library in 2020. Some are a little older — some are a lot older. All are interesting or exciting to me in some way.
https://t.co/zMB3vAV02S
Now, on to the main event!
Phys. Today 68, 44 (2015)
I found this one on twitter. It's a transcription of a round-table discussion about the future of the laser between the all-time greats (Townes, etc) that happened in 1972!
https://t.co/oJ26qE6gzv
Today is #IDL2020. Back in 2015, Physics Today published a 1972 roundtable discusion on the future of Lasers. To see how much Bloembergen, Prokhorov, Porto, Townes, Javan, Stoicheff, Jacquinot, Kidder, Schawlow, and Hall got right, click on the link.https://t.co/NsBonmmCIR
— Physics Today (@PhysicsToday) May 16, 2020
It's not *sexy*, but it's important: a rigorous treatment from @FMResearchGroup on the bandwidth limitations of metasurfaces.
This is a wonderful (scalable!) new type of optical computation! Love to see it
T. Frank et al. Discriminating between Coherent and Incoherent Light with Planar Metamaterials. Nano Lett. 2019, 19, 10, 6869
https://t.co/JPP9SvDNmY
Savo, R. et al. Broadband Mie driven random quasi-phase-matching. Nat. Photonics 14, 740–747 (2020) by @romolo_savo and @rachel_grange of the @ONG_ETH group:
https://t.co/yfVre3Xxm5
https://t.co/PSDZ83x5pL
Simple idea with a powerful application. And a clever name! This is the type of measurement method that may become a standard in the field. As expected from the @KatsGroup!
Reminds me of z-scan in its simplicity.
https://t.co/aOxujIx1aH, which was a clever idea that imho didn't get enough attention. Perhaps this publication will push the idea over the edge.
The proposal is to use a substrate with its own built-in angularly-selective fluorescence to convert any microscope into a dark field microscope. Incredibly simple, and the images are super convincing:
https://t.co/yxaCwEosE8
From my metamaterials-perspective, BICs dominated the year, with notably excellent work from Yuri Kivshar's team and collaborators.
Here I'm choosing to highlight the paper with the highest Q-factor yet, Q~20,000:
Liu, Z. et al. High-Q Quasibound States in the Continuum for Nonlinear Metasurfaces. Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 253901 (2019):https://t.co/sAbIh7zf0v
https://t.co/goMIT58BIK
*SEVEN* octaves? I mean, come on, that range is absolutely bananas, from 340 nm to 40,000 nm~!!
And it's CEP stable? I can't even fathom.
H.-S. Zhong et al, Quantum computational advantage using photons. Science 370, 1460 (2020)
What a landmark paper.
https://t.co/t77d5hsFb8
More from Twitter
I'm going to make a bomb shell statement here around the turn of the year, something so risky that I face prospects of the Twitter account being attacked or even banned.
— Cosmic Penguin (@Cosmic_Penguin) December 31, 2020
It's about my very uneasy Twitter experience over the past 2-6 months, the worst I could ever remember.
You see, I realized in the last few months that, by translating information and news related to one of the fastest growing spaceflight powers of the world...I inadvertently became a spreader of PRC propaganda.
And with me exactly 180 degrees away from them, I feel scared.
It actually started a few years ago - it's not hard to meet Chinese Twitter users interested in spaceflight, either those living overseas or find a way to climb over the wall. Not surprisingly, many of these S/F enthusiasts are interested in their own military too.
This steadily grew with my followers' count until the flagship Chinese spaceflight missions of 2020 (Chang'e 5 especially but also many others) brought in dozens of them liking/re-tweeting my info tweets sometimes, and similar no. of such followers every month.
I do casually check these new followers/users sometimes. To my horror, far too many of them routinely insults, attacks, mocks others who they see as "anti-China" or spread potential mis-information, even blatant attacks, that started off w/ their state media/spokesperson.