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
This is from the official Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence DOD account on Twitter. Ezra Cohen-Watnick - after being appointed by Trump to chair an influential declassification board - "likes" a tweet that implies he is "Q."
119/7 = 17 & Q = 17
https://t.co/LQShObYZqn
I can’t find the like , or it appears to have been “unliked” but here’s a video of someone who claims it was there just a few hours ago
This comes from the JFK grandchildren video singing “Timber”
@ 0:50 👀
https://t.co/AmjDZ74kCl
Check the domino. Posted to 4ch it has zero returns on tineye
Now check the domino
Posted to 4ch it has zero returns on tineye
119/7 = 17 & Q = 17
https://t.co/LQShObYZqn
119 \u27977 is now the Chairman of the Public Interest Declassification Board. This new information could be of importance to many. I wonder what that could mean for those who have taken actions to obscure potentially damaging information from the public view?
— 337Tomahawk (@absitminded) December 23, 2020
I can’t find the like , or it appears to have been “unliked” but here’s a video of someone who claims it was there just a few hours ago
— Dr. A. non Questry (@DQuestry) December 27, 2020
This comes from the JFK grandchildren video singing “Timber”
@ 0:50 👀
https://t.co/AmjDZ74kCl
Check the domino. Posted to 4ch it has zero returns on tineye
Now check the domino
Posted to 4ch it has zero returns on tineye
This is why I'm not a critic of "cancel culture." It's crucial to impose social costs for the breech of key social norms. The lesson of overreaction is that we need to recalibrate judgment to get it right next time, not that we need a lot more bad judgment in the other direction.
Obviously, people will disagree about which norms are important, about how bad it is to violate them, and thus about how severe the social cost ought to be. That's just pluralism, man, and it's good.
It's important to openly talk through these substantive differences, which is why derailing these conversations with hand-waving moral panic about "cancel culture" is obnoxious and illiberal.
Screaming "cancel culture!" when somebody pays a social costs other people have been fighting hard to get others to see as necessary is often just a way to declare, with no argument, that the sanction in question was not only unnecessary but in breach of a more important norm.
It's impossible to uphold social norms without social sanctions, so obviously anti-cancelers are going to want to impose a social cost on people they see as imposing unjustly steep social costs on others.
Every single critic of "cancel culture" just thinks the wrong people are getting canceled. pic.twitter.com/DDIVccj8zV
— Michael Hobbes (@RottenInDenmark) February 2, 2021
Obviously, people will disagree about which norms are important, about how bad it is to violate them, and thus about how severe the social cost ought to be. That's just pluralism, man, and it's good.
It's important to openly talk through these substantive differences, which is why derailing these conversations with hand-waving moral panic about "cancel culture" is obnoxious and illiberal.
Screaming "cancel culture!" when somebody pays a social costs other people have been fighting hard to get others to see as necessary is often just a way to declare, with no argument, that the sanction in question was not only unnecessary but in breach of a more important norm.
It's impossible to uphold social norms without social sanctions, so obviously anti-cancelers are going to want to impose a social cost on people they see as imposing unjustly steep social costs on others.
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1/ Some initial thoughts on personal moats:
Like company moats, your personal moat should be a competitive advantage that is not only durable—it should also compound over time.
Characteristics of a personal moat below:
2/ Like a company moat, you want to build career capital while you sleep.
As Andrew Chen noted:
3/ You don’t want to build a competitive advantage that is fleeting or that will get commoditized
Things that might get commoditized over time (some longer than
4/ Before the arrival of recorded music, what used to be scarce was the actual music itself — required an in-person artist.
After recorded music, the music itself became abundant and what became scarce was curation, distribution, and self space.
5/ Similarly, in careers, what used to be (more) scarce were things like ideas, money, and exclusive relationships.
In the internet economy, what has become scarce are things like specific knowledge, rare & valuable skills, and great reputations.
Like company moats, your personal moat should be a competitive advantage that is not only durable—it should also compound over time.
Characteristics of a personal moat below:
I'm increasingly interested in the idea of "personal moats" in the context of careers.
— Erik Torenberg (@eriktorenberg) November 22, 2018
Moats should be:
- Hard to learn and hard to do (but perhaps easier for you)
- Skills that are rare and valuable
- Legible
- Compounding over time
- Unique to your own talents & interests https://t.co/bB3k1YcH5b
2/ Like a company moat, you want to build career capital while you sleep.
As Andrew Chen noted:
People talk about \u201cpassive income\u201d a lot but not about \u201cpassive social capital\u201d or \u201cpassive networking\u201d or \u201cpassive knowledge gaining\u201d but that\u2019s what you can architect if you have a thing and it grows over time without intensive constant effort to sustain it
— Andrew Chen (@andrewchen) November 22, 2018
3/ You don’t want to build a competitive advantage that is fleeting or that will get commoditized
Things that might get commoditized over time (some longer than
Things that look like moats but likely aren\u2019t or may fade:
— Erik Torenberg (@eriktorenberg) November 22, 2018
- Proprietary networks
- Being something other than one of the best at any tournament style-game
- Many "awards"
- Twitter followers or general reach without "respect"
- Anything that depends on information asymmetry https://t.co/abjxesVIh9
4/ Before the arrival of recorded music, what used to be scarce was the actual music itself — required an in-person artist.
After recorded music, the music itself became abundant and what became scarce was curation, distribution, and self space.
5/ Similarly, in careers, what used to be (more) scarce were things like ideas, money, and exclusive relationships.
In the internet economy, what has become scarce are things like specific knowledge, rare & valuable skills, and great reputations.