Thread by @Orad

Hey #optics and #photonics twitter

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 👇

Some notes:
These aren't just papers that were published in 2019. They are papers that were added to my library in 2019. Some are a little older — some are a lot older. All are interesting or exciting to me in some way.

#top10photonics

I reiterate - TO ME. This list is highly subjective, and is mostly about what captured my imagination most, not about what will make the biggest impact, or what is most worth funding. The order is mostly arbitrary too. This is just for fun :)

#top10photonics

Also, I opted not to include any of my papers, or any from my current or former groups. If you're curious about what I do, drop a proverbial tip in my jar and peruse my publication list here:
reshef.ca/publications/

Now, on to the show!
#top10photonics

#10 Did Soljacic's group rewrite Maxwell's equations??? No. Of course not. But finding a new elegant short-hand for nonclassical nano effects is pretty captivating. It will take some time for me to really parse if this work is groundbreaking or merely incidental.
#top10photonics

#10 continued

Yang, Y. et al. A General Theoretical and Experimental Framework for Nanoscale Electromagnetism. Nature 576, 248–252 (2019).
nature.com/articles/s4158…

#top10photonics

#9 Here the authors spectrally resolve individual regions of plasmonic nanoparticles. Colorful near-field imaging!
Arieli, U. Broadband coherent hyperspectral near-field imaging of plasmonic nanostructures. Opt. Express 1, 9815–9820 (2019).
osapublishing.org/oe/abstract.cf…
#top10photonics

#8 Here's a solution in search of a problem — a fabrication procedure to realize true 3D nanostructures. The kinds of nano-things these guys are able to make are -insane-.

Yoon, G. et al. Sci. Rep. 7, 1–8 (2017)
dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598…

#top10photonics

#7 This one is perfectly obvious in hindsight — the worst kind of paper, the kind that makes you most jealous that you didn't think of it yourself. The authors directly image photonic crystal band structures using a very simple measurement technique:
Sci. Adv. 1, e1601591 (2016)

#7 continued

advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/11/e…

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#6 Yo dawg, I heard you like nonlinearities. So I put ALL the nonlinearities in a single metasurface:

Liu, S. et al. An all-dielectric metasurface as a broadband optical frequency mixer. Nat. Commun. 9, 2507 (2018).
dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467…

#top10photonics

#5 Metasurfaces + Bound states in continuum = high Q-factors. This topic was really hot at CLEO this year, as well. I love the counter-intuitive result that you actually want to have your structure be a _little_ asymmetric for this to work:

#top10photonics

#5 continued

Koshelev, K., Asymmetric metasurfaces with high-Q resonances governed by bound states in the continuum. Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 193903 (2018).
doi.org/10.1103/PhysRe…

#top10photonics

#4 Do you like silicon photonics but wish to use a 2nd-order nonlinearity? This incredible trick will do that for you:

Timurdogan, E. Electric field-induced second-order nonlinear optical effects in silicon waveguides. Nat. Photonics 11, 200–206 (2017).
nature.com/articles/nphot…

#4 continued

This work was presented to a packed house in CLEO a few years back. It clearly represented some sort of milestone. It's interesting how exciting this work was at the time, and how it feels their thunder has been completely taken over by newer work in lithium niobate

#4 continued

That is, I haven't heard of other groups mimicking this voltage-controlled Chi2 in silicon, but there are DOZENs of lithium niobate papers out now. (Oddly, it occurs to me that I didn't include any of them in this list 🤔) #top10photonics

#3 Nonlocal metamaterials hit the mainstream!

I have been waiting for metasurfaces to do things that isn't lensing. Here's a nice example:

Cordaro, A. High-index dielectric metasurfaces performing mathematical operations. Nano Lett. 19, 8418–8423 (2019).
pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ac…

#2 The title and abstract are a little incendiary, but they make a good point. We are so caught up in the excitement of metalenses, but if we take a step back, are they really the best option moving forward?

#top10photonics

#2 continued

Banerji, S. et al. Imaging with flat optics: metalenses or diffractive lenses? Optica 6, 805–810 (2019).
osapublishing.org/optica/abstrac…

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#2 continued

I think metasurfaces are really exciting for all sorts of reasons— but we already have lenses to do lensing. When we were first coming up with metamaterials (meta~ beyond) the idea was to do NEW things, not just the same things we could do before but... thinner.

#1 The battery powered frequency-comb.

Stern, B., Ji, X., Okawachi, Y., Gaeta, A. L. & Lipson, M. Battery-operated integrated frequency comb generator. Nature 562, 401–405 (2018).
nature.com/articles/s4158…

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#1 continued

This work by the @Michallipson and @gaeta_alexander groups feels like the culmination of 2 decades of work. Everyone has been trying to get propagation losses lower and lower, and to what end? This feels like it's it.

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#1 continued

What else is remarkable is that _everyone_ is working in silicon photonics. This isn't a niche material like Lithium Niobate or ITO. And yet, somehow, @Michallipson still manages to be the one to get to this milestone result first, despite moving institutions...

#1 continued

...and more importantly, *gasp* fabrication facilities! Just imagine having the world's best etch recipe, and then needing to completely redevelop it in a new etcher. And then posting Q factors of 10 million! #top10photonics

So, what do you think? What papers should have made the list that I completely missed out on! Please share them below! #top10photonics

And happy new year! I hope you all publish multiple Nature papers that can be featured here in 2020 :)

While I have your attention, please register for #POM20 @PhotonicsMeetup. It's completely free, and happening in 2 weeks!!

sites.usc.edu/pom/

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