The Physical Review Journals Celebrate the International Year of Light

2015 has been designated the International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies by UNESCO. This global initiative aims to highlight the importance of light in our everyday lives and how it has contributed to the development of society. To celebrate this yearlong event, the editors of the Physical Review journals have organized a collection of papers that represent important breakthroughs in the field of optics, from fundamental insights into how light behaves, to findings that were critical in the development of everyday technologies. These papers will be free to read throughout 2015.

For a shorter list aimed at a broader public audience, visit the Physics International Year of Light page.

Superradiant Atom Emission

Coherence in Spontaneous Radiation Processes
R. H. Dicke
Phys. Rev. 93, 99 (1954)

Photonic Crystals Make Their Debut

Strong localization of photons in certain disordered dielectric superlattices
Sajeev John
Phys. Rev. Lett. 58, 2486 (1987)

Inhibited Spontaneous Emission in Solid-State Physics and Electronics
Eli Yablonovitch
Phys. Rev. Lett. 58, 2059 (1987)

See Physics article: Focus: Landmarks – The Birth of Photonic Crystals

The Quantum Side of Light

Photon Correlations
Roy J. Glauber
Phys. Rev. Lett. 10, 84 (1963)

The Quantum Theory of Optical Coherence
Roy J. Glauber
Phys. Rev. 130, 2529 (1963)

See original Physics article: Nobel Focus: Photons at the Forefront
Summary from Physical Review Letters' Milestones list

Noise-free Light

Observation of Squeezed States Generated by Four-Wave Mixing in an Optical Cavity
R. E. Slusher, L. W. Hollberg, B. Yurke, J. C. Mertz, and J. F. Valley
Phys. Rev. Lett. 55, 2409 (1985)

Broad-Band Parametric Deamplification of Quantum Noise in an Optical Fiber
R. M. Shelby, M. D. Levenson, S. H. Perlmutter, R. G. DeVoe, and D. F. Walls
Phys. Rev. Lett. 57, 691 (1986)

Generation of Squeezed States by Parametric Down Conversion
Ling-An Wu, H. J. Kimble, J. L. Hall, and Huifa Wu
Phys. Rev. Lett. 57, 2520 (1986)

Two-photon coherent states of the radiation field
Horace P. Yuen
Phys. Rev. A 13, 2226 (1976)

Quantum Mechanics Becomes Truly Quantum

Experimental Tests of Realistic Local Theories via Bell's Theorem
Alain Aspect, Philippe Grangier, and Gérard Roger
Phys. Rev. Lett. 47, 460 (1981)

Experimental Realization of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen-Bohm Gedankenexperiment: A New Violation of Bell's Inequalities
Alain Aspect, Philippe Grangier, and Gérard Roger
Phys. Rev. Lett. 49, 91 (1982)

Experimental Test of Bell's Inequalities Using Time- Varying Analyzers
Alain Aspect, Jean Dalibard, and Gérard Roger
Phys. Rev. Lett. 49, 1804 (1982)

A Bright Entangled Photon Source

New High-Intensity Source of Polarization-Entangled Photon Pairs
Paul G. Kwiat, Klaus Mattle, Harald Weinfurter, Anton Zeilinger, Alexander V. Sergienko, and Yanhua Shih
Phys. Rev. Lett. 75, 4337 (1995)

See-through Materials

Observation of electromagnetically induced transparency
K.-J. Boller, A. Imamoğlu, and S. E. Harris
Phys. Rev. Lett. 66, 2593 (1991)

Storing Light

Storage of Light in Atomic Vapor
D. F. Phillips, A. Fleischhauer, A. Mair, R. L. Walsworth, and M. D. Lukin
Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 783 (2001)

Dark-State Polaritons in Electromagnetically Induced Transparency
M. Fleischhauer and M. D. Lukin
Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 5094 (2000)

Quantum memory for photons: Dark-state polaritons
M. Fleischhauer and M. D. Lukin
Phys. Rev. A 65, 022314 (2002)

Seeing Single Molecules

Optical detection and spectroscopy of single molecules in a solid
W. E. Moerner and L. Kador
Phys. Rev. Lett. 62, 2535 (1989)

Lasers for the Rest of Us

Coherent Light Emission From GaAs Junctions
R. N. Hall, G. E. Fenner, J. D. Kingsley, T. J. Soltys, and R. O. Carlson
Phys. Rev. Lett. 9, 366 (1962)

See Physics article: Invention of the CD-Player Laser
Summary from Physical Review Letters' Milestones list

How to Count to 1015 in One Second

Direct Link between Microwave and Optical Frequencies with a 300 THz Femtosecond Laser Comb
Scott A. Diddams, David J. Jones, Jun Ye, Steven T. Cundiff, John L. Hall, Jinendra K. Ranka, Robert S. Windeler, Ronald Holzwarth, Thomas Udem, and T. W. Hänsch
Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 5102 (2000)

See original Physics article: Counting the Ripples in a Light Wave
Summary from Physical Review Letters' Milestones list

Beating the Diffraction Limit

Negative Refraction Makes a Perfect Lens
J. B. Pendry
Phys. Rev. Lett. 85, 3966 (2000)

Composite Medium with Simultaneously Negative Permeability and Permittivity
D. R. Smith, Willie J. Padilla, D. C. Vier, S. C. Nemat-Nasser, and S. Schultz
Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 4184 (2000)

Summary from Physical Review Letters' Milestones list

Light is “Heavy”

Apparent Weight of Photons
R. V. Pound and G. A. Rebka, Jr.
Phys. Rev. Lett. 4, 337 (1960)

Gravitational Red-Shift in Nuclear Resonance
R. V. Pound and G. A. Rebka, Jr.
Phys. Rev. Lett. 3, 439 (1959)

Effect of Gravity on Nuclear Resonance
R. V. Pound and J. L. Snider
Phys. Rev. Lett. 13, 539 (1964)

See original Physics article: The Weight of Light
Summary from Physical Review Letters' Milestones list

Laser Beams Thick as Molasses

Three-dimensional viscous confinement and cooling of atoms by resonance radiation pressure
Steven Chu, L. Hollberg, J. E. Bjorkholm, Alex Cable, and A. Ashkin
Phys. Rev. Lett. 55, 48 (1985)

Observation of Atoms Laser Cooled below the Doppler Limit
Paul D. Lett, Richard N. Watts, Christoph I. Westbrook, William D. Phillips, Phillip L. Gould, and Harold J. Metcalf
Phys. Rev. Lett. 61, 169 (1988)

Laser Cooling below the One-Photon Recoil Energy by Velocity-Selective Coherent Population Trapping
A. Aspect, E. Arimondo, R. Kaiser, N. Vansteenkiste, and C. Cohen-Tannoudji
Phys. Rev. Lett. 61, 826 (1988)

See original Physics article: Landmarks: Laser Cooling of Atoms
Summary from Physical Review Letters' Milestones list

Quantum Dabblers

Generation of Nonclassical Motional States of a Trapped Atom
D. M. Meekhof, C. Monroe, B. E. King, W. M. Itano, and D. J. Wineland
Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 1796 (1996)

Quantum Rabi Oscillation: A Direct Test of Field Quantization in a Cavity
M. Brune, F. Schmidt-Kaler, A. Maali, J. Dreyer, E. Hagley, J. M. Raimond, and S. Haroche
Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 1800 (1996)

See Physics article: Nobel Prize – Tools for Quantum Tinkering

The Birth of Nonlinear Optics

Generation of Optical Harmonics
P. A. Franken, A. E. Hill, C. W. Peters, and G. Weinreich
Phys. Rev. Lett. 7, 118 (1961)

Interactions between Light Waves in a Nonlinear Dielectric
J. A. Armstrong, N. Bloembergen, J. Ducuing, and P. S. Pershan
Phys. Rev. 127, 1918 (1962)

Источник: http://journals.aps.org/prl/international-year-of-light