The Most Cited Articles in Optics Letters

To highlight some of the seminal research published in Optics Letters, below are the most-cited articles in the history of the journal. They are free to access throughout 2017. (Citation counts are from Clarivate Analytics as of January 4, 2017.)

1. Observation of a single-beam gradient force optical trap for dielectric particles

A. Ashkin, J. M. Dziedzic, J. E. Bjorkholm, and Steven Chu

Opt. Lett. 11(5) 288-290 (1986)
TOTAL CITES: 3345

2. All-silica single-mode optical fiber with photonic crystal cladding

J. C. Knight, T. A. Birks, P. St. J. Russell, and D. M. Atkin

Opt. Lett. 21(19) 1547-1549 (1996)
TOTAL CITES: 1831

3. Endlessly single-mode photonic crystal fiber

T. A. Birks, J. C. Knight, and P. St. J. Russell

Opt. Lett. 22(13) 961-963 (1997)
TOTAL CITES: 1830

4. Breaking the diffraction resolution limit by stimulated emission: stimulated-emission-depletion fluorescence microscopy

Stefan W. Hell and Jan Wichmann

Opt. Lett. 19(11) 780-782 (1994)
TOTAL CITES: 1715

5. Visible continuum generation in air–silica microstructure optical fibers with anomalous dispersion at 800 nm

Jinendra K. Ranka, Robert S. Windeler, and Andrew J. Stentz

Opt. Lett. 25(1) 25-27 (2000)
TOTAL CITES: 1607

6. Writing waveguides in glass with a femtosecond laser

K. M. Davis, K. Miura, N. Sugimoto, and K. Hirao

Opt. Lett. 21(21) 1729-1731 (1996)
TOTAL CITES: 1559

7. Optical image encryption based on input plane and Fourier plane random encoding

Philippe Refregier and Bahram Javidi

Opt. Lett. 20(7) 767-769 (1995)
TOTAL CITES: 1190

8. High-sensitivity, single-beam n2 measurements

M. Sheik-bahae, A. A. Said, and E. W. Van Stryland

Opt. Lett. 14(17) 955-957 (1989)
TOTAL CITES: 1162

9. Formation of Bragg gratings in optical fibers by a transverse holographic method

G. Meltz, W. W. Morey, and W. H. Glenn

Opt. Lett. 14(15) 823-825 (1989)
TOTAL CITES: 1139

10. Phase-shifting digital holography

Ichirou Yamaguchi and Tong Zhang

Opt. Lett. 22(16) 1268-1270 (1997)
TOTAL CITES: 1067

11. Negative index of refraction in optical metamaterials

Vladimir M. Shalaev, Wenshan Cai, Uday K. Chettiar, Hsiao-Kuan Yuan, Andrey K. Sarychev, Vladimir P. Drachev, and Alexander V. Kildishev

Opt. Lett. 30(24) 3356-3358 (2005)
TOTAL CITES: 1067

12. Coupled-resonator optical waveguide:?a proposal and analysis

Amnon Yariv, Yong Xu, Reginald K. Lee, and Axel Scherer

Opt. Lett. 24(11) 711-713 (1999)
TOTAL CITES: 1045

13. 60-fsec pulse generation from a self-mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser

D. E. Spence, P. N. Kean, and W. Sibbett

Opt. Lett. 16(1) 42-44 (1991)
TOTAL CITES: 965

14. Three-dimensional microfabrication with two-photon-absorbed photopolymerization

Shoji Maruo, Osamu Nakamura, and Satoshi Kawata

Opt. Lett. 22(2) 132-134 (1997)
TOTAL CITES: 935

15. Self-channeling of high-peak-power femtosecond laser pulses in air

A. Braun, G. Korn, X. Liu, D. Du, J. Squier, and G. Mourou

Opt. Lett. 20(1) 73-75 (1995)
TOTAL CITES: 910

16. Guiding and confining light in void nanostructure

Vilson R. Almeida, Qianfan Xu, Carlos A. Barrios, and Michal Lipson

Opt. Lett. 29(11) 1209-1211 (2004)
TOTAL CITES: 909

17. Imaging with terahertz waves

B. B. Hu and M. C. Nuss

Opt. Lett. 20(16) 1716-1718 (1995)
TOTAL CITES: 817

18. Giant Kerr nonlinearities obtained by electromagnetically induced transparency

H. Schmidt and A. Imamoglu

Opt. Lett. 21(23) 1936-1938 (1996)
TOTAL CITES: 807

19. Improved signal-to-noise ratio in spectral-domain compared with time-domain optical coherence tomography

Johannes F. de Boer, Barry Cense, B. Hyle Park, Mark C. Pierce, Guillermo J. Tearney, and Brett E. Bouma

Opt. Lett. 28(21) 2067-2069 (2003)
TOTAL CITES: 788

20. Discrete self-focusing in nonlinear arrays of coupled waveguides

D. N. Christodoulides and R. I. Joseph

Opt. Lett. 13(9) 794-796 (1988)
TOTAL CITES: 787

21. Electromagnetic energy transport via linear chains of silver nanoparticles

M. Quinten, A. Leitner, J. R. Krenn, and F. R. Aussenegg

Opt. Lett. 23(17) 1331-1333 (1998)
TOTAL CITES: 754

22. Three-dimensional optical storage inside transparent materials

E. N. Glezer, M. Milosavljevic, L. Huang, R. J. Finlay, T.-H. Her, J. P. Callan, and E. Mazur

Opt. Lett. 21(24) 2023-2025 (1996)
TOTAL CITES: 737

23. Compression of high-energy laser pulses below 5 fs

M. Nisoli, S. De Silvestri, O. Svelto, R. Szipöcs, K. Ferencz, Ch. Spielmann, S. Sartania, and F. Krausz

Opt. Lett. 22(8) 522-524 (1997)
TOTAL CITES: 733

24. Theory of the soliton self-frequency shift

J. P. Gordon

Opt. Lett. 11(10) 662-664 (1986)
TOTAL CITES: 715

25. Discovery of the soliton self-frequency shift

F. M. Mitschke and L. F. Mollenauer

Opt. Lett. 11(10) 659-661 (1986)
TOTAL CITES: 714

26. Reconstruction of an object from the modulus of its Fourier transform

J. R. Fienup

Opt. Lett. 3(1) 27-29 (1978)
TOTAL CITES: 703

27. Sub-Poissonian photon statistics in resonance fluorescence

L. Mandel

Opt. Lett. 4(7) 205-207 (1979)
TOTAL CITES: 699

28. Spectral phase interferometry for direct electric-field reconstruction of ultrashort optical pulses

C. Iaconis and I. A. Walmsley

Opt. Lett. 23(10) 792-794 (1998)
TOTAL CITES: 699

29. Optical fiber long-period grating sensors

Vikram Bhatia and Ashish M. Vengsarkar

Opt. Lett. 21(9) 692-694 (1996)
TOTAL CITES: 688

30. In vivo ultrahigh-resolution optical coherence tomography

W. Drexler, U. Morgner, F. X. Kärtner, C. Pitris, S. A. Boppart, X. D. Li, E. P. Ippen, and J. G. Fujimoto

Opt. Lett. 24(17) 1221-1223 (1999)
TOTAL CITES: 671

31. Compression of optical pulses to six femtoseconds by using cubic phase compensation

R. L. Fork, C. H. Brito Cruz, P. C. Becker, and C. V. Shank

Opt. Lett. 12(7) 483-485 (1987)
TOTAL CITES: 662

32. Generation of optical phase singularities by computer-generated holograms

N. R. Heckenberg, R. McDuff, C. P. Smith, and A. G. White

Opt. Lett. 17(3) 221-223 (1992)
TOTAL CITES: 648

33. Self-pumped, continuous-wave phase conjugator using internal reflection

Jack Feinberg

Opt. Lett. 7(10) 486-488 (1982)
TOTAL CITES: 638

34. Micromachining bulk glass by use of femtosecond laser pulses with nanojoule energy

Chris B. Schaffer, André Brodeur, José F. García, and Eric Mazur

Opt. Lett. 26(2) 93-95 (2001)
TOTAL CITES: 628

35. Two-dimensional birefringence imaging in biological tissue by polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography

Johannes F. de Boer, Thomas E. Milner, Martin J. C. van Gemert, and J. Stuart Nelson

Opt. Lett. 22(12) 934-936 (1997)
TOTAL CITES: 617

36. Two-photon absorption and broadband optical limiting with bis-donor stilbenes

J. E. Ehrlich, X. L. Wu, I.-Y. S. Lee, Z.-Y. Hu, H. Röckel, S. R. Marder, and J. W. Perry

Opt. Lett. 22(24) 1843-1845 (1997)
TOTAL CITES: 611

37. Negative dispersion using pairs of prisms

R. L. Fork, O. E. Martinez, and J. P. Gordon

Opt. Lett. 9(5) 150-152 (1984)
TOTAL CITES: 610

38. Nonlinear-optical loop mirror

N. J. Doran and David Wood

Opt. Lett. 13(1) 56-58 (1988)
TOTAL CITES: 610

39. Random walk of coherently amplified solitons in optical fiber transmission

J. P. Gordon and H. A. Haus

Opt. Lett. 11(10) 665-667 (1986)
TOTAL CITES: 606

40. Ultrahigh-resolution optical coherence tomography using continuum generation in an air–silica microstructure optical fiber

I. Hartl, X. D. Li, C. Chudoba, R. K. Ghanta, T. H. Ko, J. G. Fujimoto, J. K. Ranka, and R. S. Windeler

Opt. Lett. 26(9) 608-610 (2001)
TOTAL CITES: 593

41. Coherent trapping of atomic populations

H. R. Gray, R. M. Whitley, and C. R. Stroud

Opt. Lett. 3(6) 218-220 (1978)
TOTAL CITES: 592

42. Ultimate Q of optical microsphere resonators

M. L. Gorodetsky, A. A. Savchenkov, and V. S. Ilchenko

Opt. Lett. 21(7) 453-455 (1996)
TOTAL CITES: 591

43. Frequency-modulation spectroscopy: a new method for measuring weak absorptions and dispersions

Gary C. Bjorklund

Opt. Lett. 5(1) 15-17 (1980)
TOTAL CITES: 583

44. Digital holography for quantitative phase-contrast imaging

Etienne Cuche, Frédéric Bevilacqua, and Christian Depeursinge

Opt. Lett. 24(5) 291-293 (1999)
TOTAL CITES: 578

45. Simple technique for measurements of pulsed Gaussian-beam spot sizes

J. M. Liu

Opt. Lett. 7(5) 196-198 (1982)
TOTAL CITES: 577

46. Digital holographic microscopy: a noninvasive contrast imaging technique allowing quantitative visualization of living cells with subwavelength axial accuracy

Pierre Marquet, Benjamin Rappaz, Pierre J. Magistretti, Etienne Cuche, Yves Emery, Tristan Colomb, and Christian Depeursinge

Opt. Lett. 30(5) 468-470 (2005)
TOTAL CITES: 572

47. Highly birefringent photonic crystal fibers

A. Ortigosa-Blanch, J. C. Knight, W. J. Wadsworth, J. Arriaga, B. J. Mangan, T. A. Birks, and P. St. J. Russell

Opt. Lett. 25(18) 1325-1327 (2000)
TOTAL CITES: 567

48. Guiding of a one-dimensional optical beam with nanometer diameter

Junichi Takahara, Suguru Yamagishi, Hiroaki Taki, Akihiro Morimoto, and Tetsuro Kobayashi

Opt. Lett. 22(7) 475-477 (1997)
TOTAL CITES: 562

49. Accelerating finite energy Airy beams

Georgios A. Siviloglou and Demetrios N. Christodoulides

Opt. Lett. 32(8) 979-981 (2007)
TOTAL CITES: 558

50. Supercontinuum generation in tapered fibers

T. A. Birks, W. J. Wadsworth, and P. St. J. Russell

Opt. Lett. 25(19) 1415-1417 (2000)
TOTAL CITES: 555

51. 77-fs pulse generation from a stretched-pulse mode-locked all-fiber ring laser

K. Tamura, E. P. Ippen, H. A. Haus, and L. E. Nelson

Opt. Lett. 18(13) 1080-1082 (1993)
TOTAL CITES: 549

52. Large second-order nonlinearity in poled fused silica

R. A. Myers, N. Mukherjee, and S. R. J. Brueck

Opt. Lett. 16(22) 1732-1734 (1991)
TOTAL CITES: 547

53. Mechanical equivalence of spin and orbital angular momentum of light: an optical spanner

N. B. Simpson, K. Dholakia, L. Allen, and M. J. Padgett

Opt. Lett. 22(1) 52-54 (1997)
TOTAL CITES: 539

54. Low-threshold lasing at the edge of a photonic stop band in cholesteric liquid crystals

V. I. Kopp, B. Fan, H. K. M. Vithana, and A. Z. Genack

Opt. Lett. 23(21) 1707-1709 (1998)
TOTAL CITES: 526

55. Negative-index metamaterial at 780 nm wavelength

G. Dolling, M. Wegener, C. M. Soukoulis, and S. Linden

Opt. Lett. 32(1) 53-55 (2007)
TOTAL CITES: 526

56. Phase-matched excitation of whispering-gallery-mode resonances by a fiber taper

J. C. Knight, G. Cheung, F. Jacques, and T. A. Birks

Opt. Lett. 22(15) 1129-1131 (1997)
TOTAL CITES: 524

57. Optical encryption by double-random phase encoding in the fractional Fourier domain

G. Unnikrishnan, J. Joseph, and K. Singh

Opt. Lett. 25(12) 887-889 (2000)
TOTAL CITES: 521

58. Collapse of optical pulses

Yaron Silberberg

Opt. Lett. 15(22) 1282-1284 (1990)
TOTAL CITES: 515

59. Three-dimensional optical data storage in refractive media by two-photon point excitation

James H. Strickler and Watt W. Webb

Opt. Lett. 16(22) 1780-1782 (1991)
TOTAL CITES: 509

60. Nanotaper for compact mode conversion

Vilson R. Almeida, Roberto R. Panepucci, and Michal Lipson

Opt. Lett. 28(15) 1302-1304 (2003)
TOTAL CITES: 498

61. Dye laser pumped by Nd:YAG laser pulses frequency doubled in a glass optical fiber

U. Österberg and W. Margulis

Opt. Lett. 11(8) 516-518 (1986)
TOTAL CITES: 492

62. Multiplexed fiber Bragg grating strain-sensor system with a fiber Fabry–Perot wavelength filter

A. D. Kersey, T. A. Berkoff, and W. W. Morey

Opt. Lett. 18(16) 1370-1372 (1993)
TOTAL CITES: 480

63. In vivo retinal imaging by optical coherence tomography

E. A. Swanson, J. A. Izatt, M. R. Hee, D. Huang, C. P. Lin, J. S. Schuman, C. A. Puliafito, and J. G. Fujimoto

Opt. Lett. 18(21) 1864-1866 (1993)
TOTAL CITES: 475

64. Intense terahertz pulses by four-wave rectification in air

D. J. Cook and R. M. Hochstrasser

Opt. Lett. 25(16) 1210-1212 (2000)
TOTAL CITES: 467

65. Method of obtaining optical sectioning by using structured light in a conventional microscope

M. A. A. Neil, R. Juškaitis, and T. Wilson

Opt. Lett. 22(24) 1905-1907 (1997)
TOTAL CITES: 465

66. Temperature-dependent Sellmeier equation for the index of refraction, ne, in congruent lithium niobate

Dieter H. Jundt

Opt. Lett. 22(20) 1553-1555 (1997)
TOTAL CITES: 462

67. Self-focusing and self-defocusing by cascaded second-order effects in KTP

R. DeSalvo, D. J. Hagan, M. Sheik-Bahae, G. Stegeman, E. W. Van Stryland, and H. Vanherzeele

Opt. Lett. 17(1) 28-30 (1992)
TOTAL CITES: 462

68. Surface-mediated enhancement of optical phase conjugation in metal colloids

D. Ricard, Ph. Roussignol, and Chr. Flytzanis

Opt. Lett. 10(10) 511-513 (1985)
TOTAL CITES: 459

69. Degenerate four-wave mixing in absorbing media

R. L. Abrams and R. C. Lind

Opt. Lett. 2(4) 94-96 (1978)
TOTAL CITES: 458

70. Phase noise in photonic communications systems using linear amplifiers

J. P. Gordon and L. F. Mollenauer

Opt. Lett. 15(23) 1351-1353 (1990)
TOTAL CITES: 455

71. Noise in homodyne and heterodyne detection

Horace P. Yuen and Vincent W. S. Chan

Opt. Lett. 8(3) 177-179 (1983)
TOTAL CITES: 447

72. Ge-on-Si laser operating at room temperature

Jifeng Liu, Xiaochen Sun, Rodolfo Camacho-Aguilera, Lionel C. Kimerling, and Jurgen Michel

Opt. Lett. 35(5) 679-681 (2010)
TOTAL CITES: 443

73. Shift of whispering-gallery modes in microspheres by protein adsorption

S. Arnold, M. Khoshsima, I. Teraoka, S. Holler, and F. Vollmer

Opt. Lett. 28(4) 272-274 (2003)
TOTAL CITES: 438

74. Solid-state low-loss intracavity saturable absorber for Nd:YLF lasers: an antiresonant semiconductor Fabry–Perot saturable absorber

U. Keller, D. A. B. Miller, G. D. Boyd, T. H. Chiu, J. F. Ferguson, and M. T. Asom

Opt. Lett. 17(7) 505-507 (1992)
TOTAL CITES: 436

75. Angle-multiplexed storage of 5000 holograms in lithium niobate

Fai H. Mok

Opt. Lett. 18(11) 915-917 (1993)
TOTAL CITES: 433

76. In vivo bidirectional color Doppler flow imaging of picoliter blood volumes using optical coherence tomography

Joseph A. Izatt, Manish D. Kulkarni, Siavash Yazdanfar, Jennifer K. Barton, and Ashley J. Welch

Opt. Lett. 22(18) 1439-1441 (1997)
TOTAL CITES: 423

77. Interaction forces among solitons in optical fibers

J. P. Gordon

Opt. Lett. 8(11) 596-598 (1983)
TOTAL CITES: 422

78. Optical vortex trapping of particles

K. T. Gahagan and G. A. Swartzlander

Opt. Lett. 21(11) 827-829 (1996)
TOTAL CITES: 419

79. Subfemtosecond pulses

P. B. Corkum, N. H. Burnett, and M. Y. Ivanov

Opt. Lett. 19(22) 1870-1872 (1994)
TOTAL CITES: 416

80. Experimental demonstration of guiding and confining light in nanometer-size low-refractive-index material

Qianfan Xu, Vilson R. Almeida, Roberto R. Panepucci, and Michal Lipson

Opt. Lett. 29(14) 1626-1628 (2004)
TOTAL CITES: 416

81. Phase-resolved optical coherence tomography and optical Doppler tomography for imaging blood flow in human skin with fast scanning speed and high velocity sensitivity

Yonghua Zhao, Zhongping Chen, Christopher Saxer, Shaohua Xiang, Johannes F. de Boer, and J. Stuart Nelson

Opt. Lett. 25(2) 114-116 (2000)
TOTAL CITES: 411

82. Near-field scanning optical microscope with a metallic probe tip

Yasushi Inouye and Satoshi Kawata

Opt. Lett. 19(3) 159-161 (1994)
TOTAL CITES: 410

83. Monolithic, unidirectional single-mode Nd:YAG ring laser

Thomas J. Kane and Robert L. Byer

Opt. Lett. 10(2) 65-67 (1985)
TOTAL CITES: 407

84. Sub-20-fs pulses tunable across the visible from a blue-pumped single-pass noncollinear parametric converter

T. Wilhelm, J. Piel, and E. Riedle

Opt. Lett. 22(19) 1494-1496 (1997)
TOTAL CITES: 405

85. Optical trapping of metallic Rayleigh particles

Karel Svoboda and Steven M. Block

Opt. Lett. 19(13) 930-932 (1994)
TOTAL CITES: 401

86. Petawatt laser pulses

M. D. Perry, D. Pennington, B. C. Stuart, G. Tietbohl, J. A. Britten, C. Brown, S. Herman, B. Golick, M. Kartz, J. Miller, H. T. Powell, M. Vergino, and V. Yanovsky

Opt. Lett. 24(3) 160-162 (1999)
TOTAL CITES: 395

87. Chirped multilayer coatings for broadband dispersion control in femtosecond lasers

Robert Szipöcs, Kárpát Ferencz, Christian Spielmann, and Ferenc Krausz

Opt. Lett. 19(3) 201-203 (1994)
TOTAL CITES: 394

88. General procedure for the analysis of Er3+ cross sections

W. J. Miniscalco and R. S. Quimby

Opt. Lett. 16(4) 258-260 (1991)
TOTAL CITES: 393

89. Infrared photosensitivity in silica glasses exposed to femtosecond laser pulses

D. Homoelle, S. Wielandy, Alexander L. Gaeta, N. F. Borrelli, and Charlene Smith

Opt. Lett. 24(18) 1311-1313 (1999)
TOTAL CITES: 391

90. Dynamic spatial replenishment of femtosecond pulses propagating in air

M. Mlejnek, E. M. Wright, and J. V. Moloney

Opt. Lett. 23(5) 382-384 (1998)
TOTAL CITES: 390

91. Fabrication of ultralow-loss Si/SiO2 waveguides by roughness reduction

Kevin K. Lee, Desmond R. Lim, Lionel C. Kimerling, Jangho Shin, and Franco Cerrina

Opt. Lett. 26(23) 1888-1890 (2001)
TOTAL CITES: 390

92. Scanning coherent anti-Stokes Raman microscope

M. D. Duncan, J. Reintjes, and T. J. Manuccia

Opt. Lett. 7(8) 350-352 (1982)
TOTAL CITES: 388

93. Femtosecond laser-assisted three-dimensional microfabrication in silica

Andrius Marcinkevičius, Saulius Juodkazis, Mitsuru Watanabe, Masafumi Miwa, Shigeki Matsuo, Hiroaki Misawa, and Junji Nishii

Opt. Lett. 26(5) 277-279 (2001)
TOTAL CITES: 385

94. Single-mode operation of a coiled multimode fiber amplifier

Jeffrey P. Koplow, Dahv A. V. Kliner, and Lew Goldberg

Opt. Lett. 25(7) 442-444 (2000)
TOTAL CITES: 384

95. Optical coherence tomography using a frequency-tunable optical source

S. R. Chinn, E. A. Swanson, and J. G. Fujimoto

Opt. Lett. 22(5) 340-342 (1997)
TOTAL CITES: 384

96. Two-photon absorption and optical-limiting properties of novel organic compounds

Guang S. He, Gen C. Xu, Paras N. Prasad, Bruce A. Reinhardt, Jay C. Bhatt, and Ann G. Dillard

Opt. Lett. 20(5) 435-437 (1995)
TOTAL CITES: 382

97. Conical emission from self-guided femtosecond pulses in air

E. T. J. Nibbering, P. F. Curley, G. Grillon, B. S. Prade, M. A. Franco, F. Salin, and A. Mysyrowicz

Opt. Lett. 21(1) 62-64 (1996)
TOTAL CITES: 381

98. Optical coherence microscopy in scattering media

Joseph A. Izatt, Michael R. Hee, Gabrielle M. Owen, Eric A. Swanson, and James G. Fujimoto

Opt. Lett. 19(8) 590-592 (1994)
TOTAL CITES: 379

99. Optical coherence-domain reflectometry: a new optical evaluation technique

Robert C. Youngquist, Sally Carr, and D. E. N. Davies

Opt. Lett. 12(3) 158-160 (1987)
TOTAL CITES: 378

100. Experimental three-dimensional fluorescence reconstruction of diffuse media by use of a normalized Born approximation

Vasilis Ntziachristos and Ralph Weissleder

Opt. Lett. 26(12) 893-895 (2001)
TOTAL CITES: 377

100. Double random-phase encoding in the Fresnel domain
Guohai Situ and Jingjuan Zhang
Opt. Lett. 29(14) 1584-1586 (2004)
TOTAL CITES: 377