100 Most Cited Articles JOSA

To highlight some of the seminal research published in JOSA, we asked Thomson Reuters, an authoritative aggregator of journal articles, to compile a list of the most-cited articles from JOSA.

*As of Summer 2015

See also JOSA A | JOSA B
  1. Fourier-transform method of fringe-pattern analysis for computer-based topography and interferometry

    Mitsuo Takeda, Hideki Ina, and Seiji Kobayashi

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 72(1) 156-160 (1982)

    TOTAL CITES: 2114

  2. Geometrical Theory of Diffraction*

    Joseph B. Keller

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 52(2) 116-130 (1962)

    TOTAL CITES: 1408

  3. Bayesian-Based Iterative Method of Image Restoration*

    William Hadley Richardson

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 62(1) 55-59 (1972)

    TOTAL CITES: 1356

  4. New Contributions to the Optics of Intensely Light-Scattering Materials. Part I

    Paul Kubelka

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 38(5) 448-457 (1948)

    TOTAL CITES: 1304

  5. Optics in Stratified and Anisotropic Media: 4×4-Matrix Formulation

    Dwight W. Berreman

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 62(4) 502-510 (1972)

    TOTAL CITES: 1274

  6. Zernike polynomials and atmospheric turbulence*

    Robert J. Noll

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 66(3) 207-211 (1976)

    TOTAL CITES: 1197

  7. A New Calculus for the Treatment of Optical SystemsI. Description and Discussion of the Calculus

    R. Clark Jones

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 31(7) 488-493 (1941)

    TOTAL CITES: 1061

  8. Rigorous coupled-wave analysis of planar-grating diffraction

    M. G. Moharam and T. K. Gaylord

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 71(7) 811-818 (1981)

    TOTAL CITES: 1058

  9. Lightness and Retinex Theory

    Edwin H. Land and John J. McCann

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 61(1) 1-11 (1971)

    TOTAL CITES: 1056

  10. Measurement of the Roughness of the Sea Surface from Photographs of the Sun’s Glitter

    Charles Cox and Walter Munk

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 44(11) 838-850 (1954)

    TOTAL CITES: 1018

  11. Interspecimen Comparison of the Refractive Index of Fused Silica*,†

    I. H. Malitson

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 55(10) 1205-1209 (1965)

    TOTAL CITES: 998

  12. Optical Resolution Through a Randomly Inhomogeneous Medium for Very Long and Very Short Exposures

    D. L. Fried

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 56(10) 1372-1379 (1966)

    TOTAL CITES: 950

  13. Long Optical Paths of Large Aperture

    John U. White

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 32(5) 285-288 (1942)

    TOTAL CITES: 919

  14. Approximate relativistic corrections to atomic radial wave functions*

    Robert D. Cowan and Donald C. Griffin

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 66(10) 1010-1014 (1976)

    TOTAL CITES: 912

  15. Image analysis via the general theory of moments*

    Michael Reed Teague

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 70(8) 920-930 (1980)

    TOTAL CITES: 904

  16. Electromagnetic propagation in periodic stratified media. I. General theory*

    Pochi Yeh, Amnon Yariv, and Chi-Shain Hong

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 67(4) 423-438 (1977)

    TOTAL CITES: 810

  17. Reconstructed Wavefronts and Communication Theory*

    Emmett N. Leith and Juris Upatnieks

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 52(10) 1123-1130 (1962)

    TOTAL CITES: 799

  18. Some fundamental properties of speckle*

    J. W. Goodman

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 66(11) 1145-1150 (1976)

    TOTAL CITES: 718

  19. Relation Between Surface Roughness and Specular Reflectance at Normal Incidence

    H. E. Bennett and J. O. Porteus

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 51(2) 123-129 (1961)

    TOTAL CITES: 696

  20. Formation of Optical Images by X-Rays

    Paul Kirkpatrick and A. V. Baez

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 38(9) 766-774 (1948)

    TOTAL CITES: 694

  21. Degenerate four-wave mixing in semiconductor-doped glasses

    R. K. Jain and R. C. Lind

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 73(5) 647-653 (1983)

    TOTAL CITES: 689

  22. Contrast masking in human vision

    Gordon E. Legge and John M. Foley

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 70(12) 1458-1471 (1980)

    TOTAL CITES: 685

  23. Diffraction analysis of dielectric surface-relief gratings

    M. G. Moharam and T. K. Gaylord

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 72(10) 1385-1392 (1982)

    TOTAL CITES: 654

  24. Lens-System Diffraction Integral Written in Terms of Matrix Optics*

    Stuart A. Collins

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 60(9) 1168-1177 (1970)

    TOTAL CITES: 644

  25. Theory for Off-Specular Reflection From Roughened Surfaces*

    K. E. Torrance and E. M. Sparrow

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 57(9) 1105-1114 (1967)

    TOTAL CITES: 637

  26. Theory of Prism–Film Coupler and Thin-Film Light Guides

    P. K. Tien and R. Ulrich

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 60(10) 1325-1337 (1970)

    TOTAL CITES: 600

  27. Mathematical description of the responses of simple cortical cells*

    S. Marĉelja

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 70(11) 1297-1300 (1980)

    TOTAL CITES: 600

  28. The Sensitivity Performance of the Human Eye on an Absolute Scale*

    Albert Rose

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 38(2) 196-208 (1948)

    TOTAL CITES: 588

  29. Wavefront Reconstruction with Diffused Illumination and Three-Dimensional Objects*

    Emmett N. Leith and Juris Upatnieks

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 54(11) 1295-1301 (1964)

    TOTAL CITES: 574

  30. Visual Sensitivities to Color Differences in Daylight*

    David L. MacAdam

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 32(5) 247-274 (1942)

    TOTAL CITES: 569

  31. Chromaticity diagram showing cone excitation by stimuli of equal luminance

    Donald I. A. MacLeod and Robert M. Boynton

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 69(8) 1183-1186 (1979)

    TOTAL CITES: 531

  32. Electric Fields Produced by the Propagation of Plane Coherent Electromagnetic Radiation in a Stratified Medium

    Wilford N. Hansen

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 58(3) 380-390 (1968)

    TOTAL CITES: 530

  33. Spatial and Temporal Contrast-Sensitivity Functions of the Visual System

    J. G. Robson

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 56(8) 1141-1142 (1966)

    TOTAL CITES: 528

  34. Spectra-Structure Correlations in the Infra-Red Region

    N. B. Colthup

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 40(6) 397-400 (1950)

    TOTAL CITES: 524

  35. Contrast Thresholds of the Human Eye

    H. Richard Blackwell

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 36(11) 624-643 (1946)

    TOTAL CITES: 488

  36. Deterministic phase retrieval: a Green’s function solution

    Michael Reed Teague

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 73(11) 1434-1441 (1983)

    TOTAL CITES: 488

  37. Theory of Bragg fiber*

    Pochi Yeh, Amnon Yariv, and Emanuel Marom

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 68(9) 1196-1201 (1978)

    TOTAL CITES: 480

  38. The Axicon: A New Type of Optical Element

    John H. McLeod

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 44(8) 592-597 (1954)

    TOTAL CITES: 477

  39. Statistics of a Geometric Representation of Wavefront Distortion

    D. L. Fried

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 55(11) 1427-1435 (1965)

    TOTAL CITES: 450

  40. Interferometric Vibration Analysis by Wavefront Reconstruction

    Robert L. Powell and Karl A. Stetson

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 55(12) 1593-1598 (1965)

    TOTAL CITES: 450

  41. The Theory of Anomalous Diffraction Gratings and of Quasi-Stationary Waves on Metallic Surfaces (Sommerfeld’s Waves)

    U. Fano

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 31(3) 213-222 (1941)

    TOTAL CITES: 446

  42. Restoring with Maximum Likelihood and Maximum Entropy*

    B. Roy Frieden

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 62(4) 511-518 (1972)

    TOTAL CITES: 441

  43. Final Report of the O.S.A. Subcommittee on the Spacing of the Munsell Colors*

    Sidney M. Newhall, Dorothy Nickerson, and Deane B. Judd

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 33(7) 385-418 (1943)

    TOTAL CITES: 428

  44. Statistical ray optics

    Eli Yablonovitch

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 72(7) 899-907 (1982)

    TOTAL CITES: 425

  45. Photoelectric Light-Scattering Photometer for Determining High Molecular Weights*

    B. A. Brice, M. Halwer, and R. Speiser

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 40(11) 768-778 (1950)

    TOTAL CITES: 424

  46. Total Quantum Flux of Isotropic Sources*

    J. Woodland Hastings and Gregorio Weber

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 53(12) 1410-1415 (1963)

    TOTAL CITES: 421

  47. The time-dependent physical spectrum of light*

    J. H. Eberly and K. Wódkiewicz

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 67(9) 1252-1261 (1977)

    TOTAL CITES: 411

  48. Generation of time-reversed wave fronts by nonlinear refraction*

    R. W. Hellwarth

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 67(1) 1-3 (1977)

    TOTAL CITES: 403

  49. Motion and vision. II. Stabilized spatio-temporal threshold surface

    D. H. Kelly

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 69(10) 1340-1349 (1979)

    TOTAL CITES: 403

  50. A New Calculus for the Treatment of Optical Systems. VII. Properties of the N-Matrices

    R. Clark Jones

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 38(8) 671-685 (1948)

    TOTAL CITES: 402

  51. Wave-front estimation from wave-front slope measurements

    W.H. Southwell

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 70(8) 998-1006 (1980)

    TOTAL CITES: 401

  52. Spectral Distribution of Typical Daylight as a Function of Correlated Color Temperature

    Deane B. Judd, David L. MacAdam, Günter Wyszecki, H. W. Budde, H. R. Condit, S. T. Henderson, and J. L. Simonds

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 54(8) 1031-1040 (1964)

    TOTAL CITES: 397

  53. Optical and Photoelectric Analog of the Eye

    Otto H. Schade

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 46(9) 721-739 (1956)

    TOTAL CITES: 396

  54. Analysis of Response Patterns of LGN Cells*

    Russell L. De Valois, Israel Abramov, and Gerald H. Jacobs

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 56(7) 966-977 (1966)

    TOTAL CITES: 394

  55. Cylindrical Dielectric Waveguide Modes*

    E. Snitzer

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 51(5) 491-498 (1961)

    TOTAL CITES: 391

  56. Magnification and Third-Order Aberrations in Holography*

    Reinhard W. Meier

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 55(8) 987-992 (1965)

    TOTAL CITES: 388

  57. Theoretical Calculation of Atomic Spectra Using Digital Computers*

    Robert D. Cowan

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 58(6) 808-818 (1968)

    TOTAL CITES: 388

  58. Effects of Components of Displacement-Step Stimuli Upon Latency for Saccadic Eye Movement

    M. G. Saslow

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 57(8) 1024-1029 (1967)

    TOTAL CITES: 387

  59. Spatial Modulation Transfer in the Human Eye

    Floris L. Van Nes and Maarten A. Bouman

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 57(3) 401-406 (1967)

    TOTAL CITES: 386

  60. Optical constants from the far infrared to the x-ray region: Mg, Al, Cu, Ag, Au, Bi, C, and Al2O3

    H.-J. Hagemann, W. Gudat, and C. Kunz

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 65(6) 742-744 (1975)

    TOTAL CITES: 382

  61. The Dispersion of Standard Air*

    Bengt Edlén

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 43(5) 339-344 (1953)

    TOTAL CITES: 382

  62. Electromagnetic propagation in birefringent layered media

    Pochi Yeh

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 69(5) 742-756 (1979)

    TOTAL CITES: 381

  63. Visual Responses to Time-Dependent Stimuli.* I. Amplitude Sensitivity Measurements†

    D. H. Kelly

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 51(4) 422-429 (1961)

    TOTAL CITES: 377

  64. Spatial-Frequency Channels in Human Vision*

    Murray B. Sachs, Jacob Nachmias, and John G. Robson

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 61(9) 1176-1186 (1971)

    TOTAL CITES: 376

  65. Piezo-Optical Birefringence Modulators: New Use for a Long-Known Effect

    James C. Kemp

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 59(8) 950-954 (1969)

    TOTAL CITES: 368

  66. The Disappearance of Steadily Fixated Visual Test Objects*

    Lorrin A. Riggs, Floyd Ratliff, Janet C. Cornsweet, and Tom N. Cornsweet

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 43(6) 495-501 (1953)

    TOTAL CITES: 368

  67. The 1s-3p Kβ-like x-ray spectrum of highly ionized iron

    M. Klapisch, J. L. Schwob, B. S. Fraenkel, and J. Oreg

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 67(2) 148-155 (1977)

    TOTAL CITES: 362

  68. The Farnsworth-Munsell 100-Hue and Dichotomous Tests for Color Vision*

    Dean Farnsworth

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 33(10) 568-578 (1943)

    TOTAL CITES: 359

  69. Transmission Filters for the Ultraviolet*

    M. Kasha

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 38(11) 929-934 (1948)

    TOTAL CITES: 354

  70. Wavefront Reconstruction with Continuous-Tone Objects*

    Emmett N. Leith and Juris Upatnieks

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 53(12) 1377-1381 (1963)

    TOTAL CITES: 352

  71. The Optical Constants of Silver, Gold, Copper, and Aluminum. I. The Absorption Coefficient k

    L. G. Schulz

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 44(5) 357-362 (1954)

    TOTAL CITES: 349

  72. Theory of Fresnel Images. I. Plane Periodic Objects in Monochromatic Light*

    John T. Winthrop and C. R. Worthington

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 55(4) 373-381 (1965)

    TOTAL CITES: 344

  73. Coupled-Mode Theory for Optical Fibers

    Allan W. Snyder

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 62(11) 1267-1277 (1972)

    TOTAL CITES: 341

  74. New theory of partial coherence in the space–frequency domain. Part I: spectra and cross spectra of steady-state sources

    Emil Wolf

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 72(3) 343-351 (1982)

    TOTAL CITES: 341

  75. Curvature loss formula for optical fibers

    Dietrich Marcuse

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 66(3) 216-220 (1976)

    TOTAL CITES: 338

  76. Modulation Transfer Function Associated with Image Transmission through Turbulent Media

    R. E. Hufnagel and N. R. Stanley

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 54(1) 52-61 (1964)

    TOTAL CITES: 337

  77. Electron Binding Energies in Free Atoms*

    Wolfgang Lotz

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 60(2) 206-210 (1970)

    TOTAL CITES: 335

  78. Optical properties of water in the near infrared*

    Kent F. Palmer and Dudley Williams

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 64(8) 1107-1110 (1974)

    TOTAL CITES: 332

  79. Multicoated gratings: a differential formalism applicable in the entire optical region

    J. Chandezon, M. T. Dupuis, G. Cornet, and D. Maystre

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 72(7) 839-846 (1982)

    TOTAL CITES: 332

  80. Research into the Dynamic Nature of the Human Fovea→Cortex Systems with Intermittent and Modulated Light. I. Attenuation Characteristics with White and Colored Light

    H. de Lange Dzn

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 48(11) 777-784 (1958)

    TOTAL CITES: 329

  81. Luminance and opponent-color contributions to visual detection and adaptation and to temporal and spatial integration

    P. E. King-Smith and D. Carden

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 66(7) 709-717 (1976)

    TOTAL CITES: 325

  82. The Near Infrared Absorption Spectrum of Liquid Water

    Joseph A. Curcio and Charles C. Petty

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 41(5) 302-304 (1951)

    TOTAL CITES: 325

  83. Absorption Coefficients of Water Vapor in the Vacuum Ultraviolet

    K. Watanabe and Murray Zelikoff

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 43(9) 753-755 (1953)

    TOTAL CITES: 318

  84. Visual Resolution and Contour Interaction*

    Merton C. Flom, Frank W. Weymouth, and Daniel Kahneman

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 53(9) 1026-1032 (1963)

    TOTAL CITES: 315

  85. The Structure of Evaporated Metal Films and Their Optical Properties

    R. S. Sennett and G. D. Scott

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 40(4) 203-211 (1950)

    TOTAL CITES: 315

  86. Absorption Coefficient of Ozone in the Ultraviolet and Visible Regions

    Edward C. Y. Inn and Yoshio Tanaka

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 43(10) 870-873 (1953)

    TOTAL CITES: 314

  87. Least-square fitting a wave-front distortion estimate to an array of phase-difference measurements

    David L. Fried

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 67(3) 370-375 (1977)

    TOTAL CITES: 312

  88. Tandem-Scanning Reflected-Light Microscope*

    Mojmír Petráň, Milan Hadravský, M. David Egger, and Robert Galambos

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 58(5) 661-664 (1968)

    TOTAL CITES: 308

  89. Metacontrast

    Mathew Alpern

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 43(8) 648-657 (1953)

    TOTAL CITES: 306

  90. Wigner distribution function and its application to first-order optics

    M. J. Bastiaans

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 69(12) 1710-1716 (1979)

    TOTAL CITES: 305

  91. The Luminosity of Spectrometers with Prisms, Gratings, or Fabry-Perot Etalons

    Pierre Jacquinot

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 44(10) 761-765 (1954)

    TOTAL CITES: 299

  92. Energy Level and Line Tables for One-Electron Atomic Spectra*

    J. D. Garcia and J. E. Mack

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 55(6) 654-685 (1965)

    TOTAL CITES: 298

  93. Infrared Spectra of Monolayers on Metal Mirrors

    S. A. Francis and A. H. Ellison

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 49(2) 131-138 (1959)

    TOTAL CITES: 297

  94. Optical Constants of Silver, Gold, Copper, and Aluminum. II. The Index of Refraction n

    L. G. Schulz and F. R. Tangherlini

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 44(5) 362-368 (1954)

    TOTAL CITES: 295

  95. Retinal Noise and Absolute Threshold

    H. B. Barlow

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 46(8) 634-639 (1956)

    TOTAL CITES: 293

  96. New Contributions to the Optics of Intensely Light-Scattering Materials. Part II: Nonhomogeneous Layers*

    Paul Kubelka

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 44(4) 330-335 (1954)

    TOTAL CITES: 292

  97. Asymmetric self-defocusing of an optical beam from the photorefractive effect

    Jack Feinberg

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 72(1) 46-51 (1982)

    TOTAL CITES: 289

  98. Spatial-Frequency Masking in Vision: Critical Bands and Spread of Masking*

    Charles F. Stromeyer and Bela Julesz

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 62(10) 1221-1232 (1972)

    TOTAL CITES: 288

  99. Tables of the Refractive Index for Standard Air and the Rayleigh Scattering Coefficient for the Spectral Region between 0.2 and 20.0 μ and Their Application to Atmospheric Optics

    Rudolf Penndorf

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 47(2) 176-182 (1957)

    TOTAL CITES: 286

  100. Determination of the Properties of Films on Silicon by the Method of Ellipsometry

    R. J. Archer

    J. Opt. Soc. Am. 52(9) 970-977 (1962)

    TOTAL CITES: 285