Editorial: Breakthroughs in Photonics 2012

Breakthroughs in Photonics is a Special Issue of the IEEE Photonics Journal that brings a compilation of short reviews describing significant accomplishments in selected areas of Photonics within the last year. Breakthroughs in Photonics 2012 contains 14 invited comprehensive, refereed reviews written by experts that cover progress in the areas of Coherent Photon Sources; Photonics materials and engineered photonic structures; Ultrafast, attosecond, high field, and short wavelength photonics; Nano-photonics; Photovoltaics; Biophotonics; Sensors; Imaging and Visualization; Integrated Photonic Systems; and Quantum Computing. The selection of the topics and invited contributions is carried out by the IEEE Photonics Journal Editorial Board. The articles in this focus issue highlight the increasingly dominant role of photonics in unraveling fundamental science and, at the same time, enabling applications in, for example, sensing and visualization, nanofabrication, photovoltaics, fiber optics, and quantum photonics. The adoption of article numbers versus page numbers by the IEEE Photonics Journal in 2013 enables, for the first time, publication of each article from Breakthroughs in Photonics 2012 independently in IEEE Xplore, providing more visibility to authors and enhanced readership.