Each year the SPIRES database team compiles a list of the most-cited research articles in high-energy physics. Here we present the most recent addition to this collection. As usual, the Particle Data Group's "Review of Particle Physics" tops the 2009 list of the most-cited papers. The rest of the Top Ten is composed of papers in observational astrophysics/cosmology as well as now-classic string theory papers.

The astrophysics/cosmology contingent, bolstered by SPIRES' inclusion a few years ago of more astrophysics literature, includes three by WMAP [2,4,10] and one each by the Supernova Cosmology Project [6] and Supernova Search Team [7], as well as the Schlegel-Finkbeiner-Davis paper [5] on maps of dust (a more detailed discussion of many of these papers can be found in Scott Dodelson's special 2003 astro-ph topcite review). The string theory classics are the papers of Maldacena [3], Witten [8] and Gubser-Klebanov-Polyakov [9] (more information on these can be found in the 1998 topcites review by Michael Peskin).

Other lists, including those from past years, can be interesting to look at. Pay special attention to the lists broken down by eprint archives, which identify papers of interest both from and within the various subfields of high-energy physics.

Keep in mind that citation counts can never be exact; there is something like a 5 percent error in most of these numbers. Please do not fret about number 32 versus 33, as this is often not a statistically significant difference. Remember the detailed warning about the accuracy of these counts.

Also note that the counts shown and used in the rankings are the counts as of Thursday March 4th 2010. Further, the counts shown by the ranking are only the cites satisfying the criteria for that list. Actual citation numbers in the database may change as corrections are made and papers are added; the links will take you to the updated numbers. The lists, however, will not update.

The first number for each entry is the number of papers in SPIRES that cited this paper in 2009. The second number, "total citations in SPIRES," is the total number of papers in SPIRES that have cited this paper in all years.

1. 2202 "Review of Particle Physics" by the Particle Data Group. This review is published every other year. The most recent version is published in Phys.Lett.B667:1,2008. [2374 total citations for the most recent version, and a total of 36,001 citations in SPIRES for all the versions over the years.]

2. 1058 "Five-year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) observations: cosmological interpretation" by the WMAP Collaboration. Published in Astrophys.J.Suppl.180:330-376,2009(arXiv:0803.0547) [1953 total citations in SPIRES]

3. 706"The Large N limit of superconformal field theories and supergravity" by Juan Martin Maldacena (Harvard University.) Published in Adv.Theor.Math.Phys.2:231-252,1998, Int.J.Theor.Phys.38:1113-1133,1999(arXiv:hep-th/9711200) [6662 total citations in SPIRES]

4. 595 "Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) three-year results: implications for cosmology," by the WMAP Collaboration. Published in Astrophys.J.Suppl.170:377,2007(arXiv:astro-ph/0603449) [3993 total citations in SPIRES]

5. 578"Maps of dust IR emission for use in estimation of reddening and CMBR foregrounds" by David J. Schlegel (Durham University) and Douglas P. Finkbeiner and Marc Davis (UC Berkeley). Published in Astrophys.J.500:525,1998(arXiv:astro-ph/9710327) [4604 total citations in SPIRES]

6. 540 "Measurements of Omega and Lambda from 42 high-redshift supernovae" by the Supernova Cosmology Project. Published in Astrophys.J.517:565-586,1999(arXiv:astro-ph/9812133) [4816 total citations in SPIRES]

7. 509 "Observational evidence from supernovae for an accelerating universe and a cosmological constant" by the Supernova Search Team. Published in Astron.J.116:1009-1038,1998(arXiv:astro-ph/9805201) [4678 total citations in SPIRES]

8. 466"Anti-de Sitter space and holography" by Edward Witten (Princeton University, Institute for Advanced Study). Published in Adv.Theor.Math.Phys.2:253-291,1998(arXiv:hep-th/9802150) [4437 total citations in SPIRES]

9. 421"Gauge theory correlators from noncritical string theory" by S.S. Gubser, Igor R. Klebanov, and Alexander M. Polyakov (Princeton University). Published in Phys.Lett.B428:105-114,1998(arXiv:hep-th/9802109) [3919 total citations in SPIRES]

10. 416 "First year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) observations: Determination of cosmological parameters" by the WMAP Collaboration. Published in Astrophys.J.Suppl.148:175-194,2003(arXiv:astro-ph/0302209) [5652 total citations in SPIRES]

11. 405 "Five-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Likelihoods and Parameters from the WMAP data" by the WMAP Collaboration. Published in Astrophys.J.Suppl.180:306-329,2009(arXiv:0803.0586) [803 total citations in SPIRES]

12. 371"An anomalous positron abundance in cosmic rays with energies 1.5.100 GeV" by the PAMELA Collaboration. Published in Nature 458:607-609,2009(arXiv:0810.4995) [487 total citations in SPIRES]

13. 369"Stellar population synthesis at the resolution of 2003" by G. Bruzual (Merida, CIDA), Stephane Charlot (Garching, Max Planck Institute & Paris Institute of Astrophysics.). Published in Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc.344:1000,2003(arXiv:astro-ph/0309134) [1667 total citations in SPIRES]

14. 369"A Large mass hierarchy from a small extra dimension" by Lisa Randall (Princeton University & MIT) and Raman Sundrum (Boston University). Published in Phys.Rev.Lett.83:3370-3373,1999(arXiv:hep-ph/9905221) [4471 total citations in SPIRES]

15. 357"A Universal density profile from hierarchical clustering" by Julio F. Navarro ( University of Arizona Department of Astronomy and Steward Observatory), Carlos S. Frenk (Durham University), and Simon D.M. White (Garching, Max Planck Institute.). Published in Astrophys.J.490:493-508,1997(arXiv:astro-ph/9611107) [2539 total citations in SPIRES]

16. 329 "The Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Technical Summary" by the SDSS Collaboration. Published in Astron.J.120:1579-1587,2000(arXiv:astro-ph/0006396) [2111 total citations in SPIRES]

17. 329"The Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS)" by M.F. Skrutskie, R.M. Cutri, R. Stiening, M.D. Weinberg, S. Schneider, J.M. Carpenter, C. Beichman, R. Capps, T. Chester, J. Elias, J. Huchra, J. Liebert, C. Lonsdale, D.G. Monet, S. Price, P. Seitzer, T. Jarrett, J.D. Kirkpatrick, J.E. Gizis, E. Howard, T. Evans, J. Fowler, L. Fullmer, R. Hurt, R. Light, E.L. Kopan, K.A. Marsh, H.L. McCallon, R. Tam, S. Van Dyk, and S. Wheelock. Published in Astron.J.131:1163-1183,2006 [1028 total citations in SPIRES]

18. 323"PYTHIA 6.4 Physics and Manual" by Torbjorn Sjostrand (Lund University), and Stephen Mrenna and Peter Z. Skands (Fermilab). Published in JHEP 0605:026,2006(arXiv:hep-ph/0603175) [832 total citations in SPIRES]

19. 289"The relationship between infrared, optical, and ultraviolet extinction" by Jason A. Cardelli, Geoffrey C. Clayton, and John S. Mathis (Washburn Observatory). Published in Astrophys.J.345:245-256,1989 [2327 total citations in SPIRES]

20. 274"An Alternative to compactification" by Lisa Randall (Princeton University & MIT) and Raman Sundrum (Boston University). Published in Phys.Rev.Lett.83:4690-4693,1999(arXiv:hep-th/9906064) [3929 total citations in SPIRES]

21. 271"The Luminosity function and stellar evolution" by Edwin E. Salpeter (Australian National University, Canberra & Cornell University). Published in Astrophys.J.121:161-167,1955 [1782 total citations in SPIRES]

22. 262 "Five-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Data Processing, Sky Maps, and Basic Results" by the WMAP Collaboration. Published in Astrophys.J.Suppl.180:225-245,2009(arXiv:0803.0732) [524 total citations in SPIRES]

23. 259"Dynamics of dark energy" by Edmund J. Copeland (Nottingham University), M. Sami (Jamia Millia Islamia), and Shinji Tsujikawa (Gunma National College of Technology). Published in: nt.J.Mod.Phys.D15:1753-1936,2006(arXiv:hep-th/0603057) [1015 total citations in SPIRES]

24. 257"An excess of cosmic ray electrons at energies of 300.800 GeV" by J. Chang, J.H. Adams, H.S. Ahn, G.L. Bashindzhagyan, M. Christl, O. Ganel, T.G. Guzik, J. Isbert, K.C. Kim, E.N. Kuznetsov, M.I. Panasyuk, A.D. Panov, W.K.H. Schmidt, E.S. Seo, N.V. Sokolskaya, J.W. Watts, J.P. Wefel, J. Wu, V.I. Zatsepin (Purple Mountain Observatory & Lindau, Max Planck Institute & NASA, Marshall & Maryland University & Moscow State University & Louisiana State University). Published in Nature 456:362-365,2008 [311 total citations in SPIRES]

25. 257"New generation of partondistributions with uncertainties from global QCD analysis" by J. Pumplin, D.R. Stump, J. Huston, H.L. Lai, Pavel M. Nadolsky, W.K. Tung (Michigan State University). Published in JHEP 0207:012,2002(arXiv:hep-ph/0201195) [1616 total citations in SPIRES]

26. 247"Black holes in binary systems. Observational appearance" by N.I. Shakura (Sternberg Astronomical Institute), and R.A. Sunyaev (Moscow, IPM). Published in Astron.Astrophys.24:337-355,1973 [1717 total citations in SPIRES]

27. 245"The Hierarchy problem and new dimensions at a millimeter" by Nima Arkani-Hamed (SLAC), Savas Dimopoulos (Stanford University), and G.R. Dvali (Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics, Trieste). Published in Phys.Lett.B429:263-272,1998(arXiv:hep-ph/9803315) [3938 total citations in SPIRES]

28. 241 "Detection of the baryon acoustic peak in the large-scale correlation function of SDSS luminous red galaxies" by the SDSS Collaboration. Published in Astrophys.J.633:560-574,2005(arXiv:astro-ph/0501171) [987 total citations in SPIRES]

29. 240"The structure of cold dark matter halos" by Julio F. Navarro (University of Arizona Department of Astronomy and Steward Observatory), Carlos S. Frenk (Durham University), and Simon D.M. White (Garching, Max Planck Institute). Published in Astrophys.J.462:563-575,1996(arXiv:astro-ph/9508025) [1881 total citations in SPIRES]

30. 229"A Theory of Dark Matter" by Nima Arkani-Hamed (Princeton, Institute for Advanced Study), Douglas P. Finkbeiner (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), Tracy R. Slatyer (Harvard University), and Neal Weiner (Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics, New York University). Published in Phys.Rev.D79:015014,2009(arXiv:0810.0713) [306 total citations in SPIRES]

31. 227"Supersymmetric dark matter" by Gerard Jungman (Syracuse University), Marc Kamionkowski (Columbia University & Princeton, Institute for Advanced Study), and Kim Griest (UC San Diego). Published in Phys.Rept.267:195-373,1996(arXiv:hep-ph/9506380) [1384 total citations in SPIRES]

32. 225 "Type Ia supernova discoveries at z > 1 from the Hubble Space Telescope: Evidence for past deceleration and constraints on dark energy evolution" by the Supernova Search Team. Published in Astrophys.J.607:665-687,2004(arXiv:astro-ph/0402512) [1814 total citations in SPIRES]

33. 224"N=6 superconformal Chern-Simons-matter theories, M2-branes and their gravity duals" by Ofer Aharony (Weizmann Institute), Oren Bergman (Princeton, Institute for Advanced Study & Technion), Daniel Louis Jafferis (Rutgers University, Piscataway), and Juan Maldacena (Princeton, Institute for Advanced Study). Published in:JHEP 0810:091,2008(arXiv:0806.1218) [423 total citations in SPIRES]

34. 222 "Improved Cosmological Constraints from New, Old and Combined Supernova Datasets" by the Supernova Cosmology Project. Published in Astrophys.J.686:749-778,2008(arXiv:0804.4142) [335 total citations in SPIRES]

35. 221"Measurement of the Cosmic Ray e+ plus e- spectrum from 20 GeVto 1 TeV with the Fermi Large Area Telescope" by the Fermi LAT Collaboration. Published in Phys.Rev.Lett.102:181101,2009(arXiv:0905.0025) [264 total citations in SPIRES]

36. 220 "Particle Creation by Black Holes" by S.W. Hawking (Cambridge University). Published in Commun.Math.Phys.43:199-220,1975, Erratum-ibid.46:206-206,1976 [3515 total citations in SPIRES]

37. 214 "The cosmological constant and dark energy" by P.J.E. Peebles (Princeton University) and Bharat Ratra (Kansas State University). Published in Rev.Mod.Phys.75:559-606,2003(arXiv:astro-ph/0207347) [1465 total citations in SPIRES]

38. 212 "The supernova legacy survey: Measurement of omega(m), omega(lambda) and W from the first year data set" by the SNLS Collaboration. Published in Astron.Astrophys.447:31-48,2006(arXiv:astro-ph/0510447) [1065 total citations in SPIRES]

39. 208 "Quantum Gravity at a Lifshitz Point " by Petr Horava (UC Berkeley & Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory). Published in Phys.Rev.D79:084008,2009(arXiv:0901.3775) [247 total citations in SPIRES]

40. 208 "CP Violation in the Renormalizable Theory of Weak Interaction" by Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa (Kyoto University). Published in Prog.Theor.Phys.49:652-657,1973 [5950 total citations in SPIRES]

41. 204"Simulating the joint evolution of quasars, galaxies and their large-scale distribution" by Volker Springel, Simon D.M. White, Adrian Jenkins, Carlos S. Frenk, Naoki Yoshida, Liang Gao, Julio Navarro, Robert Thacker, Darren Croton, John Helly, John A. Peacock, Shaun Cole, Peter Thomas, Hugh Couchman, August Evrard, Joerg Colberg, Frazer Pearce (Garching, Max Planck Institute & Durham University & Nagoya University & Victoria University & McMaster University & Edinburgh University Institute for Astronomy & University of Sussex & University of Sussex Astronomy Center & Michigan University & Pittsburgh University & Nottingham University). Published in Nature 435:629-636,2005(arXiv:astro-ph/0504097) [737 total citations in SPIRES]

42. 204 "Star formation in galaxies along the Hubble sequence" by Robert C. Kennicutt, Jr. (University of Arizona Department of Astronomy and Steward Observatory). Published in Ann.Rev.Astron.Astrophys.36:189-231,1998(arXiv:astro-ph/9807187) [1180 total citations in SPIRES]

42. 204 "Experimental and theoretical challenges in the search for the quark gluon plasma: The STAR Collaboration's critical assessment of the evidence from RHIC collisions" by the STAR Collaboration> Published in Nucl.Phys.A757:102-183,2005(arXiv:nucl-ex/0501009) [863 total citations in SPIRES]

43. 195 "The Sixth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey" by the SDSS Collaboration. Published in Astrophys.J.Suppl.175:297-313,2008(arXiv:0707.3413) [400 total citations in SPIRES]

44. 195"4-D gravity on a brane in 5-D Minkowski space" by G.R. Dvali, Gregory Gabadadze, and Massimo Porrati (New York University). Published in Phys.Lett.B485:208-214,2000(arXiv:hep-th/0005016) [1138 total citations in SPIRES]

45. 195"Large N field theories, string theory and gravity" by Ofer Aharony (Rutgers University, Piscataway), Steven S. Gubser (Harvard University), Juan Martin Maldacena (Harvard University & Princeton Institute for Advanced Study), Hirosi Ooguri (UC Berkeley & Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory), and Yaron Oz (CERN). Published in Phys.Rept.323:183-386,2000(arXiv:hep-th/9905111) [2247 total citations in SPIRES]

46. 193 "Formation of dense partonic matter in relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions at RHIC: Experimental evaluation by the PHENIX collaboration" by the PHENIX Collaboration. Published in Nucl.Phys.A757:184-283,2005(arXiv:nucl-ex/0410003) [852 total citations in SPIRES]

47. 193 "mu --> e gamma at a Rate of One Out of 1-Billion Muon Decays?" by Peter Minkowski (Bern University). Published in Phys.Lett.B67:421,1977 [897 total citations in SPIRES]

48. 192"The Many lives of AGN: Cooling flows, black holes and the luminosities and colours of galaxies" by Darren J. Croton, Volker Springel, Simon D.M. White, G. De Lucia (Garching, Max Planck Insttitute), C.S. Frenk (Durham University), L. Gao (Garching, Max Planck Institute), A . Jenkins (Durham University), G. Kauffmann (Garching, Max Planck Institute), J.F. Navarro (Victoria University), and N. Yoshida (Nagoya University). Published in Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc.365:11-28,2006(arXiv:astro-ph/0508046) [672 total citations in SPIRES]

49. 186"The Cosmological simulation code GADGET-2" by Volker Springel (Garching, Max Planck Institute). Published in Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc.364:1105-1134,2005(arXiv:astro-ph/0505010) [643 total citations in SPIRES]

50. 186 "GEANT4: A Simulation toolkit" by GEANT4. Published in Nucl.Instrum.Meth.A506:250-303,2003 [932 total citations in SPIRES]