About Photonics

What is Photonics?

The generation, manipulation, transport detection, and use of light information and energy whose quantum unit is the photon, defines the world of photonics.

Photonics is a field that began with the invention of the laser in the early 1960's and is unfolding a world in which light will be used to perform multiple everyday functions in the areas of sight, sensing, imaging, energy usage, and communication.

Photonics is changing our lives.

Recent studies point to an explosive growth of optics and photonics:

• Photonics is predicted to be the next major technology to drive the economy and improve our quality of life. Photonics is an enabling technology.
• Light is used to perform many of our everyday functions... things we take for granted... it is pervasive!
• Optical materials are at the heart of the semi-conductor industry.
• Modern optics opens our vision to the farthest reaches of the cosmos, and into the infinitesimal world of nanotechnology.
• Optical microscopes allow us to see into micro worlds that contain hidden mysteries.
• Sophisticated large mirrors made with the latest optical techniques, are creating telescopes that can see further out in space then ever before, allowing understandings of our universe to unfold.

Photonics is very interdisciplinary... it combines optics with many other fields:

• physics
• electronics
• medicine
• biology
• astronomy