Optics tools include the refracting lens, the reflecting mirror, and various optical components and instruments developed throughout the 15th to 19th centuries. Classical optics long preceded the discovery that light is quantized, when Albert Einstein famously explained the photoelectric effect in 1905. Relationship to other fields Classical optics Further growth of photonics is likely if current silicon photonics developments are successful. However, photonics covers a huge range of science and technology applications, including laser manufacturing, biological and chemical sensing, medical diagnostics and therapy, display technology, and optical computing. ĭuring the period leading up to the dot-com crash circa 2001, photonics as a field focused largely on optical telecommunications. Its use was confirmed when the IEEE Lasers and Electro-Optics Society established an archival journal named Photonics Technology Letters at the end of the 1980s. At that time, the term was used widely at Bell Laboratories. Though coined earlier, the term photonics came into common use in the 1980s as fiber-optic data transmission was adopted by telecommunications network operators. These inventions formed the basis for the telecommunications revolution of the late 20th century and provided the infrastructure for the Internet. Other developments followed: the laser diode in the 1970s, optical fibers for transmitting information, and the erbium-doped fiber amplifier. Photonics as a field began with the invention of the maser and laser in 1958 to 1960. The word 'Photonics' is derived from the Greek word 'phos' meaning light (which has genitive case 'photos' and in compound words the root 'photo-' is used) it appeared in the late 1960s to describe a research field whose goal was to use light to perform functions that traditionally fell within the typical domain of electronics, such as telecommunications, information processing, etc.

The term photonics developed as an outgrowth of the first practical semiconductor light emitters invented in the early 1960s and optical fibers developed in the 1970s. Though covering all light's technical applications over the whole spectrum, most photonic applications are in the range of visible and near- infrared light. Photonics is closely related to quantum electronics, where quantum electronics deals with the theoretical part of it while photonics deal with its engineering applications. Photonics is a branch of optics that involves the application of generation, detection, and manipulation of light in form of photons through emission, transmission, modulation, signal processing, switching, amplification, and sensing.

Fotonica palestro