Photonics is the science of generating, controlling, and detecting
photons, particularly in the
visible and near
infra-red spectrum, but also extending to the ultraviolet (0.2 - 0.35 µm wavelength), long-wave infrared (8 - 12 µm wavelength), and far-infrared/THz portion of the spectrum (e.g., 2-4 THz corresponding to 75-150 µm wavelength) where today
quantum cascade lasers are being actively developed. Photonics is an outgrowth of the first practical semiconductor light emitters invented in the early 1960s at
General Electric,
MIT Lincoln Laboratory,
IBM, and
RCA and made practical by
Zhores Alferov and
Dmitri Z. Garbuzov and collaborators working at the
Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute and almost simultaneously by Izuo Hayashi and Mort Panish working at
Bell Telephone Laboratories. Photonics most typically operates at frequencies on the order of hundreds of terahertz.
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