Fotonikai

Fotonikai is the interdisciplinary field devoted to the generation, manipulation, and detection of light for information processing, sensing, and imaging. Photonic technologies use photons instead of electrons to carry, process, or detect signals, enabling high bandwidth, low loss communication and precise measurements across a range of wavelengths, from visible to infrared.

Historically, the foundation of fotonikai lies in the invention of lasers, the development of optical fibers, and advances in semiconductor optoelectronics in the second half of the 20th century. The field has expanded with photonic integrated circuits, nanophotonics, and quantum photonics, enabling complex light functions on small chips.

Core topics include optical communications (fiber optics, multiplexing), light sources (lasers, LEDs), detectors and receivers, photonic integrated circuits, imaging and sensing (biomedical imaging, environmental monitoring), and quantum photonics (single-photon sources, quantum information).

Applications are widespread: telecommunications and data centers, medical imaging and therapy, industrial metrology and sensing, consumer optics, and defense.

Technologies in fotonikai include optical fibers, waveguides, photonic crystals, modulators, detectors, light sources, and chip-scale photonic circuits, often coupled with electronics for control and processing.

Education and research in fotonikai are typically multidisciplinary, spanning physics, electrical engineering, materials science, and computer science. The field faces challenges in integration, manufacturing, precision, and standardization but promises advances in high-speed data, sensing accuracy, and quantum information.