Photonique

Photonique is the French term for the field known in English as photonics: the science and technology of generating, controlling, and detecting photons for applications in information, imaging, sensing, and energy. The central aim is to use light to transmit and process information efficiently.

The field encompasses devices and materials that interact with light at the level of individual photons, including light sources such as lasers and LEDs, waveguides and optical circuits, modulators, and detectors. It also includes photonic integration, where multiple optical functions are combined on a single chip, and subfields such as silicon photonics, nano-photonics, and quantum photonics.

Historically, photonics arose from classical optics and quantum optics. The invention of the laser in 1960 and the subsequent development of fiber-optic communication in the 1970s and 1980s spurred rapid progress. Advances in semiconductor processing, nanofabrication, and new materials have enabled compact, high-performance photonic devices.

Applications span telecommunications networks, data centers, and sensing systems in medicine, environmental monitoring, and industry. Imaging techniques such as optical coherence tomography, LIDAR, and spectroscopy rely on light–matter interactions. In research and industry, photonics supports quantum information processing, metrology, and sensing technologies that offer high speed and low power consumption.

As a dynamic discipline, photonics aims to further integrate optical functions on chips, improve energy efficiency of signaling, and harness quantum properties of light to enable new sensors, communications systems, and computation platforms.