Lighting a path to innovation and prosperity

‘Photonics’ encompasses a broad range of light-based technologies emerging from advances in different fields of physics, including materials science, quantum optics, atomic and molecular physics, laser science, and biophysics. Just as physics has benefited photonics, photonics has benefited physics. Many technologies that physicists use depend on photonics, including laser guide stars, CCD detectors, gravity wave interferometers, sub-diffraction limit microscopy, and laser cooling. The application of those technologies has led, in turn, to advances in robotics, medical imaging, defense technologies, biometric security, communications, and more.

Most physicists can understand and appreciate the link between the underlying science and the resulting technologies such as lasers, computers, the Internet, GPS, and high-resolution displays. For the average citizen, however, the connection is hard to make. Few people realize the extent to which optics and photonics technologies are present in their daily lives—when they drive a car, ride in an airplane, talk on a cell phone, use a computer or tablet, watch a video on cable TV or the Internet, listen to the radio, review the results of an x-ray or MRI scan, print a document, or buy food at a grocery store.

The inventions behind those activities were made possible primarily through our basic understanding of the quantum nature of energy and matter. As scientists who understand the connection, one of our most important tasks and responsibilities is to educate our government representatives and fellow citizens about this link and to show them how science brings about the technologies on which our societies rely.

To meet that responsibility, the US National Academy of Sciences National Research Council (NRC) last year published a report, Optics and Photonics: Essential Technologies for our Nation , which stresses the essential role that quantum technologies (lasers, fiber optics, high-resolution solid-state displays, imagers, and sensors) play in our everyday lives. The report is a sequel to a previous publication by the NRC released in 1998, Harnessing Light: Optical Science and Engineering for the 21st Century , which presented a comprehensive overview of optics and photonics technology in the US.

As if in response to the two reports, several nations around the world have moved to advance their already strong optics and photonics industries. Germany recently committed nearly €1 billion ($1.3 billion) to photonics R&D over 10 years; China began funding several programs developing photonics supply chains; European Commission, as part of its new Horizon 2020 program, is directing €1.6 billion to photonics-related R&D over the next seven years; and photonics has been designated as one of five ‘key enabling technologies’ for the future prosperity of the European Union. The US, however, has yet to develop a cohesive strategy.

Historically, the US has been the world leader in deploying photonics research to power cutting-edge technologies, but global competition has put that leadership position at risk. US companies have lost global market share and have shed thousands of jobs.

The 2012 NRC report called for a National Photonics Initiative (NPI) to advance photonics in five industrial sectors that are critical to our current and future quality of life, as well as to our economic well-being: energy, health and medicine, information technology and communications, advanced manufacturing, and defense and national security. New opportunities in those fields—including solar power, high-efficiency lighting, genome mapping, high-technology manufacturing, nuclear threat identification, cancer detection, and new optical capabilities to support Internet growth—offer the potential for even greater societal impact in the next few decades.

Heeding the report’s call for an NPI, five international scientific societies—the American Physical Society, the IEEE Photonics Society, the Laser Institute of America, the Optical Society (OSA), and the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE)—joined forces to organize their memberships and recruit support from across a broad spectrum of US stakeholders.

The result of that collaboration was launched in May. One hundred experts from industry, academia, and government worked on an NPI white paper whose recommendations, if achieved, will help the US to regain global leadership and develop a workforce ready to meet the challenges of tomorrow. In particular, the white paper urges the US government to:

Materials science and solid-state physics, electrical engineering, computer science, advanced manufacturing, atmospheric physics, and astrophysics can all benefit by implementing the programs recommended by the NPI, as these disciplines all employ photonics technology to accelerate progress in science and complete their specific missions.

By building on the evident success of past investments in photonics, the NPI makes a strong case for continued federal support of science and engineering. I encourage you to read the NPI white paper and join us in educating family, friends, neighbors, local leaders, and federal lawmakers about how investments in science and technology impact our modern world. It’s our responsibility and one of our most important tasks.

Thomas Baer is the executive director of the Stanford Photonics Research Center, past president of OSA and chair of the National Photonics Initiative Committee.