Colloidal crystal generating, controlling, and detecting photons (packets of light), particularly in the visible and near Infrared, but also extending to the Ultraviolet, Infrared and far IR portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. The science of photonics includes the emission, transmission, amplification, detection, modulation, and switching of lightwaves over a broad range of frequencies and wavelengths. Photonic devices include electro-optic components such as lasers (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) and optical fiber. Applications include telecommunications, information processing, illumination, spectroscopy, holography, medicine (surgery, vision correction, endoscopy), military (guided missile) technology, agriculture and robotics. Polycrystalline colloidal structures have been identified as the basic
Stimulated emission in such an excited state may thus result in radiation which has a narrow spectrum (centered around one wavelength of light), but the individual photons would have no common phase relationship and would also emanate in random directions. This is the mechanism of fluorescence and thermal emission. An external electromagnetic field at a frequency associated with a transition can affect the quantum mechanical state of the atom without being absorbed. As the electron in the atom makes a transition between two stationary states (neither of which shows a dipole field), it enters a transition state which does have a dipole