Quantum Electronics
This term was used for the area of physics dealing with the effects of quantum mechanics on the behavior of electrons in matter, and their interactions with photons. It is today rarely considered a sub-field in its own right, as it has been absorbed by other fields. Solid state physics regularly takes quantum mechanics into account, and is usually concerned with electrons. Specific application to electronics is researched within semiconductor physics. The term also encompassed the basic processes of laser operation where photons are interacting with electrons: absorption, spontaneous emission, and stimulated emission. The term was mainly used between the 1950s and the 1970s. Today, the research output of this field is mainly used in quantum optics, especially for the part of it that draws not from atomic physics but from solid-state physics. Its usage overlapped Quantum Hall effect and Quantum cellular automata.
Read more about this topic: Quantum Optics
Famous quotes containing the words quantum and/or electronics:
“The receipt to make a speaker, and an applauded one too, is short and easy.—Take of common sense quantum sufficit, add a little application to the rules and orders of the House, throw obvious thoughts in a new light, and make up the whole with a large quantity of purity, correctness, and elegancy of style.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“We live in a highly industrialized society and every member of the Black nation must be as academically and technologically developed as possible. To wage a revolution, we need competent teachers, doctors, nurses, electronics experts, chemists, biologists, physicists, political scientists, and so on and so forth. Black women sitting at home reading bedtime stories to their children are just not going to make it.”
—Frances Beale, African American feminist and civil rights activist. The Black Woman, ch. 14 (1970)