What are the disadvantages of photonics when compared to electronics?

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Photonics can\'t be generated without electronics?

What causes this limitation?

Lack of enlightenment, grasshoppa...

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Well, I guess you just have to think about how are you going to generate/control the lights and optics, it should then be obvious it won't work without some kind of electronics to start with no?

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Lost in dreams, Lost in aspirations, 
Lost to the world, Lost to myself

You have to find another newsgroup ! Stef

Google define:Photonics -> The technology of transmission, control, and detection of light (photons). You don't _need_ electronics for that. You can start a fire without electronics and you can put it out without electronics.

--DF

Actually that's the first hit on Google but it's Intel's definition "The technology of transmission, control, and detection of light (photons). This is also known as fiber optics and optoelectronics.

"

-_- If you want to take it THAT far out based on definitions from google search...

According to google, the first meaningful hit is from ansers.com

Electronics n. The science and technology of electronic phenomena Electronic adj. Of or relating to electrons.

You need electrical impulses to manipulate your body to conduct the necessary physical actions to start the fire and to put it out. That involves electrons travelling within your body, that means it's electronic.

--
A Lost Angel, fallen from heaven 
Lost in dreams, Lost in aspirations, 
Lost to the world, Lost to myself

electronics.

:o) though you don't need your body neither to start a fire nor put it out.

According to that interpretation _everything_ is electronics since electrons are everywhere. I remember even reading about a theory that claimed that the whole universe is actually just one electron going back and forth in time.

--DF

necessarily needed to power photonics *but* electricity is the most

*practical* source of energy for photonic components. Am I at least on the right track? If not, please correct me.

When most of us see the word "photonics" we think LEDs/lasers and photocells/photoresistors/phototransistors, meaning devices that translate electronic signals into light impulses and back but not often things that do something interesting to the signal stream like modulate it while it's in photon form. Generally speaking the base technology is electronics and the photonic bits are there to overcome some of the limitations of electronics like enough bandwidth to get from one signal processor to another and noise immunity. I suppose that at some point most of the things we do with electronics (signal processing-wise) will be done with photons, and the electronic part will be limited to the power supply for the LEDs/lasers etc.

Mark L. Fergerson

Is there any *practical* source of power other than electricity that could be used to energize these LEDs and lasers?

Apparently,

has the same idea: "The science of photonics includes the emission, transmission, amplification, detection, modulation, and switching of light. Photonic devices include optoelectronic devices such as lasers and photodetectors, as well as optical fiber, photonic crystals, planar waveguides and other passive optical elements."

Cheers! Rich

Actually, it started as one primordial line of force, which by vibrating called an electric current out of the void. The magnetic essence is The Mother of Everything, and the electric current that was called forth from the void came to be known as Spirit.

Cheers! Rich

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Here's how I see it:

Physics is the One True Supreme Science.

Electronics is a subset of physics concerning primarily the movement of free electrons through wires, semiconductors, vacuum, etc., and displacements thereof (since a capacitor doesn't actually conduct current...it stores it).

Chemistry is a subset of physics concerning primarily the movement of electrons between atoms and ions. All of chemistry deals entirely with the electrons around the atoms; the nuclei only serve to provide positive charge for the electrons to swarm around.

Electronics, of course, has all sorts of subsets. Optoelectronics for instance deals with electromagnetic interaction, a fast-paced extension of radioelectronics, generally due to quantum effects rather than circuit wiring.

Chemisty, too, has all sorts of subsets, which if you want to get real hairy about, includes organic chemistry, then biochemistry, then biology, then naturally all the humanities follow from biology as a result of a species' perceptions of its surroundings.

;_)

Tim

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I like to think about a digital computer than runs purely on lasers, crystals, and prisms in which the wavelength of the lasers are 400nm only, the lasing media are rare earth crystals. In addition, these lasers are "pumped" solely by deuterium-tritium fusion.

Sadly, such a dream is something that even my great grandchilren will most likely not experience.

...

Lasers need to be "pumped" in order for them to emit light. This means that the electrons in the lasing medium's atoms have to be shoved up to a higher-than-normal energy level and allowed to fall back on command, as it were. When they fall back they emit photons with energy equal to the difference between the high and low levels. A given photon will stimulate an "unfallen" electron in another atom to also fall, and the resulting photon from the second atom is "in step" with the first photon; the process repeats until all the electrons have given up their photons (it's actually somewhat more complicated than that, but I'll assume you know how to use Google).

There are only so many ways to manipulate electrons, and it depends what you mean by "practical". Chemical lasers are well-known but hard to control with the delicacy electrically-pumped lasers can achieve and are somewhat awkward support-machinery-speaking. Lasers can be optically-pumped as well (ruby and doped-glass lasers frinst), but that just pushes the power source question one step back. There are also free-electron lasers but they are basically electron tubes with magnet arrays the beam passes over.

What are you getting at, and what do you think is "impractical" with the way we do it now?

Mark L. Fergerson

IIRC They did build a water computer at a university in the Netherlands and there is this project too:

--DF

Ecraf? Can't remember the model number. Was in some April issue of Electronics Now a bunch of years ago, at any rate.

Tim

--
Deep Fryer: a very philosophical monk.
Website: http://webpages.charter.net/dawill/tmoranwms

How about a laser that is pumped by deuterium-tritium fusion in which the fusion is caused by the heat generated by the concentrated light of another laser?

Laser # 1 emits a beam of light that -- when concentrated into a narrower beam -- is intense enough to cause thermonuclear fusion of the of the deuterium and tritium in laser #2. The deuterium-tritium fusion in "pumps" the rare-crystal medium in laser #2 causing #2 to give out light of its own.