Microphotonics

Microphotonics is a branch of technology that deals with directing light on a microscopic scale and is used in optical networking.

Particularly, it refers to the branch of technology that deals with wafer-level integrated devices and systems that emit, transmit, detect, and process light along with other forms of radiant energy with photon as the quantum unit.

[1] Microphotonics employs at least two different materials with a large differential index of refraction to squeeze the light down to a small size.

If the photons reside mainly in the higher index material, the confinement is due to total internal reflection.

This type of circularly symmetric optical resonance is called a Whispering gallery mode, after Lord Rayleigh coined the term.