Photonics uses light rather than electrons to perform varieties of applications. Silicon photonics, in particular, has gained a lot of interest in the past few decades due to its unique ability to utilize standard complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor manufacturing processes and materials, resulting in high density, high yield, and the massive fabrication of optical devices at low cost.

Micro-nano fabrication is a general term for a series of technologies for processing and manufacturing micro-nano devices. Integrated circuits, micro-resonant cavities, microfluidic, micro optoelectronic systems all depend on micro-nano fabrication. Fabrication process is one of the key factors that determine the device performance.

Optical frequency combs can enable ultrafast processes in physics, biology, and chemistry, as well as improve communication and navigation, medical testing, and security. The Nobel Prize in Physics 2005 was awarded to the developers of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including the optical frequency comb technique, and microresonator combs have become an intense focus of research over the past decade.

In optics, when a collection of nonlinear processes act together on a pump beam, the resulting spectral broadening of the original pump beam gives rise to a supercontinuum. Supercontinuum sources for optical coherence tomography are of great interest since they provide a broad bandwidth for high resolution and high-power imaging sensitivity. Commercial fiber-based supercontinuum systems use high pump powers to generate a broad bandwidth and customized optical filters to modulate the spectra.