Department of Frontier Photonic Science

Summnary

Advanced technologies in optical microscopy and spectroscopy have so far brought a number of breakthroughs in the field of natural sciences, and in the 20th century, new light sources, such as lasers and synchrotron radiation, have accelerated progress of science significantly. Furthermore, these technologies are not only used as tools for examining the properties of materials and objects, but also have evolved into control technology using light, which can be applied to a wide range of optical science. Even now, the discoveries and elucidation of new properties of light have been accumulated. For example, various super-resolution techniques have been created in the field of optical imaging. We expect further technical development of new optical measurement and manipulation and their applications in wide fields of natural science.

In the Department of Frontier Photonic Sciences, we conduct research activities with the aim that we search for novel applications of the newly discovered photonic principles (which already are close to full elucidation) to other scientific fields such as life science and material science, rather than conducting pure academic science to find out new principles or to develop new types of apparatus.