Robert Gilmore
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Science and the Photon
It was Albert Einstein who first theorized that the energy in a light beam exists in small bits or particles, and scientists today know that light sometimes behaves like a wave (somewhat like sound or water) and sometimes like a stream of particles. The energies of photons range from high-energy gamma rays and X-rays down to low-energy infrared and radio waves, though all travel at the same speed. The amazing power of lasers is the result of a concentration of photons that have been made to travel together in order to hit their target at the same time.
Examples of photon in a Sentence
Phil Plait, Scientific American, 18 Sep. 2025
There are, however, key technical challenges such as generating on-demand, indistinguishable single photons with high efficiency, and the probabilistic nature of photonic gates (the electronic elements in a computer performing logic operations).
—Gil Press, Forbes.com, 16 Sep. 2025
Besides there being less interference than at radio waves, optical and infrared lasers also support quantum encryption — what's known as QKD, or quantum key distribution, in which the key to encrypting the data is encoded into the quantum superposition of the photons.
—Keith Cooper, Space.com, 15 Sep. 2025
The single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD), a solid-state photodetector, is at the heart of this innovation.
—Ni Tao, Interesting Engineering, 15 Sep. 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Photon.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/photon. Accessed 22 Sep. 2025.
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photon
noun
Medical Definition
photon
noun
called also troland
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