Quantum electronics is a term that was used mainly between the 1950s and 1970s to denote the area of physics dealing with the effects of quantum mechanics on the behavior of electrons in matter, together with their interactions with photons. Today, it is rarely considered a sub-field in its own right, and it has been absorbed by other fields. Solid state physics regularly takes quantum mechanics into account, and is usually concerned with electrons. Specific applications of quantum mechanics in electronics is researched within semiconductor physics. The term also encompassed the basic processes of laser operation, which is today studied as a topic in quantum optics. Usage of the term overlapped early work on the quantum Hall effect and quantum cellular automata.
