Heat is made of phonons, essentially dispersed noise inside material. Energy can be transmitted using photons (you are thinking of infra red, but very hot objects also emit higher frequencies, in visible spectrum and sometimes even into xrays), but this time it's about vaporisation not from infra-red, but from visible light (green has strongest effect) without any actual heating of molecules.
Yes, like the fact that light and heat are both made of photons, although of different energies. /s