Phonons are often regarded as delocalized quasiparticles with certain energy and momentum. The anharmonic interaction of phonons determines macroscopic properties of the solid, such as thermal expansion or thermal conductivity, and a detailed understanding becomes increasingly important for functional nanostructures. Although phonon-phonon scattering processes depicted in simple wave-vector diagrams are the basis of theories describing these macroscopic phenomena, experiments directly accessing these coupling channels are scarce. We synthesize monochromatic acoustic phonon wave packets with only a few cycles to introduce nonlinear phononics as the acoustic counterpart to nonlinear optics. Control of the wave vector, bandwidth, and consequently spatial extent of the phonon wave packets allows us to observe nonlinear phonon interaction, in particular, second harmonic generation, in real time by wave-vector-sensitive Brillouin scattering with x-rays and optical photons.
We introduce azobenzene-functionalized polyelectrolyte multilayers as efficient, inexpensive optoacoustic transducers for hyper-sound strain waves in the GHz range. By picosecond transient reflectivity measurements we study the creation of nanoscale strain waves, their reflection from interfaces, damping by scattering from nanoparticles and propagation in soft and hard adjacent materials like polymer layers, quartz and mica. The amplitude of the generated strain ε ∼ 5 × 10−4 is calibrated by ultrafast X-ray diffraction.
We introduce azobenzene-functionalized polyelectrolyte multilayers as efficient, inexpensive optoacoustic transducers for hyper-sound strain waves in the GHz range. By picosecond transient reflectivity measurements we study the creation of nanoscale strain waves, their reflection from interfaces, damping by scattering from nanoparticles and propagation in soft and hard adjacent materials like polymer layers, quartz and mica. The amplitude of the generated strain epsilon similar to 5 x 10(-4) is calibrated by ultrafast X-ray diffraction.