Toggle light / dark theme

Ranjan KC

| Phononic crystals as a nanomechanical computing platform.


Without electronics and photonics, there would be no computers, smartphones, sensors, or information and communication technologies. In the coming years, the new field of phononics may further expand these options. That field is concerned with understanding and controlling lattice vibrations (phonons) in solids. In order to realize phononic devices, however, lattice vibrations have to be controlled as precisely as commonly realized in the case of electrons or photons.

A large international team of scientists from various research organizations, including the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, has developed a method that dramatically improves the already ultrafast time resolution achievable with X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs). It could lead to breakthroughs on how to design new materials and more efficient chemical processes.

Measuring the size of atomic nuclei has sometimes been useful to probe aspects of nucleon-nucleon interaction and the bulk properties of nuclear matter. The charge radius of atomic nuclei, which can be extracted using laser spectroscopy techniques, is sensitive to both the bulk properties of nuclear matter and particularly subtle details of the interactions between protons and neutrons.