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Published March 1999 | Submitted
Journal Article Open

Yoctocalorimetry: phonon counting in nanostructures

Abstract

It appears feasible with nanostructures to perform calorimetry at the level of individual thermal phonons. Here I outline an approach employing monocrystalline mesoscopic insulators, which can now be patterned from semiconductor heterostructures into complex geometries with full, three-dimensional relief. Successive application of these techniques also enables definition of integrated nanoscale thermal transducers; coupling these to a dc SQUID readout yields the requisite energy sensitivity and temporal resolution with minimal back action. The prospect of phonon counting opens intriguing experimental possibilities with analogies in quantum optics. These include fluctuation-based phonon spectroscopy, phonon shot noise in the energy relaxation of nanoscale systems, and quantum statistical phenomena such as phonon bunching and anticorrelated electron–phonon exchange.

Additional Information

© 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. Available online 23 April 1999. I thank Prof. John Worlock for many enjoyable conversations that were crucial to the development of these ideas, and Dr. Keith Schwab for important input and critical comments on this manuscript. Many others also deserve thanks for their helpful insights, especially M.C. Cross, T.S. Tighe, M.B. Ketchen, B. Yurke, H.J. Kimble, A.N. Cleland, R. Lifshitz, J.P. Eisenstein, D.L. Goodstein, R. Mohanty, W. Wegscheider and Y.-C. Kao. I thank D.A. Harrington for carrying out the simulations of Fig. 8. Finally, I gratefully acknowledge support, in part, from the NSF through grant DMR-9705411 and from DARDA ETO/MEMS through grant DABT 63-98-1-0012.

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