Phononic Frequency Combs for Material Science and Engineering
Adarsh Ganesan
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Abstract. — Phononic frequency combs (PFC) are the mechanical analogs of celebrated photonic frequency combs. These represent a newly documented physical phenomenon in the well researched physical domain of mechanical resonators [1]. The emergence of PFC is mediated by nonlinear modal coupling. Through a series of experiments with mechanical devices, various features of PFC have now been identified. These include drive parameters for comb operation, hysteresis for comb spectrum tailoring and growth, saturation and attenuation mechanisms of combs, and nonlinear sensitivity to physical perturbations. My talk will describe the physics of phononic frequency combs and will emphasize how these could be foundational to the fields of material science and condensed matter physics. Here, I will also present our first observations of phononic combs in quantum materials. The future work will be focused on the fundamental contributions leading to the convergence of phononic frequency combs and material science.
1. Ganesan, A., Do, C. and Seshia, A., 2017. Phononic frequency comb via intrinsic three-wave mixing. Physical review letters, 118(3), p.033903.
Host: Walter Lambrecht