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Updated: Jun 12, 2025

Fabrication and Testing of Photonic Thermometers
Published on: October 24, 2018
Theoretical investigation of decoherence channels in athermal phonon sensors
Thomas F Harrelson1,2, Ibrahim Hajar2,3,4, Omar A Ashour1,2,5
1Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, United States of America.
Abstract:
The creation and evolution of nonequilibrium phonons is central in applications ranging from cosmological particle searches to decoherence processes in qubits. However, the fundamental understanding of decoherence pathways for athermal phonon distributions in solid-state systems remains an open question. Using first-principles calculations, we investigate the primary decay channels of athermal phonons in two technologically relevant semiconductors-Si and GaAs. We quantify the contributions of anharmonic, isotopic, and interfacial scattering in these materials. From this, we construct a model to estimate the thermal power in a readout scheme as a function of time. We discuss the implication of our results on noise limitations in current phonon sensor designs and strategies for improving coherence in next-generation phonon sensors.
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