Ultracompact interference phonon nanocapacitor for storage and lasing of coherent terahertz lattice waves.

ABSTRACT

We introduce a novel ultracompact nanocapacitor of coherent phonons formed by high-finesse interference mirrors based on atomic-scale semiconductor metamaterials. Our molecular dynamics simulations show that the nanocapacitor stores coherent monochromatic terahertz lattice waves, which can be used for phonon lasing-the emission of coherent phonons. Either one- or two-color phonon emission can be realized depending on the geometry of the nanodevice. The two-color regime of the interference phonon nanocapacitor originates from the different incidence-angle dependence of the transmission of longitudinal and transverse phonons at the respective interference antiresonances. Coherent phonon storage can be achieved by an adiabatic cooling the nanocapacitor initially thermalized at room temperature or by the pump-probe optical technique. The linewidth narrowing and the computed relative phonon participation number confirm strong phonon confinement in the ultracompact interference nanocavity by an extremely small amount of resonance defects. The emission of coherent terahertz acoustic beams from the nanocapacitor can be realized by applying a tunable reversible stress, which shifts the frequencies of the interference antiresonances.