Using the Landauer formulation of transport theory, we predict that dielectric quantum wires should exhibit quantized thermal conductance at low temperatures in a ballistic phonon regime. The quantum of thermal conductance is universal, independent of the characteristics of the material, and equal to ${\ensuremath{\pi}}^{2}{k}_{B}^{2}T/3h$ where ${k}_{B}$ is the Boltzmann constant, $h$ is Planck's constant, and $T$ is the temperature. Quantized thermal conductance should be experimentally observable in suspended nanostructures adiabatically coupled to reservoirs, devices that can be realized at the present time.

Quantized Thermal Conductance of Dielectric Quantum Wires

We report a new type of phononic crystals with topologically nontrivial band gaps for both longitudinal and transverse polarizations, resulting in protected one-way elastic edge waves. In our design, gyroscopic inertial effects are used to break the time-reversal symmetry and realize the phononic analogue of the electronic quantum (anomalous) Hall effect. We investigate the response of both hexagonal and square gyroscopic lattices and observe bulk Chern numbers of 1 and 2, indicating that these structures support single and multimode edge elastic waves immune to backscattering. These robust one-way phononic waveguides could potentially lead to the design of a novel class of surface wave devices that are widely used in electronics, telecommunication, and acoustic imaging.

Topological Phononic Crystals with One-Way Elastic Edge Waves

A topological insulator is characterized by a dichotomy between the interior and the edge of a finite system: While the bulk has a non-zero energy gap, the edges are forced to sustain excitations traversing these gaps. Originally proposed for electrons governed by quantum mechanics, it has remained an important open question if the same physics can be observed for systems obeying Newton's equations of motion. Here, we report on measurements that characterize the collective behavior of mechanical oscillators exhibiting the phenomenology of the quantum spin hall effect. The phononic edge modes are shown to be helical and we demonstrate their topological protection via the stability against imperfections. Our results open the door to the design of topological acoustic meta-materials that can capitalize on the stability of the surfaces phonons as reliable wave guides.

Observation of phononic helical edge states in a mechanical 'topological insulator'

The auxiliary and itinerant coherent potential approximations (ACPA and ICPA) have been proposed as effective methods for treating both mass and force-constant disorder in lattice vibration. In this work we make a direct comparison of ACPA and ICPA to identify the differences between these two methods for simulating vibrational properties of disordered materials and devices. We investigate the major approximations in the disorder self-energies of these two methods by using the diagrammatic method. The single-site ACPA neglects the crossing diagrams describing nonlocal correlations, while ICPA utilizes only the single-fluctuation states in the self-consistency and presents extra errors due to a change in the terms with nearest-neighbor fluctuation. To further demonstrate the important differences between the ACPA and ICPA in the phonon spectral and transport properties, we extend ICPA in combination with the Keldysh nonequilibrium Green's function technique to simulate quantum transport and introduce a Green's-function-based spectral unfolding technique to use with molecular ACPA and the supercell methods for comparison. By studying the disordered one- and three-dimensional alloys, we find that ACPA and ICPA agree very well in the weak scattering regime due to weak force-constant disorder or low phonon frequency. However, for the strong scattering of force-constant disorder, it is found that the two methods present important deviations in the linewidth (and height) of disorder-averaged phonon spectra. Compared to the ACPA and exact results, the problematic treatment of the nearest-neighbor fluctuation in ICPA can present unphysical scattering and induce large errors in the phonon transport, presenting important limitations of ICPA for transport simulation.

Direct comparison of auxiliary and itinerant coherent potential approximations for disordered lattice vibration: Phonon spectral and transport properties

Universal behaviors of magnon-mediated spin transport in disordered nonmagnetic metal-ferromagnetic insulator heterostructures

The coherent potential approximation (CPA) within full counting statistics (FCS) formalism is shown to be a suitable method to investigate average electric conductance, shot noise as well as higher order cumulants in disordered systems. We develop a similar FCS-CPA formalism for phonon transport through disordered systems. As a byproduct, we derive relations among coefficients of different phonon current cumulants. We apply the FCS-CPA method to investigate phonon transport properties of graphene systems in the presence of disorders. For binary disorders as well as Anderson disorders, we calculate up to the $8$-th phonon transmission moments and demonstrate that the numerical results of the FCS-CPA method agree very well with that of the brute force method. The benchmark shows that the FCS-CPA method achieves $20$ times more speedup ratio. Collective features of phonon current cumulants are also revealed.

Full Counting Statistics of Phonon Transport in Disordered Systems

The coherent potential approximation (CPA) within full counting statistics (FCS) formalism is shown to be a suitable method to investigate average electric conductance, shot noise as well as higher order cumulants in disordered systems. We develop a similar FCS-CPA formalism for phonon transport through disordered systems. As a byproduct, we derive relations among coefficients of different phonon current cumulants. We apply the FCS-CPA method to investigate phonon transport properties of graphene systems in the presence of disorders. For binary disorders as well as Anderson disorders, we calculate up to the 8-th phonon transmission moments and demonstrate that the numerical results of the FCS-CPA method agree very well with that of the brute force method. The benchmark shows that the FCS-CPA method achieves 20 times more speedup ratio. Collective features of phonon current cumulants are also revealed.

Chao Zhang

Papers

Full Counting Statistics of Phonon Transport in Disordered Systems

Full counting statistics of phonon transport in disordered systems