Controlling the vibrations in solids is crucial to tailor their mechanical properties and their interaction with light. Thermal vibrations represent a source of noise and dephasing for many physical processes at the quantum level. One strategy to avoid these vibrations is to structure a solid such that it possesses a phononic stop band, i.e., a frequency range over which there are no available mechanical modes. Here, we demonstrate the complete absence of mechanical vibrations at room temperature over a broad spectral window, with a 5.3 GHz wide band gap centered at 8.4 GHz in a patterned silicon nanostructure membrane measured using Brillouin light scattering spectroscopy. By constructing a line-defect waveguide, we directly measure GHz localized modes at room temperature. Our experimental results of thermally excited guided mechanical modes at GHz frequencies provides an eficient platform for photon-phonon integration with applications in optomechanics and signal processing transduction.
@article{arxiv.2202.02166,
title = {Engineering nanoscale hypersonic phonon transport},
author = {O. Florez and G. Arregui and M. Albrechtsen and R. C. Ng and J. Gomis-Bresco and S. Stobbe and C. M. Sotomayor-Torres and P. D. García},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2202.02166},
year = {2022}
}